Perry, from all I've tried variations between the thrustline and the wing and or stab don't affect much. Usually the thrust line is raised 5% of the avg. chord or so, approx. half an inch. That's mostly to balance the vertical CG with the leadouts. More important than where the stab is make the tail moment longer and the stab larger. It's hard to go wrong with a stab that is 25% of the wing. You can get both too long or too short with the tail moment. A good role model is a 3-view of the Grumman Hellcat. It had a large stab ~25%, a big wing- ~40% more wing area than most of the similar vintage fighters.
Based on Pat's reviews, you can use that same basic layout for almost any styled plane you want. The Shoestring was a very pretty design. I built a midwing Cosmic wind(the Minnow version was rebuilt to a midwing). It flew very well. I've built a near scale P-51 that flys very nice too. It has a bit higher thrust line, maybe an inch above the wing and dihedral. You can make many good looking, good flying planes using a similar formula, ala' Al Rabe. Scale the wing 20-30% larger than the fuselage, enlarge the scale stab to 25%, make the fuselage roughly 1in/ft scale. Then tweak the profile, wing centerline, and either shrink the fuselage height or stretch the fuselage to get the right tail placement and tweak the shape and placement of the cockpit, fin/rudder so it looks right. Planes look more realistic with larger fuselages but they don't have to be religiously scale outlines. The P-51 scale fuselage would have been nearly 8inches high. Using a CAD program I slimmed it down to 6.5in, made the canopy and rudder bigger, and slimmed the airscoop.
Topic: Profile design. (Read 3230 times)