Karoliina's blogs all-in-1

>I have been flying all kinds of planes and been kind of figuring slowly out what is the optimum for power loading. It turns out like 9 lbs/hp produces the “fun” experience. That is the “RV-grin” I would say.

So what comes together is:
– Optimum aircraft would consist of 2 x 100 hp engine
– Very low drag fuselage
– Very low drag wings
– High aspect ratio
– High wing loading, 22 lbs/sqft.
– Double slotted flaps
– Power loading 9 lbs/hp
-> mtow 1800 lbs = 818 kg
Empty weight should be under 450 kg to have enough useful load (368 kg, includes fuel).
=> wing area = 81 sqft.

For more general purpose use, it could be written:
– for high performance use, mtow limited to 818 kg.
– for long range use, mtow limited to 950 kg.

This becomes:
– the wing loading limit of 24 lbs/sqft can not be exceeded for the 950 kg because otherwise the stall speed gets too high
=> this becomes:
– 2090 lbs / 24 lbs/sqft
The wing area can be then assumed to be 87 sqft. 7 sqft more than on the case of high performance case.
– Wing loading calculation for the high performance case becomes:
87*22 = 1914 lbs MTOW.
1800/87.0 = 20.6 lbs / sqft

This would cause the airframe to gross weight ratio to be 0.47. This is very low and may not be realistic without special structure. A more realistic figure would be 0.55 ratio. This becomes: 450.0/0.55. Guess what, we get the 818 kg = 1800 lbs gross weight from that. So structurally the 450 kg empty weight and 818 kg gross weight should be feasible. Dynaero MCR-01 is 0.53; 260 kg / 490 kg = 0.53). The LH-Aviation LH10 is 260 kg/500 kg = 0.52. Both of these are carbon fiber structures. With lower cost materials, this may not be even nearly feasible.

If we take a pessimistic value for airframe to gross weight ratio – 0.6 and we have set the gross weight to 830 kg (based on optimizing the power loading), this gives 498 kg empty weight. This should be easily feasible if turbos and pressurization is not taken into account.