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EXPERIMENTER

DECEMBER,

1954

How to Design and Build Your Own Airplane

By Richard Schreder

Let's assume you have decided that you want to design and build your own airplane. Not being a graduate aeronautical engineer, you still want to do the job right and be sure that you wind up with an airplane that:
1. 2. 3. 4. flies. is structurally sound and sufficiently strong. has the best possible performance for the power available. possesses stability and has no weird, unsafe flight character-

y'.'

extra weight you're going! to pick up by the time you get airborne and you arrive at 799 Ibs. Round the above figure off1 to 800 Ibs. and we can now calculate your required wing area. Before going any farther, you must pick the airfoil section to be used. You have already decided on an unbraced, low wing of good thickness for easy construction and lightness. While looking through NACA report No. 824 you spot a laminar flow airfoil No. 65-<-418 which has the right thickness and a very lazy stall characteristic as ev.d.nced by the easy hump in the lift curve (CL) at the stalling an^le of attack. Other good reasons for picking this airfoil are:

''; :

istics.
5. looks good enough so that you don't have to be ashamed of it.

1. Maximum thickness is at 40% of the chord which allows a more rearward seat location in the low wing design.
2. Minimum wing drag comes at CL equals .4 which is about right

"i'TA order to get started you must decide on just what you want this airplane to do. Every airplane ever built has been a compromise. Briefly, performance requirements are as follows:
Perfomance desired
:

for the lift of an airfoil at cruising speed of a general, all purpose airplane.

3. 18% chord thickness will make a light spar.

4. Substantial uniform convex curve of upper and lower surfaces will help prevent oil canning of metal covering. Now we have enough information to fill in a formula to find the required wing area.
S equals

Requirement

Penalty

Speed

High power loading High wing loading!

High landing speed

Good Weight lifting

Fast climb . Slow landing

Low wing loading High power loading High power loading Low wing loading

Poor cruising and

high speed Low pay load

Poor cruising and

W
.002558CL V2

S equals wing area, sq. ft. W equals wt. in Ibs. CL equals Lift Coefficient V equals Velocity in MPH
800

high speed Naturally, you want an airplane that has everything but such is not in the cards. Riglht now you must make your decisions that will fix the

S equals

design:
1. Howi many seats

.002558 x .4 x 100 x 100 S equals 78.2 sq. ft.

2. How fast
3. How slow

This wing area seems low so we had better check on our landing V2 equals W
.002558CLS -I

4. What power
Taking another look at our NACA performance data on the 64-418 7. Type of construction, wood and fabric, tubing, aluminum, etc. airfoil we find the maximum lift coefficient without flap to be 1.3 and Before making any snap decisions, take the following points into with flap 2.5. About 70% of our wing will have flap so we get the averaccount: age CL by taking 70% of 2.5 and adding to 30% at 1.3 and dividing by 100 to get: (a) Biplanes can be made stronger for same weight, are good for acrobatics but wing construction is double and two wings are less 175 + 39 ,,... efficient than one. ., . equals 2.1 equals CL 100 High wing monoplanes are best for strut bracing and non-retactable 5. Type of wing and location, high, low, mid, or biplane 6. Type of landing gear

.-gear.
wing monoplanes are best for cantilever wing and retractable

Now V2 equals

800

gear.
(d) Keep your design as simple as possible as it is going: to be a lot of work and you don't want to lose interest by spending an extra year building "frills". (e) Don't try an unconventional design without getting some expert advice. (f) Avoid using struts or wires on upper wing surface as loss of lift and gain in drag are terrific. (g) Stick with conventional aircraft materials. (h) Use as much metal construction as your capabilities permit because ' metal does not deteriorate or pick up moisture and is much less susceptible to strength variation, checking, splitting, etc. (i) Thin cantilever wings have less drag but are heavier and harder to bolt together. At this point you must write down some figures. Assuming you have decided on the engine to be used, estimate the gross weight and
cruising speed of your ship. Be more honest and realistic than you

equals 1900 .002558 x 2.1 x 78.2

V equals 43.6 mph This is a little higher than what we wanted so we arbitrarily crease the wing area to 100 sq. ft. Rechecking minimum speed we get V equals 38.6 which fits our slow landing characteristic requirement better. A recheck on our cruising coefficient gives the value of .313 which is still OK as the 64"-4ia airfoil has minimum drag from CL equals .7 to .1. For our design this
will be from 75.6 to 200 mph. Right here we note for flight below 75.6

would be in making out your income tax return. Look up some statistics
on similiar ships built by others. Don't write down 65 HP, 200 Ibs. and

