Course Syllabus


  1. Introduction to course: Early history of flight.
  2. Basic concepts of flight – the essentials of an airplane and how they are controlled. The 3 axes of stability and control. Assignment of project and selection of teams.  Method of working together to study and design.  Simulator?
  3. The Design Process: What an Engineer does.  We learn about tools, drawings, and materials.
  4. Theory of lift.  Newton’s laws, Bernouli’s Principle, and the Coanda Effect.
  5. Theory of lift, continued as applied to aircraft.
  6. The Wing: parts, nomenclature, chord, chord percent, aspect ratio, camber, incidence, various kinds of wings and their purposes, dynamics of a turn.
  7. The Airfoil, nomenclature, camber, structure, selection. Calculation of Wing Area and Loading and its relationship to performance; .tiplets and wing tip vortices.
  8. Stability Concepts, Mean Aerodynamic Chord, Center of Lift, The tailplane, its purpose and design.  MAC and Center of Gravity calculations. Stability techniques in modeling, dihedral, wing positioning, wing tip wash-out for tip stall, Tail moment vs wing to stab area ratio.  Sample Design Report.  Video of poorly designed model (Shinden), and of well designed model (Boo).
  9. Stability Concepts, continued.
  10. Presentation of drawings.  Introduction to the craft of modeling, materials, and tools.  Safety considerations, materials and adhesives. Survivability - weight, rubber band attachment of wings and tail. 
  11. Power systems  – gravity for gliders, Glide Ratio, motor power requirements related to weight and drag. Thrust line, Propeller as airfoil.  Relationship of power in to thrust.  Possible thrust measurement and computer efficiency curves.
  12. Labs for working on models –  One plane per student, Each workgroup has its own color for planes.
  13. Lab for trimming models according to the material learned in this course.
  14. Show-N-Tell of models by students using their design paper, Students evaluate planes according to course material and appearance (part of grade).
  15. Flight of models from hillside.  Three flights per plane,  individual scores are top two flight times added.  Team scores are total of individual scores normalized to number of students in each group.  Plane must survive in flyable condition after each landing or that flight is zero time. Video will be shared with student body.
Review of designs and plane performance.  Questions raised by the course. Radio Control basics.  Evaluation of course.
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