Hi Ivan:

Lost my thread post, so here goes. I reviewed Raymers textbook against his homebuilders book and I'm definitely going to recommend his homebuilders book to you since he addresses questions you've raised (like wing placement) in ways not covered in his bigger book:

https://www.eaa.org/en/eaa-shop/medi...r-homebuilders

I also like Chris Heintz's book (Zenith aircraft founder/designer) - good stuff about structures and stability:

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I also like Snori Gudmansson's (gotta love that Scandinavian name - takes me back to my time in Sweden book on GA aircraft design:

https://smile.amazon.com/General-Avi...oding=UTF8&me=

I really like Gudmansson's book for all the design process. I primarily bought these books as a way to help me evaluate homebuilt designs. Snori's book (he's not boring - check for his youtube videos) was especially good. I found out a design issue (I think a pretty big one) in a plane that was being hawked at Oshkosh. You should have seen the look of worry on the hawker's face when he saw me noticing the cludgy features of the plane's wing. I kept my mouth shut - Caveat Emptor, his potential customers should buy the books too. The hype sales approach should have been their first warning though (mine too). I recently referred to the Gudmansson book about issues I saw on powered paragliders with front castoring wheels. I wanted to see what he said about geometry and shimmy. If you read the reviews on Amazon, they laud the fact that he has the derivations of the formulas too. His language is straight forward like Raymer, and he covers a ton of issues around small aircraft design. I've actually got both an electronic version and a hard cover version since the diagrams in the hard cover version are only in black and white. It also gives me the opportunity to do detailed searches electronically. The physical book is huge, like a reference should be.

Do you know of any online forums for using Raymer's programs/spreadsheets? I don't know if you want to keep yours propriatary (in case you develop a plan set, for example), but maybe we could cross check each other's work. PM if you want to.

Enjoying watching the evolution of your design,

Michael