Airfoil Selection: Understanding and Choosing Airfoils for Light Aircraft by Barnaby Wainfan (2005-11-09)

Praxisbezug , didaktischer Aufbau ,!

design of low power/foot launched gliders.

The book itself contains no page with any biography of the author. (Heaven forbid! A modest author?) Perhaps it is because the book is a reprint of a series of articles originally published in Kitplanes Magazine: regular readers of Kitplanes Magazine would already know the author, since the fraternity of general aviation designers is quite small and his name is a rather distinctive pair of words. Happily, the author recently joined the distinguished faculty in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and his concise bio is on their webstie. Impressively, we learn your author was the Chief of Aerodynamics for the car that won Progressive Insurance's Automotive X Prize. Since the engineering math used in aerodynamics is beyond the ken of most mortals, real world success in one's profession is always more comforting than the best explanations of all the equations that allegedly prove it will actually work. If you haven't seen the car, it looks like the front half of a four-place airplane fuselage that has been equipped with "open wheels," except the tires and wheels are clothed in what pilots know are "wheel pants." And if you didn't know about why some airplanes might need wheel pants and why Mr. Wainfan used them on Edison2, maybe you should read buy and read his refreshingly thin book. Price-wise, it's a bargain.

I read the entire book in one sitting, it was written that well written. The content was very useful to have the level of understanding necessary to get started on an aircraft design. Equations were to a minimum but it was very helpful in understanding the meaning of the airfoil graphs you would have to utilize to be quantitative. The only issue was that the labelling of the graphs. They were shrunk and in the process, could not be read without a magnification glass. I inked in the written material that could not be read. The claim in the introduction was that the book was essentially a reformatting of the original so it seems to me an oversight to not have relabeled the graphics. Get a magnifying glass to read.

Books can follow in the wake of this clear, geometric, and graphic analysis of subsonic airfoil selection for light aircraft but this book is a keeper. Trend monkeys take note, after reading this exposition you will delight in predictable understanding, better performance, learning from mistakes you don't have to make. And best of all, when your life and others is on the line the knowledge conveyed by this book exceeds the value of any insurance policy. Performance, the object of so much design and engineering interest is covered here while presenting competing considerations for a well rounded understanding. Yet, the math in this book is far from overwhelming. This book is a study in relevance for practical application.