Now Available: Air Documents 27-31

 aircraft, drawings, drawings&documents, history, new products, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Sep 172018
 

It has been *years* since I have released any “Air & Space Drawings & Documents,” high rez scans of vintage aerospace items. At last, I’m adding new items. The complete catalog can be seen HERE.

New items. Each are available for $4.

Air Document 27: “Design Study for an Air Force Model F-82E Airplane Modified to a Ground Attack Airplane” A 24-page study from 1949 for a twin-bodied F-82 modified with Allison turboprop engines. The engines would be mounted in the mid-fuselage, about where the cockpits originally were; the cockpits would be moved forward to compensate. The document, taken from a vintage copy printed from microfilm, includes numerous diagrams and B&W art.

Air Document 28: “This Is The Life With Lockheed” A 36-page booklet produced by Lockheed, Georgia Division, showing the wonders of working there in 1959. Includes not only descriptions and photos of the local environment and amenities but also photos of Lockheed facilities, products and projects. An interesting view of a very different era.

Air Document 29: “SAM-D Air Defense Weapon System” A 1973 Redstone Arsenal information booklet on the Surface-to-Air Missile, Development, which became the “Patriot” anti-aircraft/ anti-missile missile. The booklet describes the various elements of a SAM-D deployment.

Air Document 30: “V-397 (Regulus II) Summary Report” A 42-page 1955 Chance-Vought report on the Regulus II supersonic cruise missile. Includes data and glorious diagrams on the tactical missile as well as the flight test vehicle with landing gear. Scanned from a vintage printout from microfilm.

Air Document 31: “Republic XF-103 data” Dating from the mid-50’s, this collection of data and diagrams of the Mach 3+ XF-103 interceptor comes not from Republic, but from Lockheed. A rare look into corporate “competition data gathering,” this 21-page data file shows the sort of information that Lockheed put together on the designs put forward by their competitors.

 

Several of these were released *four* *years* ago to patrons of the Aerospace Projects Review Patreon. Patrons receive items such as these at a low cost and years earlier than waiting for them to appear on the Drawing & documents catalog… and most of the Patreon items *won’t* appear here.

If this sort of thing is of interest, please consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

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 Posted by at 3:27 pm

Bell D-270-900-100 Tiltrotor

 aircraft, drawings, Patreon, projects, US VTOL Projects  No Responses »
Sep 052018
 

A 1969 Bell Helicopter design for a high speed stowed-rotor tiltrotor. This was meant for USAF search and rescue and featured gun turrets fore and aft (each with a Minigun) and four turboshaft engines under the wings. Doubtless the gearing from the engines up through the pylons and along the wings to the nacelles would have been an engineering nightmare. But if it worked, it would have resulted in a tiltrotor with the hover performance of the V-22 and a cruise speed of 400 knots.

An article on the similar D270-900-112 (the main visual difference being that the engines were separately podded) was included in US VTOL Projects #1.

I have made the much-larger full-rez scan of the cutaway available to $10+ APR Patreon patrons. If this sort of thing is of interest, please consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

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 Posted by at 8:19 pm

XP-55 Ascender Cutaway

 aircraft, art, drawings, history, Patreon  No Responses »
Aug 152018
 

The Curtiss-Wright XP-55 Ascender was a tailless fighter design from WWII. It was intended to be an improvement on then-current designs in terms of performance, but proved to be disappointing. After years of development and flight testing, it was overtaken by jet propulsion and failed to make it into production.

I have made the much-larger full-rez scan of the cutaway available to $10+ APR Patreon patrons. If this sort of thing is of interest, please consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

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 Posted by at 4:28 pm

Forthcoming

 drawings, projects, rockets, spacecraft, US Launch Vehicle Projects  1 Response »
Jun 202018
 

First draft of diagrams for the next issue of US Launcher Projects. This will include concepts such as an eight-F-1 Nova, a 1962 Lockheed fully reusable spaceplane launcher, a Boeing HTOHL SSTO, a Convair VTOHL Delta Clipper competitor, a giant SPS launcher, a balloon-recovered Saturn I, an early Space Shuttle concept and an expendable SSTO.

 Posted by at 8:02 pm

Boeing entry vehicle designs

 aircraft, drawings, history, projects, rockets, spacecraft, weapons  3 Responses »
Jun 102018
 

A Boeing illustration from 1964 showing a number of designs for lifting entry vehicles that Boeing had produced by that point. Most of these are manned vehicle concepts; a few of them are unfamiliar to me. The “B-3 —– B” looks like it might have been an ASSET competitor. The “Recoverable Booster” at top is one of several similar V-shaped designs that used a modestly modified Dyna Soar as the crew capsule up front. One such design was the Model 895 shown (along with competing ASP designs from other firms) in Aerospace Projects Review issue V2N5.

 

 Posted by at 12:19 am

For sale: X-20 Dyna Soar Blueprint/Utah panoramas

 aircraft, art, cats, drawings, history, photography, projects, spacecraft, Utah  1 Response »
May 052018
 

Kinda in a bit of a financial bind here, so I’m going to sell off some stuff. The first thing up: a large format print of a scan of  Model 2050E X-20 Dyna Soar in the final, as-almost-built configuration. This was printed off some years ago on good quality heavy glossy photo paper; I’d always wanted to have it framed and on my wall, but never got around to it. Plus, framing it properly would be a a bit of an effort due to the size of the print, but if it was done it’d look *great.* Waste not, want not: the full rez scan didn’t quite fill out the 24-inch-wide paper, so I added in some of my Utah panoramic photos to take up some of the excess space. So with a bit of trimming, if you buy this you not only get the Dyna Soar, but some Utah as well. The whole print is I think six feet long.

UPDATE: didn’t really seem to fly off the shelves, so I’m going to slice this up and put it on ebay at some point.

Photos:

 Posted by at 10:20 am

APR Patreon April 2018 rewards issued

 aircraft, drawings, history, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft, weapons  1 Response »
Apr 292018
 

Rewards have been issued to APR Patreon patrons for April, 2018. This month, the “Diagram” is a Sikorsky lithograph of a Heavy Lift Helicopter concept. The Documents include a US Army catalog of airborne weaponry; a paper describing possible additional missions for the Saturn launch vehicles, and BOAC brochure extolling the virtues of the Comet 4 jetliner. The CAD diagram is of the British Interplanetary Society’s “Deadalus” starship design.

 

If you are interested in helping to preserve (and get copies of) this sort of thing, consider signing up for the APR Patreon.

 

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 Posted by at 3:06 pm

Extras added for APR Patrons

 aircraft, drawings, history, Patreon, projects, rockets  2 Responses »
Apr 212018
 

APR Patrons contributing more than $10 per month were today sent a 1969 diagram of a preliminary design for what would become the AWACS plane… close, but with eight engines rather than four. This design was illustrated in color artwork from time to time.

And for APR Patrons at the $4 and above level, a diagram of the 777 and scans of a McDonnell-Douglas brochure on the “Med-Lite Family” of launch vehicle concepts have been uploaded to the 2018-04 APR Extras folder on Dropbox:

If you are interested in these and a great many other “extras” and monthly aerospace history rewards, please sign up for the APR Patreon. What else are you going to spend $4 a month on? Taxes?

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 Posted by at 8:50 am
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