At Oshkosh in 1989 | gave a forum in the EAA Design College called "Design ing Your Homebuilt” So many people have asked for copies of the view- graphs and formulas from that tak that I decided to write it up for Sport Avia- tion. This also gives me the opportuni fof showing you how to use simple spreadsheet programs to help you de~ sign your airplane. ‘Last eummer Iran across this state- tment, which deeply moved me: “I be- live that the American homebuilder has a moral duty to develop new and original aircraft designs because he has everything necessary at his immediate ‘command. We are living in the wealth- jest country in the world . . . The tech- nical information is practically free. The NACA and the U. S. Government Print ing Otfice send free at your request, or at cost price, the best manuals and re- ports. Everyone has a garage and can buy tools at a price that cannot be Designing Your Homebuilt by JOHN G. RONCZ. EAA 112811 15450 Hunting Ridge Tr Granger, IN 46530-9093, matched in other countries. The aver- age American citizen can devote his weekends to playing golf, or any other hobby he cares to pursue. In other words, he is a time millionaire’. All these ‘conditions represent the back: ground that should produce more and better aircraft designs.” The EAA pub- lished this statement by famed EAA member Ladisiao Pazmany in 1957. Ex: cept for the fact that the NACA is now called NASA, the statement is more true SCALE TWO FOOT DIVISIONS ‘SPORT AVIATION 37today than it was in 1957. “There is even a better reason today: the avaliabiity of chesp yet powerful computers. The IBM AT 'm writing this fn is more powerful than the UNIVAG 1107 | first tied programming in high school. My Compaq 386/20's are about 238 powerful as the IBM 370 mainframe I used in collage. Mast people know someone who has a computer, and al- ‘most everyone who has @ computer h @ spreadsheet program, ike Lotus 1-2-3 ‘¢ Microsolt Excel. With these you need rot be a programmer to use the com: puter tohhelp you do the tedious calcula tions that aircreft design may require. Tl try and show you how to set up the formulas and plots for your spreadsheet program during this efticle. That's how I generated the plots | used in the EAA Design College forums. To help you make your spreadsheets, I'm going to put al he forrmulas in these ances into Lotus 1-2-3 language. | understand that Excel and other spreadsheets can un- derstand the Lotus formulas. While ve been privileged to work on 17 aircraft designs which have already flown, with 2 few more siillin the womb, | have always flown tactory-made airplanes. | owned three different airplanes trom 1875 to 1987, when |re- luctanlly sold my Beech Duchess be- cause the cost of insuring it and operat- ing it was becoming oppressive. A couple of years of standing in line at airports, waiting for lost luggage, and being stranded by cancelled or late flights has convinced me that | need an sirpiane. No tactory-made airplane cur: rently available satisfies my desire for fast, comfortable yet atordable trans- portation. So | decided to bite the bullet ‘and design my own. | will be using my own design as a test case throughout these articles. Dasigning your homebuilt starts by a realistic iook at what your needs are. Most pilots are attracted to speed in the seme way as the Japanese beetles in my backyard hurl themselves into the bags under the synthetic sex: pheromone disks. While | was an airplane owner, Imade dozens of fights from my home base in South Bend to Wichita, Kansas - a distance of 569 nautical miles (6S5 statute miles). | fight-planned my Duchess for 160 knots, and it usually did a litle better. | flew that trip with headwinds of up to 70 keots and tailwinds of up to 50 knots. This gave me an appreciation of how much difference speed makes on a rather lengthy flight Figure A shows the effect of speed ‘on my trip to Wichita. I's interesting to note thal it you flew at an average ‘speed of 142 knots, the trip would take you 4 hours. To save one hour, you'd have to fly at an average speed of 190 knots. This would cut your fight to 3 [98 FEOAUARY 1990 hours. Now, to save yet another hour, you'd have to go 280 knots. What | learned trom my frequent trios was that ten knots one way or the other saved ‘or lost me abaut ten minutes on a 3-1/2 hour fight. ‘Speed is even less important ch shor- ter trips. On a more typical fight {rom ‘South Bend to Columbus, Ohio, which {s 188 nautical miles (217 statute miles). going from 160 to 200 knots would save me less than $5 minutes. Occasionally lve spent more time than that waiting for my turn for taka-oft ‘While | prefer twins, my wallet prefers, singles. My homebuil is going to have ‘one engine. My own decision was that if my homebuilt could give me the same 160 knots as my Duchess, I'd be happy. ‘A more important consideration for me was the reliability and maintenance costs for the engine, On my Rockwell 112A, the 200 HP engine was by far the biggest maintenance headache. On my Duchess, which had 180 hp Lycomings, never spent a penny on the engines beyond normal maintenance. Therefore | decided to design the airplane around the 180 horse Lycoming engine, be- cause of ils ready availabilty, low maintenance requirements and low operating costs. Since the engine is going to be the heaviest single item in the airplane, you have to start by choos- ing your engine, and getting its weight and the weight of all ts accessories, in- cluding the propeller, its governor and prop extension, if you're going to use one. { originally wanted a 2-seat airplane. But we found that with a modest stretch, we could add 2 aft-facing seals behind the front 2 without making the airplane too much digger. Since both my partners have kids, they wanted to be abie to have more than 2 people in the plane. The big question was whether or Not the airplane could handle the center of gravity range with 4 seats. The afi- facing seats do put the centers of grav- ity of each person closer together, so | agreed to ty this. “The owner's handbooks for any fac- tory-made airplane are a wealth of infor mation on what things weigh. Look in the weight and balance section, and you'l find a long lst of equipment along with their weights and locations for that aitplane, You'll need to start making your list of radios, steps, ights, and ev- erything else you're gcing to stutt in your airplane, and what each item weighs, ‘You also cannot design your airplane without buying some books and doing a lot of studying. I'l recommerd some at the end of this article. There are many details that | won't talk about that these books will cover. After you buy your books, don't be intimidated by them. Yes, the formulas have things like Gresk letters in them, and maybe some Calculus thet might scare you. However. if you don't know that an upside-down y () is the Greek letter tambda, it doesn't mean you can't use the formula. Call it an upside-cown y if you want. Ii tty to show you which formulas you need and how to use them. You can aiso go 10 the aliport and start measuring the