How to Design and Construct Your Very Own Airplane (Home Flight Construction Book 6)
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How to Design and Construct Your Very Own Airplane (Home Flight Construction Book 6)
When an · airplane is to be designed, there are certain imposed elements on the basis of which it is necessary to conduct the study of the other various elements of the design in order to obtain the best possible characteristics. Airplanes can be divided into two main classes: war airplanes and mercantile airplanes. In the former, those qualities are essentially desired which increase their war efficiency, as for instance: high speed, great climbing power, more or less great cruising radius, possibility of carrying given military loads (arms, munitions, bombs, etc.), good visibility, facility in installing armament, etc. For mercantile airplanes, on the contrary, while the speed has the same great importance a high climbing power is not an essential condition; but the possibility of transporting heavy useful loads and great quantities of gasoline and oil, in order to effectuate long journeys without stops, assumes a capital importance. Whatever type is to be designed, the general criterions do not vary. Usually the designer can select the type of engine from a more or less vast series; often though, the type of motor is imposed and that naturally limits the fields of possibility. Rather than exposing the abstract criterion, it is more interesting to develop summarily in this and the following chapters, the general outline of a project of a given type of airplane, making general remarks which are applicable to each design as it appears. In order to fix this idea, let us suppose that we wish to study a fast airplane to be used for sport races.