EE Lightning

[upnorth]

All this talk about the Lightning and the fact that my LHS has the old Matchbox F.2A/F.6 kit tempting me in its consignment section has shaken loose a modeling project I had TRIED a number of years ago but my modeling skills of the time weren't up to getting it completed.

I had totally forgotten about it until today:

I thought it would be cool to see the lightning with the cranked delta wing that went on the SAAB Draken. I kept the wing rooted where it was and got rid of the horizontal stabilizer mounting stumps on the fuselage. I was extending the wing root back towards the upper engine exhaust and trying to decide where to put the speed brakes and where in the wing to put the landing gear.

I was keeping the intake and exhaust arrangement as they were to keep the Lightning look, so there were no intakes buried in the wings.

Well, things went wrong and I gave up and haven't attempted the same thing since. Shame, would have been a great way to increase the Lightning's internal fuel capacity.

Some say the Lightning was one of the butt ugliest things to take to the post war skies, but really when you think about it, look at the planform from any angle, see those engines one on top of the other and the fuel tanks over the wings; can you really say it wasn't memorable and instantly recognisable? It was beautiful in its distinctiveness if nothing else.

I'm a Canadian born and bred, but I LOVE post war flying British steel!

[Radish]

Sounds amazing!!
Good luck  

[Davey B]

God I love the Lightning          

Why'd they retire it when I was only 7?    

[Hobbes]

104 on internal fuel was better off than a Lightning, IIRC.

I read on the web it could go up to 40 000', then Mach 2 for 2 minutes and have plenty of fuel to cruise back to base and land.

^_^

Actually, that works out to a combat radius of less than 100 km. I hate to break it to you, but that is, um, Not Good.  

[nev]

I read on the web it could go up to 40 000', then Mach 2 for 2 minutes and have plenty of fuel to cruise back to base and land.

Yeah, well I read on the web that Winston Churchill was black and that Tony Blair is an alien lizard man with shape shifting abilities and is part of an international conspiracy of alien lizard men with shape shifting abilites who rule the Earth in secret.  

Upnorth - sounds great  

davey - just be thankful that you were alive at all, they actually deserved to be retired when you were -5.  Just think of all those poor linies who had to struggle to keep them flying, just so you could live in the Lightning era    

[Ollie]

And the 104 is a point-defence interceptor!!

So why the thing should halfway around the world on two tea spoons of vodka, eh?

:dum:

Nev, knock it off with your silly disinformation.

:ar:  

[Radish]

Oink  

[Davey B]

Lightnings all the way!
         

Sexy, twin-engined beheamoth of a point-defence interceptor, or a J79 with stub wings?    

[dy031101]

Recently I had a look at the "AIR-2 Genie" entry of the Wikipedia......

It mentioned that RAF briefly considered using AIR-2 Genie on their Lightning......

I mean, wow...... I know it's unlikely, but was there any drawing depicting a nuke-armed Lightning?

Or does anyone know where on the jet the Genies would have been carried?

[jcf]

Recently I had a look at the "AIR-2 Genie" entry of the Wikipedia......

It mentioned that RAF briefly considered using AIR-2 Genie on their Lightning......

I mean, wow...... I know it's unlikely, but was there any drawing depicting a nuke-armed Lightning?

Or does anyone know where on the jet the Genies would have been carried?

On the regular fuselage missile mounts.

Jon

[comrade harps]

I'm about to Sovietize a Lightning F.6 and I keep looking at the big space under the wing near the fuselage. There's enough room there for a stores pylon, but I take it that they didn't pop anything there because of ejection conflict with the low horizontal tail. Is that right?

If so, then how about a T tailed Lightning? That should solve the problem. Anyone know of any T-tailed Lightning studies or whifs, or think of any probelms with that?

I'd love to pop some tanks under that big wing, maybe with some Atolls above and a big Soviet rocket pods where the missiles normally go on a Lightning.

[Mossie]

I found an article on the Flight Global archive while searching for something else, there's a heap of info in it about potential aircraft for Germany.   The main subject of the article is that the EE P.1 was evaluated by West Germany, but it was an outside contender to the F-104 & F11F Super Tiger.  It'd be nice to see some German Lightnings, & I'm very much thinking of a Marineflieger version carrying Kormorans!
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1958/1958%20-%200128.html

[pyro-manic]

I have an idea I'm working on at the moment for a "Super-Lightning", which involves full delta wings, undercarriage moved to the fuselage, wing pylons, and the inlet moved to the chin. This allows more fuel, more weapons, and bigger radome. It will also reduce the "fat" look the Lightning has from some angles (the altered nose will be slightly longer and tapered).

[KJ_Lesnick]

Pyro-Manic,

I have an idea I'm working on at the moment for a "Super-Lightning", which involves full delta wings, undercarriage moved to the fuselage, wing pylons, and the inlet moved to the chin. This allows more fuel, more weapons, and bigger radome. It will also reduce the "fat" look the Lightning has from some angles (the altered nose will be slightly longer and tapered).

I don't know about the full-delta idea, but I was thinking of adding more area ruling to it (including various XF8U-3 fuselage design characteristics if realistic), aerodynamically cleaning it up (if necessary) enlarging it a little bit, and using a more flared nose (a shape that is conducive to forming lots of weak shockwaves instead of a few strong powerful ones and thus achieving higher inlet efficicencies).  Since the airplane has a bulged underbelly which carries fuel and may increase L/D ratios at supersonic speeds, optimizing the shape to get a better oblique shockwave pattern out of it to better "prop" the plane up and get better L/D ratios at supersonic speed would be a good idea.  I'd also consider reducing the sweep of the trailing edge a little bit (it would get a little more wing-area to work with) and slightly reducing the wingsweep outboard of about 40% down the span of the wing (not counting fuselage width) a few degrees, and increasing the sweep from the root to 30% to 33% of the span about.

Slightly larger engines would be pretty cool.  Especially something modern, more efficient, and possibly faster.

[Mossie]

I'm suprised it hasn't been mentioned on this thread yet. The ultimate Lightning would have been along the lines your talking about Kendra, just more contempary.  The solid nose would have held a larger radar, it would have had side box intakes, a variable geometry wing, more fin area & a variant of the RR Spey.  The Speys would have required a substantial widening of the rear fuselage, so some area ruling would have been incorporated by default.  A full length belly pack would contained a small weapons bay.