distance trom the propeller flange to the firewall for airplanes which use the kind of engine you plan (o use. Peek insive the cowl= ings of airplanes at your iocal mainte- nance shop, and while youre at it measure the engine height and width, etc. You're going to draw a scale ver sion of the engine, so get all the mea surements now. Ifa factory can stut all that junk in there, you should be able to 0 it also, Now measure the height ang width ofthe firewall. Doing this for a few airplanes will quickly show you about how much room you're going to need for the engine compartment. Most stores that seli drafting supplies also sell tempiates for scaled-down humans. Try and buy @ one-tenth scale human. This is a convenient size for making drawings. While you're there buy lots of drawing paper. | like mine with ten squares to the inch ‘Al this point in your design what you have is a packaging problem. Your mis- sion is to get all the people, radios, in struments, and propulsive devices in- side some fuselage-shaped container. This is the time when you need to de cide what kind of configuration you're going to build. Ii ‘mit myself to “con- Ventional” configurations, meaning one ‘wing in front and one tailn back. While canards and three-surtace airplanes ‘can be used 10 solve some packaging land performance problems, you would need professional holp and very sophis- ticated computer tools to design these kinds of airplanes. That puls them beyond the reach of most homebuild- ers. My own homebuilt is old- fashionied. Start drawing a side-view of your airplane, beginning with the pro- peller flange. Then draw in the firewall at the correct fuselage station (FS). You ‘can draw in the correct height of the firewall, since you measured how high ‘and low it should be above the center ff the prop flange at the airport. Now Use your scaled human tempiate and draw in your people. Be sure to leave ‘enough foom to push on the rudder pedals without hitting the firewall. Draw the instrument panel and everything else you can think of, Make a list of ev- arything you drew and estimate the horizontal and vertical position for the center of gravity of each item, along with its weight. Then go ahead end draw a top view in the same way, start- ing with the prop tlange and firewall width.TIME ENROUTE — 569 NM FLIGHT SBN TO ICT ‘TIME ENROUTE ~ HOURS wo oH 28028900 TRUE AIRSPEED ~ KNOTS In airplane lotting, distance down the fuselage is called the fuselage station or FS. Distance verically is called the waterline or WL. Distance along the wing span measured from the center line of the fuselage is called a butline or BL (I've also heard the term Wing Station). You can measure the FS and WL from any arbitrary position, as long as you indicate where the reference lines are on your drawing, You could decide that the prop flange or firewall was FS 0.0, for example. If the firewall is FS 00, then the prop tlange would be af a negative FS location. I's best to make FS 0.0 someplace ahead of the airplane. That way you won't be confused with negative numbers when you calculate your weight and balance. You could make the ground be WL 0.0, cr the bottom of the fuselage, or any. place else that becomes an easy point fo measure {rom vertically. Wherever you put WL 0.0, anything below that wil be @ negative number, and anything above it will be a positive number At this time, the wing and tals ean be sketched in place roughly, using your sense of judgment. Later we will size them more scientifically. WING DESIGN ‘There are three considerations you will be using to size your wings. The first is that wing area will control your landing speed. The second is that wing ‘span will determine your climb and glide performance. The third is that the area and span will determine your power-off rale of descent. The best way to get a handle on these tradeotts is to use a computer spreadsheet, although you can certainly do the calculations by hand. All discussions of wings center about the term C,, or lift coetficient. The Cis the amount of lit, in pounds, pro- duced by one square foot of wing at a dynamic pressure of one pound per square fool. Dynamic pressure is what you feel when you put your hand out side your car window when driving. Nis defined as one halt the density of the fivid (air) times the speed squared. In formulas the dynamic pressure is rep: cesented by the letter "g". The symbol {or density is the Greek letter rho, which looks like a curvy small “P" (p). This is, why aerodynamicists make the big bucks. [tis important to remember that 'V, which stands for speed, is always measured in teet per second. The reason for this is thai density is mea- sured for 2 cubie foot, and the wing area is measured in square feet, so the ‘speed has to be in feet to be consistent. In aerodynamics, one second is one Unit of time. To get speed in test per ‘second, multiply miles-per-hour by 41.467, or multiply knots by 1.689. The density of air at sea level on a “stan- dard” day is .002377 slugs per cubic foot of air. Julia Child has published several good recipes for cooking your slugs once you have finished using them in your calculations. Let's give a formal definition: Lift= Strho"V'2"S*C, The symbol “S" represents wing area in square feet. In level, unaccelerated flight, the wing lit has to equal the weight of the airplane. Therefore, S = weight(5"tho'V"2°C,) or ©, = weight( S*tho"V=2°S) or V'= @SQRT(weightS*mho"S"C)) What this means is that if you cut the speed in hal, the wing will have to pro- duce four times the Cy, because the C, varies with the square of ihe speed Note that @SQRT is the Lotus function wich calculates square roots. The kay relationshio for sizing your wing is the formula which solves for S (wing area) when given the speed and Cy. For this case, the speed is your stall speed, and the C is the maximum fit coetficient your wing can make before stalling. For now, Use a Cimge Of 1.22 for a wing with no flaps, 1.8 for a wing with simple taps (hinge inside th tap), 2.0 for a wing with a slotted flap (hinge below the flap), and 2.36 for a wing with ‘a Fowler flap (Hlap on tracks). The spreadsheet for this article al- lows you to play with the tradeotts re- quired to size your wing, Right now, you don't have a gioss weight for your airplane, so instead use the weights of other airplanes which are similar to yours. At the top of the spreadsheet, enter the altitude, the stalling speed you want (in knots) and the gross weight The spreadsheet then calculatas the density rho for that altitude and shows the speed in miles-per-hour and feel- per-second. The spreadsheet allows you to select three “KNOWNS", and then solves for the appropriate unknowns. Using the al- titude and speed entered at the top, you can specify C, then solve for wing area, you can specify wing area and solve for ©, required, or you can speatty Cy and wing area for the altitude you picked, and solve for your stall speed. Now type in the numbers suggested above under “KNOWN for Cx; the spreadsheet wil tell you how many square feet of wing you need for