On 10 Nov 2004 03:49:57 -0800, (smjmitchell)
wrote:

Hmmmm ...



The safest way for a homebuilder to design an airplane is to produce
an evolutionary design that is based on an existing sound design and
do most of the design work by comparison to other aircraft designs.
The best design tool if you are using this approach is a cupboard full
of plans for a range of aircraft.


Stephen isnt it? ...from Sydney?

agree with all the rest of your jitters re software.

in glossing over the situation above I think you lost some important
considerations.

you have to understand how the design you choose to evolve from has
handled the stress considerations and how it handles normal use.
some ball park figures for the stress values are also good.
you also need to really understand what occurred when you see
something pretty dumb in the design. why did he do that?
not everything in a design is worthy of being copied.
sometimes the dumb stuff is copied verbatim from earlier designs.:-)

it also helps to know the design's crash history.

a cupboard full of plans is a good start but fill it out by talking to
users of the designs. their experience is a good tempering input which
helps to see what is important and what is useless.

Stealth Pilot