Jul 162011
 

Sixteenth in the series of reconstructed drawings from Paul Suhler’s book “From RAINBOW to GUSTO.” This is the Lockheed A-6-5 design as drawn by Dan Zuck in January 1959. This particular drawing has a Source Grade of four:

“RAINBOW to GUSTO” is available from Amazon:

To download the high-rez version of the A-6-5 drawing, simply click THIS LINK. You will be prompted for a username and a password. For the A-6-5 drawing, use these:

Username: the FIRST word in the body of the text on page 134

Password: the LAST word in the body of the text on page 134

(Remember: Case Sensitive!)

ALSO NOTE: if all you get is a “red X,” that means the image is too large for your browser to display (I’ve not ahd a problem with Firefox, but have had with IE). In that event, simply hit the Back button to this page, and right click on the link above and save the image directly to your computer and view from there.

Up next: A-6-6 configuration

 Posted by at 11:38 am
Jul 152011
 

In late 2009 and early 2010, one of my little projects was re-drawing many of the layout drawings contained in Paul Suhler’s excellent “From RAINBOW to GUSTO,” a history of the development of the SR-71. The book has many diagrams of previously unseen designs, but due to printing restrictions, the diagrams were  a lot smaller than I would have liked. I got in touch with the author, and gained permission to redraw and post a number of them. The project was well underway when disaster struck. My computer crashed and took out a whole lot of data with it… including all the CAD drawings. It took a while to get back up and running, and when I finally did, the loss of all that data and hard work was disheartening, and I let the project slip away.

Recently I had cause to re-visit the effort. Much to my amazement I found buried in a mis-labeled file an early backup of the project… it was incomplete, lacking three of the most recent CAD drawings, but enough of it was there to allow me to pick it up again. This morning (around 2AM) I finished the last of them. Now that they are all complete (and backed up!), I will start posting them again, starting where I left off. The format of the diagrams will be a little bit different, but the basic presentation process will be the same. I’ll post a low-rez image, and a link to a password-protected high-resolution version. In order to access the high-rez version, you’ll need to have a copy of “RAINBOW To GUSTO,” as the passwords will be words on specific pages of the book. It seemed to work well enough a  year and a half ago…

Anyway, here is the complete “RAINBOW to GUSTO” drawing collection to whet your appetite. Starting Real Soon Now I’ll begin posting the individual high-rez drawings. This collection drawing shows them all to scale (1/550 scale when printed out D-size… it has been reduced to 1/4 of the original image size, BTW).

Next up: the A-6-5. So, make sure to have your copies of “RAINBOW” handy…

 Posted by at 10:37 am
Feb 212010
 

Fifteenth in the series of reconstructed drawings from Paul Suhler’s book “From RAINBOW to GUSTO.” This is the A-5 design as drawn by Dan Zuck. This is Figure 67. This particular drawing has a Source Grade of four:

a-5_small.gif

“RAINBOW to GUSTO” is available from Amazon.com (for $39.95) and direct from the AIAA ($29.95 for AIAA members).

To download the high-rez version of the A-5 drawing, simply click THIS LINK. You will be prompted for a username and a password. For the A-5 drawing, use these:

Username: the FIRST word in the body of the text on page 132

Password: the FIRST word in the body of the text on page 133

(Remember: Case Sensitive!)

Up next: Figure 68, A-6-5 configuration

 Posted by at 4:23 pm
Feb 172010
 

Fourteenth in the series of reconstructed drawings from Paul Suhler’s book “From RAINBOW to GUSTO.” This is the A-4-2 design as drawn by Ed Baldwin. This is Figure 66. This particular drawing has a Source Grade of four:

a-4-2_small.gif

“RAINBOW to GUSTO” is available from Amazon.com (for $39.95) and direct from the AIAA ($29.95 for AIAA members).

To download the high-rez version of the A-4-2 drawing, simply click THIS LINK. You will be prompted for a username and a password. For the A-4-2 drawing, use these:

Username: the FIRST word in the body of the text on page 130

Password: the FIRST word in the body of the text on page 131

(Remember: Case Sensitive!)

