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SA Light A/C conceptual design

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something-awful

Well-Known Member
Joined
Sep 14, 2014
Messages
52
Location
Over the hills and far away
I warned you all, I am terrible at naming things

Like my own username

So, I have a big lull in things to do for the next few weeks so I'm taking the time to have a proper jump into doing a conceptual design for a much smaller aircraft than what I'm used to. I need an excuse to properly learn the more exciting parts of XFLR and this should provide a fairly straight forward case to get involved with the uglier side of stability and control calculations.

Not really intending to trial an unconventional configuration, more just wanting to design something that just generally does a good job. I'll be showing everything in my working and where I've got it from. I'm prone to stupid little mistakes so having my working public should at least catch that


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The target specs then, taken from here and then any other additional caveats I'd like to add, to be compliant with the CAA Single Seat De-regulated Aircraft rules:

  • Max Takeoff Mass of 300kg (315kg with full aircraft parachute)
  • VStall of 35KCAS
  • Single Seat
  • Trailer Storable
  • Room for expansion to 2 seat capacity
  • Compliant with 51% rule
  • Relatively inexpensive (I need to look at what a decent basic build cost less custom avionics packages would be)
  • Unrestricted aerobatic capability
Other things I want to ensure, while it's in the de-reg zone it will be designed as if it were to comply with EASA CS-23. It will also need to follow the tiger moth principle, undemanding to fly safely, but requires skill to be flown well. That's mainly required of trainers but I see no reason why a single seat aircraft shouldn't ask PIC to keep up their basic stick and rudder skills to get the most out of it. Same goes for aerobatics, the more a pilot safely experiences some funky attitudes, the more confident they are when all of a sudden the sky and the grass swap places.
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Step numero uno is estimating empty weight, then a constraints analysis.
 
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