the altitude and speed you entered at the top. Now fly to Denver ‘by typing 5009 for altitude, and note that the wing has to get bigger to maintain the same stall speed. Lower the stall ‘speed by ten knots, and note how much wing area you have to add to achieve this. See how much wing area you would need to get the same stall speed wilh no flaps, and with al the varieties of flaps. When you have a feel for this, go ahead and select a wing area by enter- ing it under the word "KNOWN". Now you can select climb and cruise speeds at different altitudes, and develop a fee! for now the C, changes with diferent airspeeds and alltudes. Try setting a ‘cruise speed at 7500 feet, then pretend you're turbocharged and change the al- Iitude to 25,000 feet. See what happens to the C in that case The last option in the spreadsheet ig- nores the speed you entered atthe top, and instead solves for speed based on the wing area and C, you choose. Select an appropriete G, from the list ‘SPORT AVIATION 39————_—_——- VAKING THE SPREADSHEET FOR THIS ARTICLE To mako the spreadsheet which demonstrates the relaionships betwees it, density, wing ares and C. First set the column width to 16 for columns A and D, The following shows the cell address, followed by the utles you need to type in each cell. Celi address 813, for example, refers to the cell at column B and row 48. For titles, the character ‘tells 1-2-3 to leftjustity the fille, while center the title in the cell. tells Lotus 10 At: Spreadsheet for calculating basic lift parameters ‘A2: Irom Sport Aviation 3: JGR 11-89 AS: 'H(altitude) AG: 'Viknots) 47: W(weight) 9: “KNOWN 10: ‘CL(lt coef) 12: KNOWN) A13: ‘S{wing area) 15: KNOWN AY6: ‘Swing area): ANT: 'CL(ltt coat) DS: ‘rho(density) DB: 'Vitvsec) D7: 'Vimph) D9: SOLVE FOR D10: “Swing area) D12: SOLVE FOR D13: ‘CL (Nit coet) 015: ‘SOLVE FOR 016: “V{knots) Now type the formulas carefully in their proper cells: E5: @IF(BS.36089,(1-.000006875347" 185) 4.2561" 002376889, 2971" @EXP(-(B5-36089)/20806.7)" (00237689) E6: +B6"1.689 E7: +B6".152 E10: +87/.5°ES*E6-2°B10) E13. +-B7.5°ES"E6"2°B13) E46: @SORT(87( 5°ES'B16°817))/ 1,689 Hints on conversion to ther non 1-2-8 spreadsheels: The @IF in cell E5, which caloulates rho, works like this GIF (test, doi tests true, do il tes! is false) @SORT calculates square roots GEXP celoulates antilogs In cell E6, for example, +6 refers to the contents of cell B6. In Excell, i Believe that the + is replaced by To test your spreadsheet, enter the {following values into their proper cells: BS: 0) B6: 55 87: 1850 B10: 1.5 B13: 100 B16: 100 B17: 1.803881 Your spreadsheet should then be identical to the one shown below. Spreadsheel for calculating basic lih parameters {rom Spon Awation JGR 11-89 H (alitudey ° V (knots): 55 W (weight 1850 KNOWN CL itt coel) 18 KNOWN SS (wing area) 100 KNOWN 'S (wing area) 100 L (it coer): 1.803881 “40 FEBRUARY 1990 sho (density) 0.002376 Vv (tusec) 92.895 V (mph) 63.36 SOLVE FOR 8 (wing area) 120.2587 SOLVE FOR CL (lt coety 1.803881 SOLVE FOR V (knots) 55.00000 ‘above, and select @ wing area. The spreadshest will tell you your stall ‘speed in knots. Now change the altitude ‘and see what happens to your stall speed. | want you to get a feel for how ‘small reductions in landing speed re- ‘quite large increases in C,. ‘The next article in this series will show you how to caleulato your wing area Here is a short list of books which you may find useful in designing your own homebuilt - Alrplane Pertormance, Stability and Controt, Perkins, Courtland O. and Hage, oben E. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1949. (This is a classic book which most aero engineers own.) = Design for Flying, Thurston, David 8, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1978. (Shows how design choices affects tying qualities.) = Fundamentals of Aircraft Design, Nicolai, Leland M., METS, Inc., 6520 Kingsland Court, San Jose, CA 95120, 1984. (Emphasis on miliary fighters, but contains all the equations needed for a general aviation design as welt) Airplane Aerodynamics, Dom: masch, Daniel O., Sherby, Sydney S., and Connolly, Thomas Pitman Publish- ing Corporation, New York, 1967. (This is my favorite college textbook on aerodynamics. Emphasis is on our kinds of airplanes. Excellent.) Light Airplane Design, Pazmany, Ladislao, Pazmany Aircrat Corp., Box 80051, San Diego, CA 92138, (Good introduction to aircraft sizing and pertor- mence.) ~ A Practical Gulde to Airplane Per- formance and Design, Craword, Donald R., Crawlord Aviation, Box 1262, Torrance CA 90505. (Leis you calculate performance based on design choices. Aimed at the beginner.) Airplane Aerodynamics and Pertor- mance, Lan, Chuan-Tau Edward, and Raskam, Jan, Roskam Aviation and En gineering Corp., Route 4, Box 274, Ot tawa, Kansas 66067. (College textbook. Covers the material well) = Airplane Design, Crawlord, Donald R., sddress shown above, (A collection ‘of 18 artcies from Kitplanes magazine Contains BASIC programs which calcu late dynamic stabilty, a small vonex-la tice program, and other good tools for doing performance analysis. Terse, but has many pictures. The guided tour of the Greek alphabet and all the math will scare most people.) Aircraft Structures, Peery, David J., McGraw-Hill Book ‘Company, New York, 1950. (The bible of aircrah siruc- tures. Chapter 9 on spanwise airioad distribution is done better than in any aerodynamics book I've seen. Lots of math, but there's no other way.)A computer study of John Rone’s homebullt, DLR VERSION 9 X= 14.008 +08 Y 4.00 +08 Z 4.00E +06 ITER =1 Sizing Your Wings by JOHN G. RONCZ, EAA 1192811 18480 Hunting Ridge Tr. Granger, IN 48530-9093, Your homebuil’s wings are obviously the ‘ost important piece of your airplane. Wrile you can design an aircraft without an engina, you can't have one without wings unless you hhave at least a pound of thrust for every pound of weight, in which case you'd have a rocket, ‘Your choice of wing designs will have two major impacts on the performance of your homebuil: the first is the stall speed, which wil of course also govern your takeolt and landing speeds. The second is he power-off rate of descent. (intend to dwell on that last point a lot, To date ! have logged a bit under 1800 hours of fying time, and in that ime | have had two engine fares. The fist was precipitaied by the delamination of a bearing Surface on a rod end. The plane went in for 2 routine ll change and the mechanics found a lot of metal in the oil fiter. was very lucky that this failure was discovered on the ground! The second time | was not so lucky. Rle- turning trom Ohio State University late one right, the crankcase spin from top to bottom, leaving a thick fl of oil all over the windshield so t coulda't see anything after it Quit - precisely at hall-past midnight. I made to an airport. due partly to the fact that | had tumed towards the airport immediately 24 MARCH 1990 ‘upon seeing tho oll pressure dropping, and due in larger part tothe fact thatthe airplane: | was tying, & Rockwell 1124, had excellent power-off gliding abilly. ‘This