Question (from a noob non-pilot): What's up with all the ...

I have both the Thomas and Panjo books. As Boku said, the Thomas book is an excellent discussion of the peculiarities of sailplane design. It's heavy on theory and becoming a little dated, but still excellent material that I would consider a "must-have" for a sailplane designer getting started. Pajno's book is probably outstanding in the native Italian, but the English edition suffers greatly from a very poor translation. One of the most glaring issues is that whomever layed out the English edition didn't update the page number references. The page number cross-references in the book are accurate for the Italian edition, but not for the English edition. A fair amount of searching ensues...

I don't have the other two books.

If you're starting from a basis of having already done a power-plane design, these are excellent references to get you into sailplane design. Thomas, in particular. However, if you're starting from scratch, I'd become familiar with the basics of aircraft design before getting into this specialized niche. Does this look like a good book combination? I'm just getting my bearings.[/QUOTE]"]Our "references" section has a good selection, and you'll want to get started with the Aircraft Configurational Development section. Not listed there is Raymer's, Simplified Aircraft Design for Homebuilders, which is available on Amazon and is a really nice place to start learning about airplane design. It's the same author as Aircraft Design: A Conceptual Approach, which is prominent on Orion's list, but this is a more-friendly introduction and would be an excellent primer for his larger college text.

Bob, you need to keep announcing these things more visibly here on HBA! :roll: :gig:

 

Exactly. Sorry, I put the link in my earlier reply, but sometimes links aren't as visible here as they might be. That's the one.