..and you can spend an inordinate amount of time re-inventing the wheel to arrive at something that is round, and rolls. Even Firestone (and others) can't lay claim to inventing the tire...only making refinements to an invention that's existed for thousands of years. Try as you may, you will not in this lifetime reinvent the airplane.

Any airplane, regardless of the amount of engineering involved is a nothing more than a series of compromises that work together to perform some basic task. Not every task....just some.

It's important to have an objective. What the design is supposed to accomplish...before you can improve upon anything. Even then...best case scenario....your design will only be optimized for THAT set of parameters and nothing else. This is why fighter jets make such lousy trainers, and Airliners really turn in a pitiful aerobatic performance.

When you set out to do this...plan on building TEN of your designs...each with some alterations because the best layed plans on paper will always leave room for improvement, and there is no software in the world that can predict with certainty how well a particular airplane will fly.

Where r/c planes are concerned...it interesting to observe that variations on the same basic platforms that have existed for 30-40-50 years are still at the forefront of sport model design. Change the materials...change the cowling...add a canopy....remove a canopy....add some area...make this a little bigger, and this part a little smaller.....the basic layout remains the same.

Hmmmm.

Not to poo-poo your enthusiasm for getting in there with both hands and making something better than it was...just be sure you have realistic expectations.