experience taught me that single engine planes rust be designed for power-ot fight Careful mainte- nance and oil analyses done every 25 hours atoll change lime didn't prevent my two en- {gine faites, and nothing you can dois going to change your luck, either. While a wing is the source of the it that ‘makes fight possible. itis also the source of several kinds of drag, Since we have to push its many square feat of suvace area through the skies, we pay a price in skin fiction drag. Nex, since the wing is producing lif, we pay fan extra fee ‘or this work, which is called induced drag - this isthe drag created by the work of creating Bt. The wing joins a fuse- lage somewhere, disrupting the smooth tlow of air along the fuselage, and changing the pressure on the sides ofthe fuselage, creat- ing interference drag, Finally, we lend to as- sault the pristine wing shapes by sawing hholes in them for ailerons and flaps, and gar- ‘page tke inspection covers, landing lights ‘and winguip lights. We pay a price for this desecration also. “There are some things we can do with the wing lo minimize the price Nature charges Us for her gift of tit. To get rid of skin fnction drag, we can sotoct laminar airfoil shapes. ‘These have lower drag per square foot of wing area, We can make the wing smaller, making the drag smaller by trading it for higher approach and landing speeds. We can aso ir using high-ift davices so that we can have a smaller wing while maintaining our (ow landing speed. We can iry sealing the fap and aileron gaps, though this may not always be 3 good idea. We can make our covers and seams smoother. To lower the price we pay for induced rag, only one thing works: you must have ‘more wing span. Induces orag is directly re- Jae to the amount of work the wing is 60ing, {and in cruise is not very nigh. The induced drag dominaées in the climb condition, haw: lever, when the wing is working harder. “To lower the interterence drag. you can filet the intersection, whieh ig a bandaid measure. The real fix is to design the wing Toot airfoil and fuselage $0 that their pres: sure distributions do nol adversely affect one ‘another. However, this method needs com- plicated 3-dimensional analysis, which is beyond the capabilly of homebuilders, ‘Max Munk, who by the way taught EAA'S own R.T. Jones, discovered that to minimize the induced drag of wings, the lit must be distibuled spanwise in a semi-eliptical shape. This gives the optimum span loading, ‘The Spitice’s elliptical planform is one way of doing this, In practice, however, itis it~ Fieut to get very far from an elipical loading fon a wing. A rectangular wing has almost a perlect span loading, for example. So the first assumption we're going 1o make is that our wing wil be loaded. semi-lighically, From geometry, we know thatthe area of an ellipse is, area pltatb vwnere a is hall the height, and b ig half the width of he etipse, For wing, a representsthe fat Butt Line 0.0, the centerine of the ‘wing, and b represents the semispan, or ihe ‘span of one wing, In this case we count only tral tha area of the elise. Thus the lit pro duced by a proporly loaded wing would be tit = I at BLO" semispan * pi/ 2 However. making another assumption, that the it itself can be represented by the it coetficent C,, we can further simply things 86 follows: ‘average C, = C, al BLO plis ‘area = Cl at BLO“ semispan * pl /2 Fic. 2 The issue here is that of two dimensions versus three. Il we buld a wind iunnel model to span the walls of the tunnel, no wingtip Vortizes can form, and the lit coeficient will bbe the same Irom wall to wall (neglecting boundary layers formed on the walls). The ‘ocal it coeticient, C, (lower case 1) will be the same everywhere. Ths is two-dimen- sional flow. You can get the same results by building your plane wih an infinite wingspan. But W's hard to find a T-hangar to park it in. Howover, i we build a model of a wing and put itn the wind tunnel, wingtip vortices will form in the tunnel, and for a properly loaded wing the highest it willbe atthe cern tering of the wing. The spanwise flow ‘caused by the wingtip vortices makes the lit vanish at the wingtips, and makes tho bit cootficients smaller as we come closer tothe tips. This is three-dimensional flow, which Mts ficely in a T-hangar. The average it coett- cient produced by the wing, Cy (uppercase Lis therefore smallor than the G, at But LUne 0. Since is atte bigger than 3, theory ‘says that the average C, of a wing will be a bit over 3/4 of the G, at the centeriine of the wing, WF you use flaps, you get less than pi'é times the lh at the centerine because the flaps don't go al tha way tothe wingtips. Nor should they. At the wingtip itsel, the lift wil bbe zero. You can use leading edge slats and triple-slotted flaps, and the fit atthe tips wil sill be zero. Since you can't fool Mother Na- ture, there Is litle point 10 carrying flaps all the way out to the tips. Then you'd have to ‘use spollers for roll contro, since you won't ‘have space for ailerons, The complexity and ‘weight will nat come close to being worth the Sila bit of It that full span flaps offer you, FOR FLAP = E54 oF SPAN FIG.3 ‘My opinion is that flaps ought to cover 85%: 70% of the span of one wing. (a this case, the spenwige it distribution wil ook ike fig- blends smoothly BAD FUSELAGE SHAPE bback to she unflapped value at the fap tips. Teounted, and the ih was 7% loss than hav- ing full span flaps. We will use this know! (26ge to size our wing and determing its inci dence on the fuselage. But, you ask. on my airplane the wing is, buried inside the fuselage, 60 how can you ‘have lif at But Line 0 as you say? Well, the ‘answer to this is that the pressure drop on the upper surtace of the wing carries onto the fuselage sides, or the top for a high winged plane, and makes the fuselage pro- duce about tne same ift as the wing buried inside it woula have made, However, to get this fuselage lh you should avoid fuselages shaped like that in figure 4, The dotted line shows the effective camber line for this shape, and it looks very much ke a fal plate al negative angle of altack. Therelore, Uns fuselage might well make negative Ki, and ‘would have a bad impact on the span load ing, the induced drag of the plane, and the interference drag, Fic. 5 While on the subject of spanwise it distr. ‘butions, we should pause long enough 10 ‘consider wing shepes other than rectangul ‘or optical. Figure 5 shows that for a rectan- ‘gular wing, the it cosficient is highest atthe Toot, and falls off towards the tip. This will ‘guarantee that the root wil stall fist, since the area of the wing with the highest lt coat: ficient stalls frst. A root stall gives. the airplane gents stalin behavior. you taper the wing soveraly, oF f you sweep the wing back, then the highest it cosficient occurs rot at the root, but closer to the tip. This ‘means the ailofons could stal first, leaving you with no way to controi the rollotf ten dency caused by the stall. Tis is not good! ‘The fix for this is to incorporete washout, which means lowering