When it comes to designing aircraft - of any type, one concern that every company boss will tell you about is that it's not only very expensive to design aeroplanes but it can take too long to complete. And these days, cost reduction and being first to market are important factors in aviation.

There are a lot of CAD design software tools available to let the design department's imagination go wild - but precious few products on the market that will actually help you discover if your aircraft will actually fly and have any sort of stability and control before going to the expensive stage of wind tunnel testing.

The J2 Universal Tool Kit from J2 Aircraft Dynamics is the only off-the-shelf and commercially available software product that can do this effectively. This software makes no assumption as to the type of design and will allow any sort of configuration. There are no restrictions to the wing design, airframe size or propulsion system. Everything can be modelled very quickly,

The aircraft's performance, stability and control can be assessed and an accurate virtual video flight is displayed on screen in a real environment.

The software will allow you to make multiple design modifications 'on-screen' with just a few clicks of the mouse and then re-fly the changed aircraft and have them perform defined flights like take-off, in-flight manoeuvres and landings. You are even able to set-up flights to conform to FAA regulations and be sure your aircraft will pass these regulations 'first-time'. This method is not only very quick but it saves a lot of money because the aircraft Company no longer has to build multiple physical models with the different changes to see how they perform or complete many flight trials to modify or change the design.

With the J2 Universal Tool –kit, you are able to explore things like the effects of gusting, ground effect, prop-wash, changes in CG and mass and inertia to name but a few.

Most businesses these days consist of specialist teams of designers that are involved from the conceptual stage and follow through preliminary design to detail design with the project going right through to the actual flight. Their budgets are often very tight and the delivery deadline is always very critical. The J2 Universal Tool Kit is used throughout the project and can even demonstrate flight manoeuvres by using actual flight test data.

The J2 Universal Tool Kit also integrates with other software products and you are able to import aero data from sources like in-house codes, other commercial aircraft design software (Nastran, Catia, Fortran, AAA etc), wind tunnel and even MS Excel and MatLab/Simulink. The creators of this popular software took 10 years to develop the tool-kit; they are called J2 Aircraft Dynamics and are based in Liverpool, England. They have a team of experienced software developers and aircraft designers and are certified Microsoft partners as well as being accredited Matlab partners.