Materials

Modelling Wood

Balsa Wood is highly available, cheap, and easy to work with. With a density of 120-160kgm$^{−3}$, balsa wood is the lightest wood that can be used for this project, and is commonly used in model aircraft building. Plywood is a close second to Balsa in terms of its usage in model plane building. The building and assembly techniques are however quite different. To make up for its higher weight, lightening holes are often cut. The most common type of plywood used is Douglas Fir plywood.

Alternative Materials

Alternatives to modelling wood are available, but require a higher manufacturing skill, and increases the design parameters that need to be considered. Furthermore, existing models using anything other than Balsa are always no smaller than one fifth scale of its real-size counterpart. Materials other than wood are rarely used for constructing model aircraft of this scale. Composite materials, metals and plastics may be used for landing gear, propellers, and to reinforce certain structural components but otherwise, most model aircraft primarily use wood. Larger model aircraft have been known to use materials such as carbon fibre for the fuselage and wings.