A neighbors high school kid is trying to build a flyable plane from scratch, for a school science project. He asked for some help. I am thinking that there must be people and programs that have exposed the basics of flight to school kids, and included in them the building of a simple plane that adheres to basic design concepts.

If anybody has a copy of a program etc it would be much appreciated

thanks and regards

AMA Delta Dart?

This site has some good information:

http://webpages.charter.net/rcfu/HelpsHints/ModDgn.html

Compufoil works pretty good for airfoils and wing plans:

http://www.compufoil.com/index.shtml

I would have him take a look at some of the stik planes. They are very simple and easy to construct. Something with that basic sort of design shouldn't be too hard to make work.

DesignFoil is worth noting too. It is on the much pricier side (inexpensive for CFD), but has pretty extensive CFD modeling including the "Virtual Wind Tunnel". I've tinkered with a much earlier version of this years ago. I didn't end up building anything, but it's a good program also. The software mentioned in the above post appears to be much better for the overall design work and ending up with the templates necessary for building (unless many new features have been added to DesignFoil since I used it).

http://www.storesonline.com/site/960...uct/DesignFoil

Check out the SPAD Debonair (www.spadtothebone.com). Its been built by others as science or school projects, its inexpensive, and its very quick.

Brad