Flight Modeling & all that....

I am currently up to my armpits in aerodynamics, stability derivatives, lift co-efficients, pitching moments and a whole lot more. I am also attempting to obtain a sound understanding of the workings of .air files as in MS sims. At this stage I have to say I am thoroughly enjoying the experience.

I am interested in all eras of aviation, from 1914 through to the present. My initial focus will be on aircraft of the 1914-1938 period, and am developing my own spreadsheet which will largely cater for biplanes and perhaps early monoplanes. If a name is worth anything, I have called my system 'Vintav'... LoL. It is MS Excel based. Vintav may be able to write aircraft .cfg files. I have yet to decide. However table data will have to be entered in .air files via programs such as AAM (Aircraft Air File manager).

I am primarily still at the research and data collation stage with much more in front of me. At this stage I have only purchased two books. The first was somewhat advanced and related to aerodynamics rather than aeronautics, not much about aircraft. I still find it useful in providing an understanding of the concepts. I have just purchased Airplane Flight Dynamics and Automatic Flight Controls by Jan Roskam through ebay which will probably take a few weeks to reach Australia. In the meantime I have found Hervé Sors' Flight Simulator Aircraft Dynamics and Navdata website to be a useful portal to the world of flight dynamics creation and reference material for MS Sims.

At this stage I plan to devote at least two months, in my spare time, to this activity, perhaps more if need be.

I am not out of the loop completely as far as 3D modeling is concerned. However that activity is taking very much a back seat at the moment.... just enough to keep a few projects ticking over.

I am also most likely returning to my normal vocation for a while (FS creation doesn't pay the bills), but am still hoping to complete projects such as the freeware Sopwith Snipe, maybe a Sopwith Triplane and two payware projects. Perhaps a big ask, but many of the steep learning curves are behind me apart from flight modeling and issues such cockpit lighting. However WW1 aircraft are a bit light in the systems area. The FSX Snipe is perhaps the most complicated of the planned aircraft. I hope to include cockpit lighting and flares in that aircraft.

Rob