Monte C. wrote: "Do you want to plug numbers into equations or do you want to build planes?"
Those two things are not mutually exclusive, you know.
There's absolutely no reason why you can't do both.
If you want to, you can plug numbers into equations and build a better plane by doing so. (This is how all full-size aircraft are designed, obviously. But full-size requires a heck of a lot more math.)
Math's not to your taste? You prefer rolling the dice? Sure. You can ignore the math, use TLAR (That Looks About Right) for everything, and these days, because we have so much excess power at our disposal, you can often still get the thing to fly.
I've known at least one guy who was an absolute genius at TLAR design. He would create the most outlandish-looking objects (like Alladin sitting on a magic carpet), and get them to fly. And he never used any math at all.
But that was the exception. Over the years, I saw a lot of money wasted by a lot of people who just used TLAR.
First they'd buy a motor, because it was on sale. Then throw a prop on it because their buddy said it was the right size. Mount the whole thing in whatever model they'd just finished building. But then, at the flying field, they'd find the model didn't have enough thrust to take off.
So they'd go and buy a bigger prop, throw it on, and try again. This time, they'd burn out the ESC, because it couldn't cope with the current draw.
Then they'd buy a bigger ESC, plug it in, and try again. This time it would be the motor that burned out, because the prop was too big for it all along. (That's why the first ESC burned out, but nobody did the math, so they didn't realize it.)
If they were unlucky, the motor would burn out in mid-air, and they'd crash the model because they didn't know how to glide and land it without power.
So they go off and buy a new airframe to replace the crashed one.
Then they go off and buy a bigger motor. Which puffs the lipo battery, because the lipo pack couldn't keep up with the current draw from the big motor and big prop.
Then they'd buy a bigger lipo battery, and the model would finally fly without crashing or burning anything.
But, by this time, the owner's wallet would be a good bit lighter. A fair bit of money had just been wasted on one burned out ESC, one burned out motor, one burned out Lipo pack, and one crashed airframe.
Along with the wasted money, there was also usually loss of enthusiasm. It's not fun having to waste lots of money and watch multiple expensive electronics doodads burn up before you ever get your model in the air. People who went through this more than once often walked away from the hobby altogether.
You don't actually have to do the math by hand. Back in 2004, I began to create WebOCalc because I wanted an easy way to do the essential math for myself. It took a few years for me to develop and refining the underlying physics model to get WebOCalc to work really well. Then I made WebOCalc free, and gave it away online, to anyone who wanted to use it. It works in your 'Web browser, on Windows, Macs, Linux, any operating system with a reasonably modern, standards-compatible 'Web browser. So nobody with a computing device is left out.
By 2009 or so, there were a bunch of other free online calculators to help with various aspects of electric RC plane design. Like "PeakEff" and the Adam One RC calculator, and lots more. Many seem to have disappeared in the dozen years since then 2009, though, as the RC flying hobby continued its decline, and the software creators eventually stopped paying their website hosting fees.
Dirt-cheap radio equipment, outrunner motors, and lipo packs have changed the game quite a bit since 2004. Nowadays it doesn't cost you as much money if you don't do the math, and have to replace burned-out ESCs, motors, and lipo packs.
-Gnobuddy