Hello,
I've been signed up to the forum for a couple of years but have been largely inactive as was working on my private pilots license which I received just over a year ago. To gain experience and to meet local like minded people, I've recently joined my local EAA chapter 154 where we are building a Zenith 701 kit to be powered by a 110hp Viking Honda.
To keep up with current flying, I own an old Cessna 172H.
But my background is as a mechanical engineer and so aircraft design is also a strong interest. For various reasons, mainly to do with my passenger preferences, I prefer high wing design but also like the concept of Van's Total Performance which I sort of describe as My Universal Performance aircraft. Also, like many, for various reasons metal design is preferred. In my own mind I have a preliminary idea of some performance specs for such an airplane but would like to start a thread where these could be put out there and then continuously improved. Although there are homebuilt aircraft out in the market that meet some of the requirements, I've not been able to find one design that meets them all. I think there are valid technical reasons for this but I don't think they are insurmountable. In my career, I'm a problem solving optimist. For every 10 ways in which a design can't work, there's always one way in which it can!
So I would like to start this new discuss in this forum as it seems the outlook here is one of possibility. Any suggestions as to what forum section it belongs in would be appreciated. My dream would be to collaborate with those on the forum to first refine the design brief, develop a preliminary layout and airodynamic design, preliminary performance calculation, and so on. And then see where things go from there.
I could sit at home at a desk doing this but colloboration with others is more fun and almost always more productive in my mind.
I've been signed up to the forum for a couple of years but have been largely inactive as was working on my private pilots license which I received just over a year ago. To gain experience and to meet local like minded people, I've recently joined my local EAA chapter 154 where we are building a Zenith 701 kit to be powered by a 110hp Viking Honda.
To keep up with current flying, I own an old Cessna 172H.
But my background is as a mechanical engineer and so aircraft design is also a strong interest. For various reasons, mainly to do with my passenger preferences, I prefer high wing design but also like the concept of Van's Total Performance which I sort of describe as My Universal Performance aircraft. Also, like many, for various reasons metal design is preferred. In my own mind I have a preliminary idea of some performance specs for such an airplane but would like to start a thread where these could be put out there and then continuously improved. Although there are homebuilt aircraft out in the market that meet some of the requirements, I've not been able to find one design that meets them all. I think there are valid technical reasons for this but I don't think they are insurmountable. In my career, I'm a problem solving optimist. For every 10 ways in which a design can't work, there's always one way in which it can!
So I would like to start this new discuss in this forum as it seems the outlook here is one of possibility. Any suggestions as to what forum section it belongs in would be appreciated. My dream would be to collaborate with those on the forum to first refine the design brief, develop a preliminary layout and airodynamic design, preliminary performance calculation, and so on. And then see where things go from there.
I could sit at home at a desk doing this but colloboration with others is more fun and almost always more productive in my mind.