Up next: Figure 67, A-5 configuration

 Posted by at 12:02 am
Feb 062010
 

Thirteenth in the series of reconstructed drawings from Paul Suhler’s book “From RAINBOW to GUSTO.” This is the final A-3 design as drawn by Ed Baldwin. This is Figure 63. This particular drawing has a Source Grade of four:

a-3_small.gif

“RAINBOW to GUSTO” is available from Amazon.com (for $39.95) and direct from the AIAA ($29.95 for AIAA members).

To download the high-rez version of the A-3 drawing, simply click THIS LINK. You will be prompted for a username and a password. For the A-3 drawing, use these:

Username: the FIRST word in the body of the text on page 118

Password: the FIRST word in the body of the text on page 119

(Remember: Case Sensitive!)

Up next: Figure 66, A-4-2 configuration

 Posted by at 9:12 pm
Jan 142010
 

Twelfth in the series of reconstructed drawings from Paul Suhler’s book “From RAINBOW to GUSTO.” This is the A-3 variant as drawn by Dan Zuck. This is Figure 62(c). This particular drawing has a Source Grade of four:

a-3w_small.gif

“RAINBOW to GUSTO” is available from Amazon.com (for $39.95) and direct from the AIAA ($29.95 for AIAA members).

To download the high-rez version of the A-3 variant drawing, simply click THIS LINK. You will be prompted for a username and a password. For the A-3 variant drawing, use these:

Username: the FIRST word in the body of the text on page 114

Password: the LAST word in the body of the text on page 114

(Remember: Case Sensitive!)

Up next: Figure 623, Final A-3 configuration

 Posted by at 12:33 pm
Dec 302009
 

Eleventh in the series of reconstructed drawings from Paul Suhler’s book “From RAINBOW to GUSTO.” This is the Cherub variant as drawn by Henry Combs. This is Figure 62(b). This particular drawing has a Source Grade of four:

a-3-3_small.gif

“RAINBOW to GUSTO” is available from Amazon.com (for $39.95) and direct from the AIAA ($29.95 for AIAA members).

To download the high-rez version of the Cherub variant drawing, simply click THIS LINK. You will be prompted for a username and a password. For the Cherub variant drawing, use these:

Username: the FIRST word in the body of the text on page 112

Password: the FIRST word in the body of the text on page 113

(Remember: Case Sensitive!)

Up next: Figure 62, A-3 variant

 Posted by at 5:40 pm
Dec 172009
 

Tenth in the series of reconstructed drawings from Paul Suhler’s book “From RAINBOW to GUSTO.” This is the Cherub 2 (A-3) as drawn by Dan Zuck. This is Figure 62(a). This particular drawing has a Source Grade of four:

a-3-2_small.gif

“RAINBOW to GUSTO” is available from Amazon.com (for $39.95) and direct from the AIAA ($29.95 for AIAA members).

To download the high-rez version of the Cherub 2 drawing, simply click THIS LINK. You will be prompted for a username and a password. For the Cherub 1 drawing, use these:

Username: the FIRST word in the body of the text on page 116

Password: the LAST word in the body of the text on page 116

(Remember: Case Sensitive!)

Up next: Figure 62, Cherub 2

 Posted by at 11:45 pm
Dec 142009
 

NOTE: this is a revision of the original Archangel drawing posting. If you download the hi rez version, you can now see the dimensions of this craft. 

Fourth in the series of reconstructed drawings from Paul Suhler’s book “From RAINBOW to GUSTO.” Here we have the initial “Archangel” design produced by Kelly Johnson. This is Figure 45. Due to low image quality in the original, this particular drawing has a Source Grade of two:

“RAINBOW to GUSTO” is available from Amazon.com (for $39.95) and direct from the AIAA ($29.95 for AIAA members).

To download the high-rez version of the Archangel drawing, simply click THIS LINK. You will be prompted for a username and a password. For the Archangel drawing, use these:

Username: the first word in the body of the text on page 96

Password: the first word in the body of the text on page 97

(Remember: Case Sensitive!)

 Posted by at 6:02 pm