Melting pot: 50's Jets, or, Ideas are as Cheap as Blackberries

[Daryl J.]

As a hodge podge idea thread I hope to not give Jeffrey too many grey hairs over this post.  


In honor of JCF's signature:

Alternative 50's jets requiring reshaping of the existing kits.  

XF-88 goes into production after Hawker develops the aircraft further---enlarged engines, intakes, Hawkeresque flying surface shapes, appropriate cockpit, and some never before heard of missiles (Blue Andrew, Red David, etc) on a couple of underwing pylons.   X-dark sea grey over sky.

F7U-3 gets Sea Vixen-like booms and a horizontal stab, shortened nose gear, better engines.   Serves in the USAF.

Scimitar get hugely uprated engines.  Sleek nose for interceptor variant, duckbill nose for ground attack variant.  

Javelin variant has elongated fuselage, supersonic wing with increased sweep angle.  T-tail remains.

Vigilante gets a subsonic 'little' brother, somewhat smaller, antisubmarine warfare.

F-102 gets an elongated nose, remote guidance system, and a nuclear bomb up front.  Designed as a cruise missle.  Elevates Cold War to crisis levels and is withdrawn from service.

Sea Hawk gets a fuselage stretch, two seats, and serves for decades as a beloved trainer.

Tunnan.   Some things can't really be changed.  They're good enough already.  


[Edit]  That's 3 for 3 posts being moved.  I think I'll just respond to other's threads for a while.  LoL.   

[Jeffry Fontaine]

How about a dedicated attack version of the F-80/T-33 ?

Armed with a pair of 20mm cannons in the nose and three large stores pylons under each wing?  So you would have the fuel tanks mounted on the wing tips and all of the ordnance under the wings plus the 20mm cannons in the nose.  You could call it the FA-80 or the AF-80. 

[Weaver]

Already mooted somewhere else: an attack-roled F-94 Starfire. All them rockets.....

Alternately, you have the earlier version with the small radar and boat-shaped nose, which had a battery .50 cals of cannons and RP/MG pods on the wing.

Edit: according the the Wiki article, this isn't so mad as it sounds. The F-94A/B had two hardpoints for 1000lb bombs, and there was a proposed F-94D, which was a ground attack  version of the much more powerful -C with a single seat and underwing hardpoints. Apparently this was serious enough for a prototype to get half-built before it was cancelled.

Some design info: http://home.att.net/~jbaugher1/f94_4.html

Bottom of the page, some pics of the F-94D airframe converted as a Vulcan cannon testbed: http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.afwing.com/intro/f94/f94c.JPG&imgrefurl=http://www.afwing.com/intro/f94/2.htm&usg=__yEBF3lHPfL4Yp_Pcs-dQryzx1bw=&h=315&w=390&sz=13&hl=en&start=11&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=gM91fHspcdr-QM:&tbnh=99&tbnw=123&prev=/images%3Fq%3Df-94d%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26tbs%3Disch:1

Kit-wise, the Heller F-94B comes up on ebay fairly frequently, and Hannants are listing early and late F-94Cs from Emhar as future releases.

[thedarkmaster]

Sea Hawk gets a fuselage stretch, two seats, and serves for decades as a beloved trainer

Did one very similar, but was Rhodesian and Ground attack, in my Empire's Twighlight thread.

Loving some of the ideas on here, really something to think about.

[Daryl J.]

Banshee:   Developed into a high altitude reconnaissance aircraft.   Enlarged air intakes, U-2esque wing, etc.    CIA aircraft, not US Navy.  No carrier capability.  Sorry, I'm a party pooper today.  


Phantom I:   Developed into a full fledged ground attack machine.   Serves the USAF/USN instead of the Skyraider.


Martin B-51B serves out its time as an ELINT aircraft.   Final units based at Great Falls, Glasgow, and Minot AFBs.    Triple Trouble placed on a stick as a gate guard at the Evergreen Aviation Museum.  Swing wing variant never developed beyond one full sized mockup.

AC-141 existed in prototype form only. 

Demon:  Low level tactical reconnaissance.   No RF-101's developed.

