1. An environment conducive to airplane design is important in an academic setting and in any serious industrial setting. In an environment which provides for the basic needs of the airplane design engineer, the design student can flourish, and time and energy can be used efficiently to meet the extremely tight schedules imposed during undergraduate studies by the length of semesters or quarters. The design environment created in our department includes the following: a) Books and Reports: a dedicated design library, containing such selection of books and reports, as described in Refs. 71-159, covering all major aspect of conceptual airplane design. The departmental design library complements the university engineering library, in which students can find, AIAA journals, aviation magazines, AGARD publications, NACA~ and NASA Reports, publications distributed by the government National Technical Information Service (NTIS) and additional engineering books and reports on all related subject areas; b) Computers and software. An array of UNIX workstations and personal computers with software products ranging from very simple airplane sizing or aerodynamics codes through powerful industry standard analysis codes and up to advanced design optimization codes for structural optimization and airplane design optimization; c) Conference rooms. A remodeled computer lab includes spaces for meetings and room for storage of drawings and documents; d) The University of Washington Aeronautical Laboratory - Kirsten Wind Tunnel, as described above ; e) Machine shop for the manufacturing of model parts aswell asworkshop area in the Kirsten Wind Tunnel Building for servicing and modification of wind tunnel models and full size unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), component testing and fiberglass conslruction; f) Industry partnerships and a network of experts and consultants, as described before,
2. The key elements and experiences, combination of which make: the capstone design courses the culmination o'f the airplane undergraduate curriculum, have been identified and discussed by many authors (Refs. 7-26) and are widely addressed in most capstone airplane design courses in the c=ountrytoday. They include:
3. Experimentation has always played a major role in airplane development (Ref. 160). Where aerodynamic analysis techniques have been limited in their capability to capture all important aspects of vehicle aerodynamics spanning all flight regimes, wind tunnel testsbecame and still are an essential part of airplane aerodynamic development (Ref. 160, Chapters 9 and 11, and Refs, 168-169). The Fastprogress and decreasing costs in the area of radio controlled model airplane construction in recent years (Refs. 157-159) made the construction and flight test of R/C models of new airplane configurations an important element in the development of many new airplanes in the SOSand 90s especially for exploring stability and control characteristics. In the structures' area, coupon tests for the establishment of material allowables, and load and structural dynamics tests of sub assemblies are used to augment and support analytical models. "Iron bird" laboratory simulations of software / hardware integration of flight control systems as well aspropulsion unit and integrated propulsion / airframe tests are also widely used in airplane design development.