RAE XP-79B "Flying Ram", RAE Farnborough (FINISHED Pics pg. 3)

TheChronicOne · June 07, 2018, 12:27:47 PM

We're all aware, or mainly aware, of Northrops many adventures with the -Flying Wing- and the large, more well known models. Well, here's the small, lesser known jet fighter one. I'm not entirely convinced it was ever ACTUALLY intended to be used to fly through other aircraft although that seems to be the consensus. Either way, the proposal is utterly preposterous. Still, it makes for some fancy lore!

"The Northrop XP-79, USAAF project number MX-365, was an ambitious design for a flying wing fighter aircraft, designed by Northrop. It had several notable design features; among these, the pilot would operate the aircraft from a lying position, permitting the pilot to withstand much greater g-forces in the upward and downward direction with respect to the plane – and welded magnesium monocoque structure instead of riveted aluminum." Wiki + more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_XP-79

Fancy Book Learnin' (nice article about it): https://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/detail.asp?aircraft_id=549

Some notable aspects of this thing:

*Pilot flies prone.
*Canopy is also the nose
*Quad landing gear in a typically automotive fasion, i.e. "four corners"
*No rudders, but has fins
*Control surfaces partialy operate with ram-air from wing-tip inlets
*No rivets
*Made out of Magnesium
*Ridiculous

This is the RS kit. I've went and did some intell gathering and it seems I'll have problems with the intakes and a couple other minor things but should go together reasonable well. It's an extremely simple looking kit:

See why I picked it?

Should be simple even having to fix things. RS Models even helps out as the "what if" scheme is all there in the box with a painting guide and everything so all the work of that type is done for me which saves a decent chunk of time. Good job, RS Models!

It will have yellow on the bottom and green-grey camo on top with the UK roundels.

Should be interesting... I've never built anything quite like it. Closest to a flying wing would perhaps be the Vampire I made but it has booms and a tail.... (OH HEY I just came up with a neat idea to make a Vampire flying wing!! take the booms away and stick the fins and stuff up on the fuselage, etc etc etc...

) I DIGRESS. Long story short, it should be pretty interesting.

zenrat · June 08, 2018, 05:15:14 AM

Quote from: TheChronicOne on June 07, 2018, 12:27:47 PM
...Some notable aspects of this thing:

*Pilot flies prone.
*Canopy is also the nose
*Quad landing gear in a typically automotive fasion, i.e. "four corners"
*No rudders, but has fins
*Control surfaces partialy operate with ram-air from wing-tip inlets
*No rivets
*Made out of Magnesium
*Ridiculous
...

IMO the last point is the most important.

NARSES2 · June 08, 2018, 06:29:05 AM

Ah, another magnesium aircraft to keep the manufacturers of fire extinguishers in business

Just make sure it's parked in a bay a long way away from anything else flammable.

The biggest problem you might have with this is getting a good coverage with the yellow funnily enough.

TheChronicOne · June 08, 2018, 07:48:02 AM

I'm going to try some intermediate coats of differing colors under that yellow. I've heard pink works pretty well so after primer I might throw on a couple coats of white-ish color then some pink then try the yellow on top of that to see what happens. I'm thinking of "black-basing" it, as well, so if anything doesn't cover quite as well, it just looks like weathering instead of primer-grey shining through. It's an experimental airplane anyway so why not have a little fun with the painting!

You know, it's a shame, and I can see why they cancelled the program, but it would have been nice if the craft (and test pilot) weren't destroyed and we could have seen more of what could have become of it. Magnesium... and.... at first they were wanting to use rocket motors or whatever with some highly corrosive, volatile fuel if memory serves. Seems like a disaster waiting to happen even after they went with the turbo-fans.

Fascinating stuff.

JayBee · June 08, 2018, 01:42:43 PM

Let's just go back five years :

http://www.whatifmodellers.com/index.php/topic,37828.msg614995.html#msg614995

TheChronicOne · June 08, 2018, 02:15:04 PM

Ha, Japanese, brilliant!!!! Very good, there!!

NARSES2 · June 09, 2018, 02:35:52 AM

Yup pink, for some reason, makes a good base coat for yellow.

Use a fairly lightish pink though

zenrat · June 09, 2018, 03:04:13 AM

Quote from: NARSES2 on June 09, 2018, 02:35:52 AM
Yup pink, for some reason, makes a good base coat for yellow.