tne incidence of the Wing tip airfoil with respact to the root airfoil incidence. This helps to protect the tips, a- though for large sweep angles such as @re used on jets, not even this will cure the probe lem. Several of the raference books | gave you last time show how to calculate the Spanwise Wt coeticients for tapered and Fig. 4 swept wings. The best that (ve seen is in Peoty’s book on Alrcratt Structures. If you plan to have @ moderate taper ratio (ip ~ 50% of the rool chord), use e washoul of 1-1/2 degrees, and this will pul you in the balipark You're going to pick your wing size now, ‘based upon the stalling speed you pick. Id ‘suggest thal you consider this question from 4 ailferent viewpoint: how much energy val your plane have when itemashes into some- thing at hal-past midnight wit oil all over your windshield? All mowing bodies have ‘nergy dua to their motion. The energy is ‘equal to one-half its mass times is speed ‘squared. Remember that epeed is measured {feet per second. So before you raise the tal peed by only 10%, be aware that the ‘energy you will have 1o dispose of in a crash will go up by 21%. ‘The FAA came down trom Mount Sinai with 67 KNOTS writen on the stone tablets. ‘Thou shalt not certly a single-engine plane it the stall speed is any higher. I think this is ‘an intaligent law, and one that you ought to respect, even though the fine print on the ‘lone tablets allows homebulders 1 violate this commandment. For my own homebuil, | get the limit at 55 knots, because I lke 10 Aly into some short fields occasionally. While those 6 knots don't sound like much, it wil take an additional 23% more It costficient 10 achieve! if you're into STOL planes, lke my friand Fred Keller, and you want to sta ‘at 30.5 knots, your wing would have fa pro- ‘duce four times the it coefficient than it needs for 61 knots! (Fred stil owes me & beer) Bul now a brief message from our spon so, The Acme Flap Company TYPES OF FLAPS Fis, 6 SPORT AVIATION 35We at Acme Flap have an offer you home- builders simply can't refuse. Imagine your- sell taking olf from short fields at speeds Which wauld have your present plane falling ‘Out of the sky! Imagine a romantic weekend at a flyin resort with a short grass strip - ‘gine al this with a wing no bigger than your present wing! ‘Yes, folks, all this can be yours with the modern miracle we call a flap. We at The ‘Acme Flap Company are the word's foremost makers o laps. Our wide selection |g shown on figure 6. Bul weit, tha's not all Because youre an EAA momber we have 10 size your wing based on Acme's igure 6. ‘The maximum lit coeticient youll get with the various kinds of flaps depends a lot on the airfoll you use. Thin airfoils with pointy litle noses will not do 2s well as those shown, On the other hand the last one | did that was wind tunnel testes demorstrated a ‘maximum ©, of over 3.0 with just 8 sloted flap. So the Values on figure 6 are averages for & 15% or thicker sill. A good source of ‘information on flaps. is found in Fluld Dynamic Lift by Hoorner and Borst. Il give ‘tha details on where to get this atthe end. Tam not going to preach at you about WING AREA REQUIRED BASED ON CLmax OF AIRFOIL 230 MTT R210 H 1950 POUNDS, E STALL SPEED = 55 KTS 7 190 SEA LEVEL a USING FLAPS 170 || 2 150 130 PA c ~. <0 oO Zz = 9044+ 70: &® ¢ 8 8 8 & $¢ 8 8 8 = + = A a a nN oi oO 2-D MAXIMUM LIFT COEFFICIENT FIG. 7 ‘also incivded figure 7 at no extra cost! Figure 7 shows you exactly how much wing area an Acme flap can save you! If you ‘are currently using an sirfol_ whose maximum C, is 1, you can cut your wing area in half by choosing an Acme Fowlet Flap, nd atill land at the same speed!!! Yes, fois, it realy works! So pick the Acme Flap of your choice, and figure 7 wil show you how much you'll save. Order yours todayit ‘Your homework assignment from the last anicle was 10 use the spreadsheet | wrote for you, and using the maximum lit cosf- cients | suogested, pick your wing area. | assume you've done that by now. if you haven't, ve included 2 section on the spreadsheet for this article which allows you 36 MARCH 1900, selecting airfoils, because | am hardly objec- tive on this subject. | consider airolls to be ‘another design too, tailoring them to have @ happy marriage with the fuselage, and tet ting over the aileron control forces and flap performance. | spend a lot of time working with separated flow, designing the stalling behavior specifically for stabilty and control reasons, trying mightily to predict and contro! the post-stall behavior of the plana, This is typical of tha slate of the an, but itis time consuming and difficult. My current passion in low-speed designs centers around laminar flow airfoils with positive pitching moments ‘and high maximum it. This is the approach used on my own homebuil. One advantage I'm looking for ig that ! can trim the airplane wilh almost no tal bit required. Cambered airfoils generally have negative pitching mo- ments, which means thal the wing is Irving to make the airplane dive. This diving tee oncy is countered by producing negative it fon the tall High pitching moments make it tough to get nice alieron forces, extract & penalty in tren drag, and make a bad mar- Fiage withthe fuselage. ‘The pitching moment coetlicients are pub- lished for a the airols, using the symbol Cy. Cus is the amount of moment, in foot Pounds, produced by @ one foot square wing ft a dynamic preseure of one pound per ‘square fool. What you want to compare is 1@ piiching moment around the quarter- chord point on the airoll when the airfoil is producing zero lit, because the center of it Is located near the 1/4 chord point. A mo- ment is simply a foros times a distance. I you hold a five-pound nammer two feet trom Your armpit, you will have ten foot-pounds of torque or moment at your armpit. To see how this works, assume that you have 90 square feet of wing, the average chord is 8 feet, and your plane is going 200 miles per hour at sea level. Furor assume that the pilching moment ofthe wing is 050. In this case, the dynamic pressure q is 5 * 002377 * (200 * 5.467)°2 = 102.91 pounds per square foot. This was calculated Using hal the air density rho times the speed {in feet per second) squared. The pitching ‘moment produced by this wing is then 10231 * 90" 05 * 3 = -1381.18 foot- pounds, This was calculated by mutiplying the dynamic pressure by the wing area, then by the pitching moment, then by the average chord. ifthe center of ft of your tails ten fet frorn the center of lt of your wing, then the tall would have to produce -1381.18) 10 = 138.12 pounds of ft to counter the pitching moment of the wing. ‘The nagalive sign means that the tat would have 10 make negative lit, which means it would lit down. Since the wing cant tel negative it from weight, it elso means that the wing has to carry anther 128 pounds of phantom weight. A piching momant of only =050 is only moderate. Some newer aitalls have pitching moments of -15 or even more. It you pick an sirfi! with 8 pitching moment of =16, then our sample tall would have to