Turboprop Fighters

[Mossie]

Hmm, I'd forgotten about that Lenny!  If I remember, ducted fans are particularly suited to low speed handling, if turboprops had been more prolific than they may possibly have equipped trainers or observation types, like the Edgley Optica?

[GTX]

Speaking of which, does anyone do a kit of the Edgley Optica?

Regards,

Greg

[Mossie]

I've never found one Greg, I've been hoping so for a while!  I'd love to do a COIN version, maybe fitted with various electronic lumps & bumps.

[kitnut617]

Speaking of which, does anyone do a kit of the Edgley Optica?

Regards,

Greg

Yes there is, in 1/72.  But I can't remember who made it now though.  I thought it was our friends at Mach II.  I'll keep looking.

[Mossie]

Lovely, thanks Robert!

[GTX]

Yes thanks.

Regards,

Greg

[dy031101]

Itsuha from Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces.

I once considered it not as sleek as the Sanka, but its bulbous radome now makes me think...... what say if we turn the design into a missileer by scaling it up if necessary (at least a missileer needs a two-man crew) and then put Bendix Eagle missiles under its wings?

EDIT: Was half-asleep when first typing this post.

[PR19_Kit]

Having read the discussions on this bumped thread, there were a couple of projected turbo-prop fighters for real, although they are usually remembered for other reasons. I'm talking about the Convair XFY-1 Pogo and the Lockheed XFV-1 Salmon, both of which used the big Allison YT-40 turbo-prop.

They solved the 'Where do you put the radar' question by having installed in front of the prop, inside the monster spinner! Or at least they planned to do that, AFAIK neither aircraft actually flew with the planned radar installed. Full scale Whiff thinking there. 

[dy031101]

They solved the 'Where do you put the radar' question by having installed in front of the prop, inside the monster spinner! Or at least they planned to do that, AFAIK neither aircraft actually flew with the planned radar installed. Full scale Whiff thinking there. 

Um...... I got a question- of a fire control radar unit to be installed in the configuration you described, what needs to be in the spinner with the antenna and what can be mounted further behind within the nose?  Can we run some wires past the engine to connect two seperate parts (if one of those is mounted behind the engine) of the radar?

It's just that I'd imagine the spinner to be even bigger than those on the Pogo and Salmon if the entire radar unit is to be mounted inside of the spinner......

[Fulcrum]

I know this is a silly idea, but why don't just replace the cannon in the spinner of the Bf-109 with a miniurized radar unit?

[gral_rj]

I know this is a silly idea, but why don't just replace the cannon in the spinner of the Bf-109 with a miniurized radar unit?

No space for it; the spinner isn't hollow, there's an axle inside it. The barrel of the cannon goes inside that axle.

[Weaver]

I'd love to know what effects vibration would have on a spinner-mounted radar set/aerial.........

[Mossie]

Early on radar sets would be placed in pods mounted on pylons or faired into the wing.  Maybe this approach would continue, until the need for larger dishes started to make this practice impractical.  As mentioned above, pusher configurations would have been favourable, there are also other ways of incorporating arrays rather than a dish, maybe these could be explored further.

[PR19_Kit]

Um...... I got a question- of a fire control radar unit to be installed in the configuration you described, what needs to be in the spinner with the antenna and what can be mounted further behind within the nose?  Can we run some wires past the engine to connect two seperate parts (if one of those is mounted behind the engine) of the radar?

It's just that I'd imagine the spinner to be even bigger than those on the Pogo and Salmon if the entire radar unit is to be mounted inside of the spinner......

AFAIK just the scanner head was to be in the spinner dome, and the waveguide was to extend through the contra-prop tubular axle from a junction box behind it. But if you look at stripped down pics of the Pogo, the prop gearbox is mounted RIGHT behind the prop base-plate, so where the radar stuff was going to go goodness only knows.

In my Whiffed Convair-Hawker Osprey I made the whole airframe longer to give it some more space, but I don't know how far Convair got on planning a 'production' version.

[Stargazer]

Whatever happened to these two? Did you finish them, Robert?

I'd given this some thought for quite a while Simon,  I came up with these two, which could be either turboprop or piston powered:





Robert