400 mph because, to the best of my knowledge, that one hasn't been

. -built yet.
Let's assume that you have decided on a nice comfortable slow flying, fixed gear, single place with 65 HP that will carry you from airport to airport every Sunday at 100 mph. After looking through all of the back issues of the Experimenter, you find that ships of this size are running around 500 Ibs. empty. Add your weight of 170 Ibs. 13# gal.
of gas at 6 Ibs. per gal., 4 qts. of No. 40 oil at 2 Ibs. per qt., throw in

mph the plane will fly with less power by using: some flap. Since a wing should have an aspect ratio of about 6, we decide to make the wing 24 feet long and 50 inches wide. These dimensions give us exactly 100 sq. ft. for a rectangular wing (counting the part cut out by the fuselage which is standard procedure). From here on the rest of the design is easy. We will assume our C.G. to be 25% of the chord back of the leading edge. Our tail span should be about one-third of our wing or 8 ft. It is customary to plac&the elevator hinge about 2Vz times the wing width behind the C.G. This gives the tail enough leverage to balance the airplane. Cutting down on the dimension or on horizontal tail area would give control and stability problems. Vertical fin and rudder area should be about 75%
of horizontal tail area unless a long nose or other unusual items put a

verical area ahead of the C.G. in which case more area is needed. Tricycle landing gear rear main wheels should be behind, but close to the C.G. for best ground handling, landing, and takeoff characteristics. Usual location is about 45% of chord back from leading edge of
wing on straight wings or MAC on tapered wings.

another 40 Ibs. for your lunch, mud on your shoes, and some of that

Before spending a lot of time making fancy drawings it is best to

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DECEMBER 1954 EXPERIMENTER

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make a preliminary side view sketch so that we can make a rough weight and balance check. Don't let this scare you as any 5th grader is capable enough for this calculation. In order to fly properly, your C.G. must be right and this is one thing you shouldn't guess at because moving the engine or cockpit back 6 inches may be out of the question after the ship is completed.

News Notes

The Reader Speaks

Billings, Montana December 4, 1954. Experimental Aircraft Assn. Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Paul H. Poberezny, President Dear Paul: Thanks a million for your very gracious letter of November 17 and again for the sample copy of the "Experimenter" received in last Thursday's mail.
The efforts of both you and your organization in behalf of the private and amateur sport pilot can only be described as terrific. Photos and articles I have seen in various publications concerning the accomplishments of numerous members of the EAA tend to place a highly erroneous connotation on the word "amateur". Just as the Hot-rod enthusiast and Indianapolis Speedway pioneered many of those common-place features in today's automobile, so has the initiative and abilities of this country's private pilots blazed the trail in aviation. It is wonderful to see that someone had the desire and fortitude (I almost used another word) to throw fuel on what was rapidly becoming a dying fire, through no lack of a desire to burn.

Ray Stits is in the process of building one of his two-place low wing ships for two E.A.A. members, Aurie Lowinske of Springfield, Minn. and Warren Ewen of Jeffers, Minn. The ship will be Below is our rough sketch with the estimated weight and its lo- powered by a 115 H.P. Lycoming cation for each major item in the ship' We now check lor proper bal- engine which should put the cruisance by multiplying each weight by its distance from the C.G. The sum ing speed up in the neighborhood of all these moments forward of the C.G. must equal the sum of all of 150 MPH. The boys are anxiously awaiting its completion those behind the C.G. If the total behind exceeds the total forward by which should be in the later part iUOO pound inches and the engine weighs 200 Ibs. then the engine must of February or early March 1955. be moved 1000 or 5 inches forward to put the ship in balance. Warren flew Ray's Playboy and was very much impressed by its 200 performance and rugged construcWith our airplane balanced we now have enough information to tion. He said if the two-place make a set of 3 view drawings. Make these to a convenient scale so ship performs like the Playboy, they'll really have a going piece of that later on you can measure lengths, widths, and angles directly from machinery. the drawing.

