December 2020
Overview
While doing background research for my senior design project, where we were designing and building a glider, I learned a lot about RC planes. So over my winter break I wanted to put what I had learned in my aircraft design course to use and build an RC airplane. I felt this would a) be fun and b) help prepare me for my senior design project the following semester where I would be building a glider.
I had learned all the background needed to build a succesful RC plane, with the aircraft design from my coursework, and the specifics of using a motor, esc, and battery from doing research on the rotor aerodynamics.
Design
The overall design was based around the design of the acrobatic plane I designed in my aircraft design course. To start my design I weighed my materials to get a rough estimate for the weight of the plane, W. Using the same wing loading (W/S) as I used for the acrobatic plane, I calculated the required wing planform area, S. I estimated the plane speed to be 20 mph. Using an aspect ratio of 6 I was able to then get the dimensions of the wing. The vertical and horizontal tail sizes I got from a approximation calculation I found online. See my foam glider post for more info. I created a spreadsheet which showed the wings and I could put the tail info in and it showed where the center of gravity would be based on the wing sizing and weight.
For my airfoil I used the Clark-Y which is supposed to be forgiving if you do not cut it out perfectly. Since I was cutting foam by hand with a knife, this seemed like a good fit.
Construction
Unfortunately the propeller exploded when I put the motor at full throttle, so I wasn't able to really fly the plane. The propeller was a cheap one that came with the motor.