Use a fairly lightish pink though

The reason is probably quantum.

TheChronicOne · June 09, 2018, 08:00:23 AM

Wilco! We'll see how it goes pretty soon. I'm getting under way tomorrow and have every right to just sit around and work on it all day in the cool AC so it won't be very long before we see some pink paint action. I've done the layering of different colors before but have not yet tried using pink so we'll see how it goes. It'll be fun to try it out and I've been wanthing to paint something with pink for quite some time now as I've never done it before despite being a fan of the color. Almost a shame to cover it up with yellow.

JayBee · June 09, 2018, 08:07:42 AM

Make sure you get PLENTY of nose weight in, I had to mould (English spelling) new nose wheels in lead and then it is only just not tail sitting.

Jim

TheChronicOne · June 09, 2018, 08:26:48 AM

Thanks for the tip, Jim. It's weird, you wouldn't imagine something that doesn't have a fuselage and with a four point gear configuration would need anything! I'll be sure to address this early and be aware of it continually as I go. I had to do the "stick glued to the end of the fuselage" a couple times before and it's always the pits.

TheChronicOne · June 10, 2018, 03:58:31 PM

90% of the construction is done. Top and bottom fins, a couple gear doors that go on closed, then the fuselage halves are what's next. I'll leave 4 gear and two last gear doors until I'm finished doing any PSR.

I have a ton of solid lead sitting in this thing. I wonder if it is enough? I might dry fit things together and do a fulcrum test.

Not too shab!!! I'll be painting the interior stuff soon. Not sure if I'll do what the instructions say or change it up but I'll likely keep it mostly the same with exception of the cockpit which I don't think needs to be chromate yellow or whatever... I'll likely just paint it some color of interior green.

For a short run kit.... this thing is really nice. I've seen mass produced name brand kits that were 10x worse than this stuff...

TheChronicOne · June 10, 2018, 06:12:55 PM

Interior is painted.

Good enough!! I'm not going into hyper-detail because the whole point is to blaze through this and not only that, I do believe it is rather difficult to peer through the front glass and see anything all too well to begin with.

Now, I'm going to go over everything again and make sure I didn't get any paint on any joining surfaces or inadvertently knock anything loose that will affect the fitment of the wing halves. (Did I call them fuselage halves earlier!?

) Earlier I did a bunch of dry fitting mixed with filing and sanding (along with heavier measure to remove pin towers) and got it really nice so this shouldn't take long. Then.... I'll be gluing this together and applying copious clothes pins to keep it all in order.

I have to say, I'm really enjoying building this!!

I'm definitely going to be keeping my eye out for more of these kits. It's a really nice kit, in my opinion. I have yet to fit the intakes, however (I forgot about those in the last update), so "knock on wood. "

Anyway... once I get the fuselage halves together I think I'll call it a day on this one so it can dry up. Next round I'll sand and fix anything I need to before I glue on the fins. I don't want to break them off gripping and elbow-greasing things so they'll have to wait 'til the next phase.

TheChronicOne · June 12, 2018, 06:00:57 PM

This lil sucker is coming together, now!!!

All construction is complete aside from the antenna and gluing the 4 gear on. Oh and two gear doors.

I know I need to do more PSR but I went ahead and primed it to help matters.

I'll give it all a day to dry then get back after it. Won't be long, now. All I need to do is sand/file some places then hit it with another coat of primer then I can start painting. That should hopefully last 2-3 hours or less then I can gloss it and do transfers. If all goes well, I'll definitely be done before the deadline.

Rumination: There's so much weight in this.... it makes it feel "good." Has a nice weight to it and almost seems as an actual shrunken down "real thing" with engines and everything. Something about being weighty just makes things like this seem of higher quality. Also of note is that it's such a nice little tidy package... compact... A really neat model kit! (it's also good to get rid of more lead

)

NARSES2 · June 13, 2018, 06:21:55 AM

Quote from: TheChronicOne on June 12, 2018, 06:00:57 PM
Something about being weighty just makes things like this seem of higher quality.

True. We all seem to want to "heft" things to try and judge their quality sometimes. Almost certainly goes back to when a lot of items were metal and to a lot of people weight meant quality. I've also seen people do it with wood to try and determine hard wood or soft wood ?