Scramjet artwork

 aircraft, art, history, models, projects, spacecraft  2 Responses »
Oct 132012
 

A piece of NASA-Langley artwork describing the future of aeropropulsion… the scramjet engine. The provenance on the art is hazy at best… found in the uncatalogued collection of a former Langley engineer, it probably dates to the mid 1960’s. The aircraft illustrated here has been seen from the early 1960s up into the late 1980s, so that at best brackets the art. The aircraft has been used as a hypersonic transport and as the first stage of a space launch system. As shown here, the model used was *probably* a wind tunnel model repainted and repurposed as a display model… none of the diagrams I’ve seen of it have included the “hump” on the underside of the aft expansion ramp. Most likely that’s the connection point for the support “sting” for tunnel use. Alternatively, it *could* represent a fairing for a rather sizable rocket engine, though that seems unlikely… during scramjet operation the hump would not only mess with exhaust flowfields, it would also be subjected toa whole lot of thermal unpleasantness.

 Posted by at 10:27 pm

Bell D314F armed tiltrotor

 aircraft, models, projects  4 Responses »
Oct 062012
 

A Bell Helicopter concept in model form of an armed derivative of the XV-15 tiltrotor. This dated from the early/mid 1980’s and represented a ground attack aircraft… largely what the US Army was looking for in what became the LHX/RAH-66 Comanche program, just in tiltrotor form. As a tiltrotor, it would have had a much faster and more fuel efficient cruise, but a less efficient hover, than a helicopter. The Army turned out to not want tiltrotors for this application, and made sure that they were effectively excluded from the LHX competition.

 

Note the hand-written notation that missiles would only be fired in hover… otherwise, they would pass through the proprotor disk. However, it seems likely that missiles could be fired while the rotors were tiltedless than fully upwards, meaning that the craft could fire and move at a fair rate at the same time, just not at full speed.

 Posted by at 9:16 pm

Looking for…

 aircraft, blather, models, science fiction, ships  6 Responses »
Oct 022012
 

1) Schematics and whatnot of the “Quinjet” from the “Avengers” movie. I’m discussing building a CAD model of this for Fantastic Plastic, but diagrams are unavailable. Screenshots galore will be available, but I could really use accurate diagrams.

2) The same for the “Avengers” helicarrier.

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3) Either a scan of this, or at least pointers to when and where it was published (apparently sometime prior to October, 1944):

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4) Better/more detailed diagrams & illustrations – and original source documentation – of this early 1980’s concept by Martin Marietta for a “Phase II” restoration of the Iowa class battleships into battlecarriers by replacing the aft turret with a hangar, ski-jumps for Harriers and VLS missiles, for a conversion kit:

 Posted by at 8:41 pm

Tremulis Zero Fighter CAD model complete

 aircraft, models, projects, rockets  1 Response »
Sep 212012
 

Ready to be 3-D printed:

 Posted by at 10:24 pm

Zero Fighter Interlude

 models, new products, news, projects, rockets  1 Response »
Sep 202012
 

While work on the LK CAD model continues, a bit of a break in the process has allowed me to jam completion of the Tremulis Zero Fighter CAD model into the schedule. This will be a 1/48 scale kit from Fantastic Plastic, and will stand about 16.9 inches tall. Shown below are some renders with the Hydra Parasit (also 1/48) for scale.

 Posted by at 11:45 pm

So very, very wrong

 blather, eBay, Gah., models, Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, nukes, projects, spacecraft  8 Responses »
Sep 152012
 

As should be obvious, one of my jobs is that of “model maker.” This is a job title that I suspect is not long for this world; more and more it’s going to 3D CAD & 3D printing. Additionally, American craftsmen in areas such as this simply cannot charge the cheap prices that the Asian  “genuine Philippine mahogany” sweatshop/slave labor firms do. So to compete, we’ve got to be *better* than the Asian crap and/or often touch on more obscure topics. I try to do both.

Ebay is a source for a lot of the cheap Asian models. I check in from time to time to see what thing they’re cranking out now. I saw a Project Orion model listed… and I gotta laugh:

Wow. That’s just so wrong on so many levels.

 Posted by at 10:30 am

Goooooooooooooooold….

 awesomeness, models  5 Responses »
Sep 132012
 

A mix of Alclad clearcoat and gold dye from a specialist auto paint shop applied over the Alclad chrome (on the left side of the fuselage from the canopy through the central fuselage section) seems to just about do the trick:

It’s still not perfect, but some tinkering both with the chrome undercoat (as previously mentioned, it was pretty slapdash) and the yellow/red/gold dye, should dial it in. This would finally allow me to make a large-scale Project Pluto model that would really look right. Ummm… anyone want one?

 Posted by at 6:37 pm
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