[PR19_Kit]

Banshee:   Developed into a high altitude reconnaissance aircraft.   Enlarged air intakes, U-2esque wing, etc.    CIA aircraft, not US Navy.  No carrier capability.  

Hm, noted.......... 

[JayBee]

Banshee:   Developed into a high altitude reconnaissance aircraft.   Enlarged air intakes, U-2esque wing, etc.    CIA aircraft, not US Navy.  No carrier capability.  

Hm, noted..........  

X 2  

And again
"thinks, two seater"

[Weaver]

Demon:  Low level tactical reconnaissance.   No RF-101's developed.

Or for that matter: RF-105......

[Daryl J.]

Quote from: Weaver on February 23, 2010, 09:11:46 AM
Quote from: Daryl J. on February 22, 2010, 10:31:07 PM

Demon:  Low level tactical reconnaissance.   No RF-101's developed. 


Or for that matter: RF-105...... 

Or RF-104?   

Those are some mighty tall orders!        I wish there were a high quality Demon.   How's the Emhar kit?   


Swing wings on a MiG-19 might disturb a few of the joyless zealotry.   It's a bit more 60's-ish but why not.

Quad engined Tu-16.

Regarding the cannon nose F/A-80, perhaps the RF-80 could be a starting point?

[dy031101]

One thing that has always got my attention is the XF-91 Thunderceptor.

What if it had to chance to undergo aerodynamic evolution?  What if, in pursuit of a higher top-speed, it underwent a planeform change?  With Convair?

(Okay, I admit that I want to see XF-91 with tailless delta-wings...... later evolved with a slim radar nose, lateral air intakes, area-ruled fuselage, etc.)

[Jeffry Fontaine]

Regarding the cannon nose F/A-80, perhaps the RF-80 could be a starting point

Daryl,

I am not sure what advantage the camera nose from the RF-80/RT-33 would give you for a cannon armed F-80 or T-33 other than the different shape and the slab sides.  

I see no reason to not use the regular F-80 since the F-80s guns were all mounted low in the nose with the ammunition boxes and feed to the weapons situated in between these guns.  Swapping out the machine guns for a couple of 20mm cannons in the same position would leave that area already devoted to ammunition boxes available for the cannons.  That would also help resolve any CoG issues that might arise from this change.  While the RF-80/RT-33 nose is a bit longer than the standard F-80/T-33 the machine guns were positioned in a staggered arrangement so some of the weapons had exceptionally long blast tubes due to being positioned so far to the rear of the other weapons.  The overall length of the 20mm (depending of course on which model cannon you are using) is going to be longer than the Browning machine gun it replaces but that may not be a problem when you factor in the blast tubes that were used on these weapons to get them all to exit more or less in the same locations on either side of the nose.  So if you keep everything pretty much as is but change out the machine guns for cannons the remaining space in the nose would probably continue to be used for whatever avionics boxes were originally located in that space.  

Just like in real estate,  it is always location, location, location...

[Daryl J.]

Was just thinking there'd be more ''room'' as a visual clue only.  

Any styrene kits of the XF-90 or XF-93 in any scale, or 1/72 Vampire, Venom, Sea Venom?

[Jeffry Fontaine]

Was just thinking there'd be more ''room'' as a visual clue only.

I thought that was your intention but needed to make sure.  If you use the RF nose you could just claim it was an all weather and night attack aircraft but that would necessitate having a second seat to keep the poor pilot from being overworked.  So a night and adverse weather AF-80? 

[upnorth]

Or RF-104?

Do you mean an F-104 variant that actually had reccon designed into the airframe as opposed to a bolt on pod or pallate?

I know more than a few countries developed camera packs for the F-104 so it could be used for tac recce in the real world.

[jcf]

Don's Modelworks makes and sells the Wings Vac 48 XF-90 for $24.95:

http://search.cartserver.com/search/search.cgi?cartid=p-3638&category=dmw&bool=AND&maxhits=100&keywords_1=key48&keywords_2=&keywords=keywm

I have it and its a fairly decent vac, yes Daryl its 'styrene' ... vacu-formed styrene. 

As far as injected moulded styrene is concerned the only one is the old Aurora kit.

I don't know of any vac or injected XF-93 currently available.