How hard is it to design your own plane?

[phil64]

Nice Butcher Bird!

[stx44]

I have designed and built my own aircraft many times, using nothing more than a good set of 3 view drawings, a pencil, french curves and a t square.

Its not that hard when you have built a few so know the basic structure and how a plane should go together..

The biggest issue as that they tend to be a little random in the end result. Ive had some pearlers that flew very well, and did so for years. Ive also had ones that have hit the deck at high speed and exploded on the first launch. (me262 on a 6 strand catapult- rolled inverted and BOOOM!!)

Stil thats all part of the fun,isnt it?

[phil64]

Yeah,you spend 2-3 weeks building a plane only to watch it destroyed in 3 seconds.Not a good bargain;Fun ratio is zero compared to effort expended!

[Brenda]

Yeah i want a Fokker Eindecker!

I picked up a brand new Sterling Eindecker at AMA Expo for $20. I have to finish Guillows Spitfire and Comet A26 then start on Fokker

[phil64]

Awesome!I downloaded the PDF and printed out the plans but I have to go to Fedex/Kinko's to have them blown up to proper size.

[Wildpig]

Yeah,you spend 2-3 weeks building a plane only to watch it destroyed in 3 seconds.Not a good bargain;Fun ratio is zero compared to effort expended!

I hear ya' and if you leave it at that, you're right. But, the fun continues when you take what you learned and apply it to the next model.
Sure, if the balsa splintering crash occurred on every first flight, yeah, the fun ratio would be zero.

Mitch, here on the forum, usually signs off his post with something like: "keep flying, keep learning, and have fun".
If he didn't say it, I say it.

[davidchoate]

It took Me 3 years to just get one to fly more than 10 seconds, and I am still working on perfecting an RC conversion that flies well. But thats how you learn, and someday I'll be able to build a Plane that flies perfect. like Bill said. It should take very small inputs to fly, and want to go level and straight on its own. As far as scratch building. I dont think you can successfully just jump right into it. I'm not going to try it til I perfect perfect flying planes built from Plans.

[dirk gently]

I never built a model that I hadn't designed myself. Generally, if you use a 3D view of an actual plane, your chances of success are good. Some modelling experience is helpful.
I also designed some sports (non-scale) models from scratch. This is somewhat more complicated, basic aerodynamics knowledge becomes handy.
For the record, all my models ended up flying, although sometimes they were not flying right right away.

[phil64]

Blew up the plans 200% Ha!Its gonna be a big 'un!Good!

[Wildpig]

Attention Mr. Parker ... Attention Mr. Parker. You have a protege'

Ought to be a real nice flyer, phil.

[phil64]

Yep!

[BillParker]

Okay, somewhere around 40 inches?

Whether flyable or scale, in that size it's really fun to detail em, and paint em up really nice. That thing is very kewl when the wires are added..

Have alot of fun with it!

bp

[phil64]

i have to put hard points in the wings to accept the wires.

[Mitch]

Hi ALL... I am on my ship in Anchorage and just saw this post. you should look up my old post on "Guillows Eindecker" I drew and build the Eindecker. Made it to the same scale as the DR1 Used parts from the Morse Scout for the wing ribs and plastic parts.

The ws was to be about 28-29 inches but ended up at nearly 30 inches. The model is intended to fly on rubber power.

Mitch

[joecrouse]

here is my stickbuilt plane in a zipped .rar file.
ive done a dozen versions of this more or less and they all fly REASONABLY well.