This article serves as your complete roadmap. Before we discuss file formats, we must understand the subject matter. General Aviation (GA) refers to all civilian flying except scheduled commercial airlines. This includes Cessnas, Pipers, Cirrus, homebuilt experimentals, and business jets.
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Go to Chapter 8 (Airfoil selection). Gudmundsson provides a list of GA-specific airfoils (NACA 63-415, 23012, etc.) and explains how to pick one based on maximum lift coefficient and pitching moment, not just drag.
Open Chapter 11. Follow the flowchart for "Horizontal Tail Volume Coefficient (V_H)." You will calculate that for a low wing, V_H should be between 0.45 and 0.55.
That changed in 2014 with the publication of General Aviation Aircraft Design: Applied Methods and Procedures by Dr. Snorri Gudmundsson.
