Airplane design basics for hand thrown un-powered planes.?

Hand thrown aircraft are not nearly as sensitive in design as full-sized aircraft. Things like detail streamlining and airfoil design only marginally affect the aircraft's performance.

This is what I came up with...

First, you need enough wing area to fly your aircraft. More wing area will make the plane easier to fly, but more sensitive to wind gusts and very quick to slow down. Less area will require a higher launch speed.

Second, you need enough surface area behind the centre of gravity to ensure pitch and directional stability. For a forward wing aircraft, this generally means having the centre of gravity somewhere along the wing chord and horizontal and vertical airfoils mounted on the tail.

Third, you need roll stability. Without going into too much detail, simply give the wings a dihedral (angle them up from the root to tip). This will help keep your plane's wings level.

Fourth is control. Since I imagine you don't have any controls on your aircraft, this would simply be tweaking the stabilizers, wings, and centre of gravity (ballast) until you have the desired flight characteristics.

Have fun experimenting. Sometimes the best lessons aren't learned from books.

1

Not sure about "whole" craft modeling, but NASA has a virtual Wind Foil simulator that's free for use. Check it out here:

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/foil2.ht...

Good luck to you.

dss110