The most important part of the cantilever low wing airplane we have decided to build is the main wing spar. The greatest stress will be at the point of attachment to the fuselage. If we design for a safety factor of 7, we will have plenty of strength and exceed CAA requirements. In normal level flight, each wing will be carrying % the gross wt. (less wing weight) or 350 Ibs. Since our wing is rectangular, we can assume that this 350 Ib. force is concentrated half way out or 66 in. from the attachment. Multiplying this force and distance together we get 23,100 inch Ibs. The spar attachment bolts are 7 2 inches apart and must resist this bending moment; dividing 23,100 inch Ibs. by 7% inches we get 3,080 Ibs. Multiplying 3,080 by our safety factor of 7 we get a force oi' 21,56,0 Ibs. acting on each bolt. Since the attaching fittings are to be mated male and female, the force of 21,560 Ibs. will be trying to shear each bolt in two places. Dividing! 21,56,0 by 2 to get the single shear force, wie look in a table of aircraft bolt strengths and find that our force of 10,780 Ibs. will be safely handled by a Vz" steel bolt which is good for 14,722 Ibs. shearing strength.

* * * * *

Frank Novak, RFD 4 Box 200, Quakertown, Pa., would like to contact readers interested in homebuilts in his area. Kenny Kern, Bedford Municipal Airport, Bedford, Illinois, says he really enjoys the Experimenter. Would like to meet any members down his way. Also expects to have his RNF Waco flying this spring. Ed Garner of Garner Flying Service, Municipal Airport, Falls City, Nebraska, has a Great Lakes to rebuild and is interested in obtaining information on the installation of a D-4 Menasco engine. He also is making drawings of the Great Lakes scaling it down to % size. That should be very interesting. ***** v/iiiiam O. Wilkins, 115 E. Chapel Hill St., Durham, North Carolina, expects to test hop his -ti.s Piayboy soon. He has a 65 Continental in it for power.

Modified "Knight Twister"

As the October "Experimenter" - quoted Ray Stits, the response to your efforts could well be the voice of the private pilot in not too many years.

Pictured here is a modified "Knight Twister" being built in Jacksonville, Florida by Sam Pilgrim. Known as the Pilgrim "Special', it -is to be powered with a Continental C-85 engine. It is expected to attain around 125 mph., but similar 85 hp. ''Twisters" have been known to attain considerably higher speeds. Interesting to note is the fact that all wing spars are the metal rear spars from the J3 "Cub", and all the ribs have been cut down from "Cub" ribs. The tail surfaces have been slightly enlarged to offer better control, and the ship has just recently been covered.

I took exception to some conclusions printed in a recent artic e of "Air Facts" awhile back. The more I thought about it, the more riled I became. As so often is the case, we will just grouse about something among ourselves and do nothing more. So, I sent a letter off to the magazine and was quite surprised to find it re-printed in its entirety in the "Air Mail" ff % *J* * % section in the November issue. It James E. Tyndall of 5606, Pat- sums up my feeling and it seems terson Avenue, Richmond, Vir- to reflect that of so many I talked ginia has started construction of to in past years. an open cockpit parasol ship. The Attached is my check for a span will be 24 feet, length 16 membership and along with it feet, the fuselage will be of wood and steel tube construction. He is comes my sincerest wishes for a building: it in the attic of his home future growth of the EAA even and will have to remove it piece by greater than you have witnessed piece through the window. That in past months. I hope to get unreminds us of the old story. (The derway on a project of my own very soon. I think it might stimwindow was too small). ulate enough interest around here ***** Ed Bishman, 213 St. Christopher that we might get a Montana- Lane, Columbus 13, Ohio is look- chapter one of these days. ing for plans of an all wood or With kindest personal regards plywood constructed ship that he and best wishes. can construct in a spare room. Seems his wife won't allow a Kelton E. Bainum welding rig but will consider a 821 N. 29th Street pot of glue. Billings, Montana.