How Does A Wing Work?

Really, the wing is the airplane, so it is a good place to start when talking about designing an RC plane. This is also probably the most critical part of the design. First though, it is important to know how a wing actually works to generate lift.

There are several ideas out there for how a wing actually works but one of the most popular is the Bernoulli principle.

The Bernoulli principle states that air moving over the top of the wing has a further distance to travel than the air underneath. So, it must travel faster to meet the air that went underneath the wing. The faster-moving air that travels above the wing has less pressure than the slower air beneath. This creates the lifting force. 

However, the misconception with this theory was that both paths of air have to meet up together at the other side of the wing. Some experiments were done recently that suggest that the air that travels over the top of the wing actually reaches the trailing edge (back) of the wing BEFORE the air underneath. 

Another theory for lift is that when the wing is at an angle of attack (angle relative to the ground) that a plane would normally take off at,

the air hitting the underside of the wing is being directed downwards. As this happens, this air  pushes the bottom of the wing upwards in a way that creates lift at a good angle of attack. 

The bottom line is that both of these theories work for how a wing generates lift, if they are explained correctly. They are just two ways of looking at it. Personally, I agree more with the first one. I think that the second one would work more for paper planes.