Produce 414 pounds of negative lit just 10 Counter the pitching moment. Of course, the fall would algo have to produce more nega: tivo lit to trim the airplane. The equation we used above shows that the moments are @ product of the wing average chord. Thers- fore, @ short wing with a wide chord wil have more moments than a long wing with a short Since the dynamic pressure is a prod- ‘Speed equared, high speed planes will have much higher pitching moment 10 trim out than slower aiplanes. The torsion these moments produce in the wing itself ‘must also be taken out stricturaly. Therefore some people passionalely be- lieve in zero pitching moment airfols, ike the NACA 23072. | dont like thal airfoil because it has very nasty stalling behavior and only ‘average drag. But the pitching moment issue 1 do believe has ment. | have recently ad= Vieed some homebuilders to look at helcop- {er rotor Blade airfols, which also must con- trol the pitching moments caretuly. There 2are excellent sections available for helicop- ter rolor blades which would make fine wing airoll sactions, Other than that broad oulline, Fl leave the choice of which airoll you want to use up to you. The book Theory of WingSections gives you many choices. tt also ‘ives you a lot of information on flap and ‘alleron design. You can't design an airplane without it, 80 99 order the book (Editor's Note: Theory of Wing Sectlons is avallable from EAA Headquarters. Costs, {$10.95 plus $2.40 S/H, Call 800/843-3612 (in Wi 800/238-4800) for your capy.) (Once you know your wing area, and the type of fiap (if any) that you plan to use, the ‘next question is 0 deterine the wing span To help you. Ive written a spreadsheet that 1 think youtl find very usetul. The objective is for you to get a fee! for he affect of wing ‘span on gliding performance. This is expres: 3d in two ways. Firs, i! you want to glide the furthest distance, you must fly at your best litidrag ratio, which goneraly occurs at 4 relatively low speed. It was this require- ‘ment that Kept Oick Putan and Jeana Yeager ‘cooped up in the Vayager for So long, Using Your speed for best range, youve hopetully Glided to the vicinity of an arpon, Now your ‘goa! changes; you want to minimize your sink rate so that you can fly the approach. This is the speed for best endurance. Tho spreadsheet will calouiale thase for you. Unfortunately, one ofthe things the equa- tions need to know isthe equivalent lat plato drag area of your airplane. What this means is that we are going fo think ol your siplane {as a bam door being pushed through the sky. We need to find the size of the barn oar, in square feet, that would have the ‘same drag as your alrplane. The way I do this, end I think i's the best way, is 10 start by adding up all the wetted area of your airplane. It you: held the airplane by is tai, ‘and dunked It into a (large) swimming poo) every square foot that got wet is wetted area. That means you have to count both the top land the bottom of the wings, for example, For the fuselage, you dvide'tinto say, fiteen leven strips, and you estimate the distance ‘around the fuselage at "ch of the fifteen Fuselage Stations. From your drawing you know the height and width of the fuselage at each location. If the fuselege were a box, you would odd the height to the width, then ‘multiply by two to get the perimeter. if tho fuselage was a ckcle, you would add the height to the wish, divide by two, then mul: tiply by pi to get the circumference. In prac- ‘Nee most fuselage cross sections are some- ‘where in between & box and a cicle, so pick f2 number in between depending upon how ‘square your luselage is at that location. Now ‘add up all 15 perimeters, and divide by 15 to get the average. Now multiply by he fuse- lage length, Make sure that every number ‘you just Useé was measured all n feet or all ininches, because they have to be the same. Ifyou usad inches for everything, now divide ‘by 144 and you'll have the welled area of your fuselage. For wings and tails, give you a shortou For atypical arfll rats 129% thick, he wet- ted area is 2.042 times the wing area. For ‘an airfoil that is 18% thick, the wetted area {is 2.078 times the wing area, Obviously, if the airfol had zero thickness, the wetted ‘780 would be exactly Mice the wing area {one top + one bottom). For wing area or fall area, count only the wing area outside the fuselage, then muliply that area times fone of the factors shown above based on avfoll thickness. Yes | know that we haven. sized the talls yet. So use 25% of the etted area of the wing for this, and that wil put you Inthe ballperk for now. Add the wing ane tail watted area tothe fuselage welted area and don't forget the prop spinner as wall! You can compare the wetted area ol your plane to these: © VariEze 2475 '* Quickio 190.5, * Solitaica 297.3. Long-£2 925.0, # Catbro 298.8 © VanViggen 458.2 (8 Swit 460.8 © Defiant 517.8 « Piaggio Svanti 1238.1 ‘© Wheeler Express 487.0 * Glasair 929.1, © Cirus 565.5 « Giasair Il 3608 Questair Venture 280.0 ‘ancalr 320 325.0 © Beech Bonanza 668. # Cessna 172 675.0 * Cherokee, 4-place 601.0 # Beech Musketeer 601.0 « Piper Malibu 730.0, ‘Some of these may not be perleily accu rate, since they are based on 3-viow draw- Ings, Also the fixed gear airplanes inthis list 0 not inciude the wetted area ofthe landing ‘gear. You can use 25 square feet of wetted area for a fixed tricycle gear. This should helo you compare your plane fo others. Mine ‘comes out to 412 square feel. The point of this exercise is that once you know the wel- ted area of your plane, you can easily find is equivalent flat plate drag area. You do tis by picking a drag valve for ‘each square foot of wetted area, then mult- plying by the rumber of square leet youve (901, The lowest drag value I've seen on any airplane I've worked on is 0037 per square foot, which is for the Triumph business jat designed by Burt Rutan, for which | did all the flying surfaces. A lot of factory made ‘metal planes come out a between 0060 and (0085 per square foot. Most ofthe composite hhomebuits are coming in at around .0050 er square foot. By the way, .0050 is pro~ ‘nounced “fity drag counts’, since 000% is ‘one drag count. | wart you fo sound protes- sional, since you're now an airplane do- signer. if you're doing @ metal plane with some round rivets, ele, use 65 drag counts. {you're doing a very clean plane out of plas tic, with laminar aidils and a lt of attention to drag, use 45 drag counts. The production Starship, before they glued rubber deicing boots on, had 44 drag counts per square foot. | used .0048 for my homebuilt, but | ‘sure hope It turns out better than thai, coo: sidering al the blood and sweat that’s gone ite it $0 far! ‘So examine your consclence, pick @ target «rag value, and multiply the drag counts per ‘square foo by the wetted area of your plane. “The answer you get isthe size of your equi- valor barn door, measured in square feet. (Once you know this number, you ean cae late all kinds of interesting things, including the top speed of your homebuil! Nex! time we'll look at special problems with my Romebui's wing and how l analyzed them, and well determine the angle of inci ‘dence for the wing and size our tails. Mean- while, since you may have wondered what ‘my homebullt looks like, Il show you an aa ler version which has the tai on. The cur- rent version is nicer, but stil playing with and haven't put the tails on yet. REFERENCES + Hoerner and Borst, FioDynamic. Lit Published by Mrs. Liselotte Hoerner. 