Project Aurora........

[GTX]

Show off!  great work.

Regards,

Greg

[General Melchet]

Thanks for all the kind comments chaps, really appreciate them!...it's great to know others share my passion for the seriously disturbed.


Ian....

really got this domination by size and quality thing sorted.

Not quite yet...once I have the 1/72nd scratch Handley-Page 100 finished then I will consider that done!!

I must admit to being very surprised by the size of the thing myself. It's actually a great kit and hopefully Italeri can be persuaded to reissue it some time soon.......so many possibilities!!

Oh, btw the third man was used to ensure safe seperation of the Thunderdart and that the SR driver didn't pull up into the horrendously expensive payload, via a small rear facing window, though I'm sure he would have had many other 'covert' tasks to perform as there's an awful lot of instrumentation in his 'pit.



Thanks again all,

Melchett...





Dunc      get weaving!!

[John Howling Mouse]

Man, I did think they were all CGI...on account of all the images just being too dang perfect for reality.

Yikes, General...you are ridiculously talented.

How to raise the bar.  Off to find my mudpies and knitting needles.         

[BlackOps]

Wicked Cool!        Great subject and stunningly executed! 

[Cobra]

Awesome Job,General why do i somehow picture Some 'Eastern Bloc' military Types Yelling,"What is THIS?,They Have a Plane WE Can't Intercept?"! This is TOO COOL Keep up the Great Work :cheers:Dan

[Taiidantomcat]

Wow!! Best full size SR-75 I have ever seen   The SAC markings are great, the finish is perfect    Nominated for a Whiffie   The XR-7 looks otherworldly 

[dragon]

Uh....


Wow...


Whoa...

I'm pretty speechless.

Alvis Pi

That reaction from Alvis has got to count for something.  First time I can remember that reaction....I also agree wholeheartedly.

I was living in the greater Los Angeles Area in those years in the 1990s.  The story floating around then was that "string of pearls" contrails had been seen (which suggested some kind of pulse ramjet).  Supposedly there was also a very strange "seismic event" noted.  Apparently the aircraft's speed created some kind of compression wave that translated to "seismic event" in the seismometers that dot the area.  Oddly enough the "seismic event" seemed to be a regular occurence, something like every Thursday at 4:00am, and when mapped suggested a vector in the general direction of Edwards AFB. 

[General Melchet]

Thanks again fellas, John, cheers, combination of nice sunny day, blue card and decent camera went some way to achieving this...it's simply too huge to fit into my indoor studio lighting box, so outside it had to be!,glad you like it...

dragon, interesting info there,




Here's a nice 'doughnuts on a rope' pic taken near Edwards and certainly seem to have been produced by a pulsing power source though at the speeds the Thunderdart was designed to travel (in excess of Mach 7 with full PDWE power on) its hard to see how anything but a standard contrail would result as the detonation cycle would be incredibly rapid, though it depends on altitude, air pressure, wind speed and decay time I guess. My wifes uncle lives about 50 miles from Edwards and has certainly heard the strange deep resonance and vibration that you mention...he described it as a low frequency vibration felt mainly through the diaphragm..a very intense pulsation lasting only a short time. Naturally most folks put it down to seismic activivity but as he used to work for NASA/Rocketdyne as an engine design specialist you can just imagine what his thoughts on the subject are!!!

Cheers all


Andy

[bearmatt]

Melchet strikes back (once again, after the superb B-70) and the force is definitively with you, no Padawan anymore you are 

My imagination of a (built) SR-75 was..... well,.... is your buzzard! Great job!!!

[ajmadison]

Here's a nice 'doughnuts on a rope' pic taken near Edwards and certainly seem to have been produced by a pulsing power source though at the speeds the Thunderdart was designed to travel (in excess of Mach 7 with full PDWE power on) its hard to see how anything but a standard contrail would result as the detonation cycle would be incredibly rapid, though it depends on altitude, air pressure, wind speed and decay time I guess. My wifes uncle lives about 50 miles from Edwards and has certainly heard the strange deep resonance and vibration that you mention...he described it as a low frequency vibration felt mainly through the diaphragm..a very intense pulsation lasting only a short time. Naturally most folks put it down to seismic activity but as he used to work for NASA/Rocketdyne as an engine design specialist you can just imagine what his thoughts on the subject are!!!

Cheers all

Sometimes you just can't dismiss or cover up all of the evidence.  One of my favorite stories from the space race, involves a Soviet program developing new re-entry vehicles (you can guess what was in them, NOT cosmonauts).  This was supposed to be a super secret program.  But the testing was leaving strange glowing tracks in the night sky.  The locals, taken by the same UFO fever in western hemisphere thought they were alien visitors, or at least an astronomical curiosity.  In our modern parlance, a special interest group was formed, and newsletters were being distributed.  That is, until a KGB Bureau chief read verbatim and highly detailed reports of the performance of the test articles of what should have been a top secret program.  Alas, because it was the USSR, squashing the newsletter and the activities of its participants was easy.

[rickshaw]

In the West, the Spooks just let the newsletter writers, write their newsletters and post their outlandish claims on the internet and refuse to "confirm or deny" them.  In the end, the "special interest group" just get seen as another mob of people with another crazy conspiracy theory.  The end result is the same.  Just a little less bloody, thats all.  

[Devilfish]

Amazing work as always General!!!

Just one thing....and it's nothing to do with your spendid job, more a design "problem"

Those outriggers....they are so far back, I just wonder how the aircraft takes off or lands without snapping them off?  One can only assume that they retract when the a/c has gained enough speed to not need them, just prior to pulling up the nose and then the reverse on landing......

But maybe that's just me being pedantic.....

[General Melchet]

Thanks devilfish ,I think you might well be right there!...The only way they could work would be to retract post touchdown then telescope down into position to keep the thing level and stable at lower speeds and the reverse for take off.......................other than that VTOL would be the next answer with lots and lots of lift engines working their little socks off trying to keep 200 tons+ in the hover!!....

[FAR148]

The word BADASS has just been redefined!


Steven L  

[Alvis 3.14159]

In the late 70s, there was a hue and cry from UFO groups in the west that the Soviet government was actually funding their own civilian UFO research groups, whereas in the West, nobody would support ours. Gee, did it ever occur to anyone that the Soviets would be perfectly happy to let people speculate endlessly about alien spacecraft leaving all sorts of odd lights and contrails in the skies? Of course they were..it gave them the perfect cover story every time somebody saw something they weren't supposed to...Officials would show up and pronounce it all another UFO incident.
Funny thing...in the West, one major UFO group was founded by an ex CIA bigwig, and eventually it was run by his successor at the CIA. Oh yeah, sure, I'm sure the same game was  in play over here too. See some weird lights over the Nevada desert? Oh, musta been a UFO, you nutjob! Eventually, anytime somebody said "I was out in the desert and saw something strange in the sky" you KNEW they were a crackpot wearing tinfoil on their head! Both sides, playing the same game. I wonder how many "flying saucer" reports were something cool we will never  find out about?

Alvis Pi