Product Description

Build and fly your very own model airplane design. Using clear explanations, you will learn important design trade-offs and how to choose among them. The latest research and techniques are discussed using easy to understand language.

You will discover:

• The special challenges faced by the smaller models and how to overcome them.
• How to choose the right material for each part of the airplane.
• Easy rules for selecting the right power system, gas or electric.
• When it makes sense to use one of the innovative KFm airfoils.
• Pros and cons of canard and multi-wing configurations.
• A step-by-step design process that includes goal setting and flight testing.
• In-depth discussions of important topics like airfoils and wing design.
• The sources of air drag and how to minimize their impact.

Not just for beginners! Exhaustively researched, there is something for everyone among the wealth of information it contains.

Not just for electric models! The power systems chapter covers gas engines and electric motors. Most of the book applies equally well to gliders.

A perfect complement to RCadvisor's online model airplane calculator, this book stands completely on its own. All of the formulas included can be easily used with a hand-held calculator.

RCadvisor's easy to use calculator is the leading online tool for model airplane building and design. Numerous ToolTips, interactive tutorials, and real-time graphs make understanding easy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #47668 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Review
This book is definitely needed by anyone getting into R/C or is a veteran flight fanatic! Tons of good info that racks my brain and gets me thinking. --Jamie Burke, Host, AllThingsThatFly.com

Review
This book is a joy to read! The writing style and wit add dimension in a way that is rarely found in today's reference materials. If someone has considered designing their own airplane and been put off because of complicated formulas, vocabulary and reference style that would bore even an engineer, this will convince them to go ahead and try it. Written with real people in mind and not engineers - and I mean that in a good way. This is a book that will reside along the other favorites on my bookshelf. Carlos really managed to produce a book that will last a long time and become one of the standards for modelers.

Review
No matter how long you've been aeromodelling, or what your interests are in our great hobby, the greatest thrill of all is standing behind a unique model that you've designed and built yourself, from a blank sheet of paper - or even a blank CAD file - and preparing to make that first take off.

So sit yourself down in a comfy chair, read RCadvisor's Model Airplane Design Made Easy and set off on aeromodelling's greatest adventure.

Let Carlos Reyes - an aeromodeller of long standing and great talent - take you through the mysteries of how to arrive at the point that every lover of model aircraft should experience.

Customer Reviews

A gold mine for RC aircraft design !
I am an EE/Physics type working in materials & electronic device design, but RC models, building, and aerodynamics have been a life long interest of mine, designing, building, and flying mostly small and medium sized electrics at this point. I just recently bought Carlos Reyes' book "Model Airplane Design Made Easy", and I am enjoying it immensely.

The has a broad range practical info on materials properties choices and how to think about aircraft design choices that face EVERY new design. The book is full of non-mathematical and understandable descriptions and explanations of important and often misunderstood concepts in aerodynamics (behavior of wings and airfoils, choice of power plant and propellor, etc.) I was especially delighted with the big list of high quality web and paper references on related topics. This book is a gold mine!.

I am also beginning to dig into the companion RCAdvisor calculator(http://www.rcadvisor.com/guest), to try to understand it better, and explore its capabilities. The book and the RCAdvisor website are a wonderful combination. I highly recommend them both; I am sure that together they will improve the quality of my power system choices (motor, prop, battery) and also reduce the frequency of cut and try in my scratch built designs.

A fine distillation
Over the years I've accumulated most of the books on Model Aircraft design - from Frank Zaic's 1987 edn. of "Circular Airflow" to the latest version of Martin Simon's "Model Aircraft Aerodynamics". This one joins the list of the very few (like those two and the somewhat brain-testing but excellent stuff by Ferdinando Gale) that get top marks. Having long ago trained as an Engineer I have a soft spot for numbers that are useful and Carlos has brought off that very difficult task: writing about quantitative things that are complex with just the right amount of numbers and formulae. Any modeller with the most basic math (think multiplying and dividing and fractions!) could follow his descriptions which are deceptively simple and easy. This book is for non-experts because it is a great read, easily accessible and welcoming but make no mistake this is an expert book by an expert. Carlos has a rare ability to distill in personable and direct prose some very important stuff. And it's not just classical aerodynamics. He covers a huge range of topics from airfoils to adhesives, particularly some that get little attention elsewhere like propeller performance, in a friendly format by focusing on the key information. His explanation of lift is a classic example. Just 3 short elegant paragraphs covers the essence of the Bernoulli explanation with a fourth noting that there is an alternative. For practical modelers his ""It is not a bad way of looking at the phenomenon, but it is less useful when doing computations than the pressure differential explanation" beats the many pages of circulation theory and bound vortices others labor over. I can't recommend this book highly enough. Think of it as the Cognac of Model Aerodynamic texts. Instantly accessible without years of experience in fine wine tasting but with enormous depth and content. An extra point for recognizing that not everyone lives in the US and metric units are important too. :-)

It's an absolute bargain at the price.

Model Airplane Design
Clear easy to understand information. Book is well organized and logical. Topics provide understandable answers to many model airplane design questions. If you build, design, or fly model airplanes this book is well worth the price.