1975 = Hoemer Fluid Dynamics, P.O, Box 342, Brick Town, New Jersey 08723, = Abbol! and Von Doenhatl, Thoory of Wing Sections, Dover Publications, tnc., New York MAKING THE SPREADSHEET The spreadsheet fortis articles very am- bitious. It will do thees things for you, The first section wil tll ou the top speed ol your airplane, the speed for best range, the maximum liftto-drag ratio, the speed for minimum sink rate, and what that sink rate 's. This wil lat you trade botween speed and the glide rato of @ brick ‘Tho second pan of tho spreadsheet lets you calculate the equivalent fla plate drag ‘area based upon published performance ‘numbers for ary aiplane of your choice. i you know or can estimate tne wetted area of that design, it will give you the drag counts er square oot of welted area. Using ths, Yyoumay be able lo discover whether the per. formance specs for the homebuill design of your choice are fact oft. “The last pan of the spreadsheet lets you calculate the wing area required to stall at the speed you choose, using soverai kinds of laps. ‘Then you can place your order with The ‘Acme Flap Company. ‘Set the column width to 19 for colurnn A, and to 17 for column ©. “Type the labels as shown into their respec: tive call addresses. At: ‘SPREADSHEET #2 ‘A2: FROM SPORT AVIATION 43:'1/90 JGR ‘AS:"To calculate best cange speed, minimum descent speed and op speed Ae = 7. SPAN (FT) AS, “ALTITUDE (FT) Ag: WETTED AREA (FT"2) 10: DRAG PER FT'2 ‘A12: "RHO! 13: ‘BEST UD (MPH) Als: "BEST LD: 16: MIN DESCENT (MPH): AIG DESCENT (FT/MIN): AI7: MAX SPEED (MPH) ‘A19; To Cateulate Drag Area Usiag Pubs lished Performance Data ‘SPORT AVIATION 97420 = ‘21: HORSEPOWER: ‘A22: ‘ALTITUDE: ‘A246: ‘TOP SPEEO (MPH): 425: F (TOTAL): ‘A26: ‘WETTED AREA: IT. COF ‘A29: ‘To Calculate Wing Area Required Based on Type of Fa Used A90\= ‘831: GROSS WEIGHT: 32. -RETITUDE: ‘833: ‘STALL SPEED (MPH): ‘835: ‘Type of Flaps Used ‘436: ‘NONE ‘37: PLAIN ‘838: ‘SPLIT ‘439: ‘SLOTTED ‘ad0: ‘FOWLER £835: “Cmax 13: C15 = C7. 2a: cx3'= 7: WEIGHT (LBS): 08 De: HORSEPOWER: Dio: ‘PROP EFFY: Diz: FLAT PLATE AREA: Dat: ‘PROP EFFY: 22: “RHO: 031: “RHO: 32:0: 9S: Wing Area Required ("2) E13: KNOTS E15: KNOTS E17: KNOTS E24: ‘KNOTS nats ‘Again, an spastophe ‘tells Lotus 1.2:3 to loftjustfy the ile in the column. The * syn ‘ol flls 1-2-3 to center the tle in the column, ‘and the quotation mark "tells 1-2-3 to ight: justly the title inthe column. The\= in elis 6 ang ecevner is shonhandteling +23 {o al the column with Now areal type the formulas ino thle proper cells. Afer you finish each formu, you may be greeted wih an ERR message the cel. This doesn't mean that you typed anything in wrong, It means thal you haven't Yet typed in the numbers that these formulas 2re Irving to crunch. The eror displays wail {90 away as you fil in the blanks later on 12: 1F(@8-96089,(1-.0000068753" £88)" 4.2561".00237689, 2871" @EXP (B6-96089)/20806.7)" 00237688) B19; 72425" @SOATIE7(B12°87"@SQAT {E6°E12)) B14: 886227°B7'@SORT(EBE12) B15; 5802" @SORT(E7/(B12°B7"@SQRT (€8°E12)) B16; 1.051651"60/E8"@SORTIEIZ*E7* ‘@SQAT(EB/E12)(87-3°B12)) B17: (948.842"E10"ES(B12°E12)) * 3333333, £826 94a 642"821°E211E22"824°) 827: +825/626 +613/7.152 O15: +815/.182 $8178 152 3824/1152 33: +B93/1.152 +891E32"836"GPI/4) 4+ 831(E32°837"@PII4" 99) 98 MARCH 1990 O98: + 831(E92"898"« PIA" 93) 039. +831(E32"B39"« PU4" 93) 40: +831/(E32"B40"w Pid" 93) E12; +B9°810 E22: @IF(@22:36089,(1-.0000088753" 1822)" 4.2561".00237889, [2971 @EXP(-(822-96089)/20806.7)" (00237688) 31; @IF(@32.96009,(1-.0000068753" 1832)’ 4.2561".00237689, [2971"@EXP(-(B32-36089)/20806.7)" (00237688) 92; 0.5°E31"(899"1.467)"2 ‘As a reminder, when the frst character in aformulais & letter, Lotus 1-2-3 will presume that you are typing in a thle rather than formula. in order to inform Lotus that this is 8 col address, 1-2-9 uses a plus sign + to Indicate that this isa coll address eather than 2 tile. For users of Excel, replace the plus signs ~ with equal signs =, which does the same thing In Excel. By ine way, if you couldn't get 1-2-9 to accep! the tite listed for cell A3, the reason is that this tite deging with @ ‘number rather than a letter. You ‘needed to preceed the number by an apos trophe in order to let Lotus know that this Is a title rather than a formula, To verity that the spreadsheet Is working ‘properly, fype in the values shown In their proper cells: 7: 90.694 Ba: 89: 415 B10: 0088, Bat: 160 B22: 0 824: 261 826: 323.1 831: 1950 832: 0 B33: 551.152 896: 1.5 B37; 23 598: 25 839: 26 B40: 5 E7: 1850 8:7 E9: 120 E10: 85 E21: 85 ‘Your spreadsheet should look exactly ke the sample shown. Since | chose to make the inputs in miles per hour rather than knots, you may be annoyed it you think in knots. I You [ook at cell 833, however, youl find an easy way around this. To convert knots to mmiles-perhour, you multiply by 1.182. Re- member that the computer can do this for you, $0 In B33 | typed 55 times 1.152, and Lotus id the conversion for me. You can type 2 formula into any cell that expects 3 simple number. {€ you want to check my homebuil’s cruise speed st 7500 feet and 75% power, for exampla, you would eter ‘7500 into cell88, and you could type 180°.75 into cell E9 and lt the spreadsheet calculate 178% ol your 180 horsepower for you. Ths is why | love computers, USING THE SPREADSHEET “The example in the sample spreadsheet fs formy homebuill. The only items not talked ‘about in the article are propeller eficiency ‘and 6. For a constant speed propeller in cruise, use 85% efficiency, oF .85, and this will bs very close, For 2 fixed pitch cruise prop, use .B0 and for a climb prop use .77. ‘The other paramoter Is e, which is the span ‘tficiency, Remember that i your wing pro- ‘duces a pertect sem\-tiptical span loading, the efficiency is 100%, oF 1.0. However, the fuselage and propelir slipstream wil mess. up even an eliptical wing, and your wing probably iptical anyway. For ight airplanes, the span efficiency is usually not much better than 70%, or .70. What this ‘means is that 8 30 foot wing will have the same performance as a 21 foot wing, # its span efficiency is 70%! ‘The sample spreadsheet shows that my plane should havo a minimum sink cate of $822 feet per minute. Youll notice that the engine power makes no diference, since ‘nase calculations are done for @ aro power Condition. However, this number does cot take Into account the drag of a windmiing propeller. | estimate this to be + square foot To do this, !g00 cellB9 and type 415"2.992/ 1.992, leting Lotus do the work of figuring ‘out how much additional wetted erea would change the drag from 1.992 square feet 10 2.992 square feet Now my minimum sink Tale increases 10 877 feet per minute. This | only 55 feet per minute more than it was before! Yet we know that a windmiling prop would do a fot mora harm than this. | go back to cali B9 and type 415°4.992/1 992, ‘which moans that | am adding 3 square feet ‘of drag area to the baseline, the rate of das- ‘cont increases lo 656 feel per minute, ‘The reason that ihe fat plate drag doesn’t {do that much harm to the sink rate is that 08. | add drag, the spesd | need to obtain the minimum sink rate is going down. It was 72 knots for the first case, and Is now down 10 57 knots. Of course | car't fly the plane at 557 kno\s, since Id need full aps and Would bbe only 2 couple of knots above the stall ‘speed at that. At low speeds the ora is de- tarmined more by the Induced drag than by allother kinds of dag, since the wing is work- ing very hard at low speeds, and is charging us alo for ll that work. Rasta‘ the original 415 square feet of drag area in cell 89, and then change e 10 .5 in coll E8. Now our minimum sink rata really jumps. Also, the speed we need to ly to get this minimum slso jumps. This tells us thal a windmiling prop actually does its damage by changing the span efficiency more than by its addea drag area. | suspect that the span efficiency can be as low as 20% with a windmiting Prop. Use this part of the spreadcheet to m- gine yoursell at hall-past midnight with no engine and oi) obscuring your vision, and ccarefuly look atthe speeds you'll have 1 ty to get the maximum range and minimum sink. Il you want some fun, ry modeling the Voyager. Span is 110.8 feat, weight on takeoH was 9894, wotted area is 1337.7 ‘square feet, power (otal) was 230, use 8 for span efficiency (extremely ‘ong skinny wings have bad @'s), .0050 for drag and 72 for prop etficiency (low speed prop efficiency Int very good). You can see that for best range you'd (ly at 85 knots, that the plane ‘could glide 29.4 feet forward for avary foot it ‘rapped (best LID), and that minimum sink is only 258 feetminute, although at a speed well below the stall speed at that weightSPREADSHEET #2 FROM SPORT AVIATION 190 JGR To caleulate best range speed, minimum descent speed end top speed SPAN (FT) 30.694 ALTITUDE (7) ° WETTED AREA (FT"2): 415 DRAG PER FT”2: 0.0048 RHO: 0.002376 BEST LO (MPH) 108.9826 EST LO: 16.12511 MIN OESCENT (MPH): 82.7770 DESCENT (FT/MIN): 821.7401 MAX SPEED (MPH): 224.1788 WEIGHT (LBS): + 1950 & O7 HORSEPOWER: 180 PROP EFFY: 08s FLAT PLATE AREA: 1.992 '94.585638689 KNOTS 71,855047859 KNOTS 104.597919 KNOTS, To calculate drag area using published performance data, HORSEPOWER 180 ALTITUDE: 0 TOP SPEED (MPH): 281 F (TOTAL) 1a2siae WETTED AREA: 929.1 cor: 0.004330 To calculate wing area required based on type of flap used GROSS WEIGHT: 1950 ALTITUDE: 0 ‘STALL SPEED (MPH): 63.96 Type of faps used Cumax NONE 15 PLAIN 23 ‘SPUT 25 ‘SLOTTED 28 FOWLER, 3 Now raduce the weight to 2000 pounds. The best range speed drops to only 47 knots, ‘and the minimum ink rat is only 143 feet per minute! Voyager did't tly this slow be- cause these equations assume that the parasite drag stays the sama at all angles of attack, and in realy the flow begins to sepa- rate from the wings, and the intersection drag and other drags are going up at high angles of attack. you can’ fy at the speed Tequited o achieve the minimum rate of sink. then you wil sink faster. you cant fly at the for maximum range. you won' fly as ier ‘You can also use this part of the spree sheet to answer the question of how much {asar the airplane would go with 2 bigger oF smaller engine, or wih a more efiiant prop. “The second part of the sereadsheetalows you to have fun with published performance numbers for designs you may lust afer. The ample shows the fgures published for the Glasair I AG wih 180 horsepower. Using {he wetted area fom the chant inthe article as an educated guess, bis aiplane would have 4S drag counts per square foot of wet {e0 area, which is very low indeed. You can take the numbers you get Here and put them into the fst section of tho spreadsheet to play with different engines, et, and to look 8 sink rates. Ifyou don't know the wetted area, don't despa. You can either guass Using the chart above, of you can type neat B9 tho drag area from call B25 and divide by the drag per square loot hat you consider reasonable, and which you enter into cal PROP EFFY: oes HO: 0.002376 208,20138889 KNOTS. RHO: 0.002378, a 1026761 55 knots, Wing area required (t"2) 161.20807114 113.04838688 108.008497512 100.00422459 196.670414583 810. For the Glasair example, cell 825 says the flat plate drag is 1.425142 square feet IF 1 assume a drag coefficient of .0047 per ‘square foot, "6 type 1.4251421.0047 into cal 9, and the spreadsheet wil tel you that the welled area in this case would have fo be 303.2217 square feet. Lets continue this exercise by fling in the other blanks at the top for the Glasair: spanls 23. 3, horsepower | 160, prop efficiency is 85, e is .7, weight is 1800 pounds. The minimum rate’ of des- ‘cont tumns out to be 697 feet per minute at 98 miles per hour. Now for fun type in 180 horsepower, and note that the top speed ‘changes to 251 miles per hour for this en- gine. Glasair publishes 256 miles per hour for the 180 horsepower version, so ether they have cleaned up the 180 horsepower version some var the 160 horsepower ver sion, or they measured wrong, So get out the 3iews and published performance for any plane you want, and discover for you ‘self whether the marketing department istry: ing to foo! Mother Nature! "The last part of the spreadsheet lets you ‘calculate your wing area using several kinds Of flaps, Just enter the gross weight, aliude and your desired landing speed, and you get a list of wing areas with different Kinds of flaps. The maximum lit coefficients | put in for diferent kinds of flaps are 2 general Quideline. Ihave also adjusted the equations Yo account for the fact that the flape aren't full span. Fee! fr20 to type in diferent nur: bers for Cmax to see what effect this has on your wing area. NOTES ON THE EQUATIONS USED IN THE SPREADSHEETS: | am embarrased to tell you How many hours took me to deve the equations used iminis spreadsheet. haven't cone that much Coleus and algebra in ages, but | did my ‘ell bepause | enjey doing things Ihe ts, find because it became a game fo 368 how Simple could make each equation. “The only assumption tat | mada was thst ‘he drag polar was parabotc, whichis gener- ali @valé assumption. The equaton for he Sp8ed fo ly in miles par hour to aban the Dest UD tumed out tobe 72425 "(span (ho * span * (0 * fat plate area) *'5))) ~ 5 “The equation to determine the best 1o- rag ratio was: 88227 span” (o/atpate ares) * 5 ‘The equation to pri the speed to yn milas pet hour to bain the minimum si rate 5502 * ( weight / (rho * span * (fat plate area) © $))~ 5 “Tho minimom sink rate possibe s expres- 0d in eet por minute by 163.09608 /€ (fet pate area * weight * (7 tat pate area)” 51 (span “3* cho))* 5 ‘The lop speed calculation neglects in-