McDonnell Douglas Alternative Harrier Replacement.

[kitnut617]

All the projects that are going on in the VTOL GB I've been reading got me thinking about something that's been forming in the basement of my mind  

The idea is that the USMC got tired of waiting for the XF-35 program to get underway and approach McDonnell Douglas to sort something out for them using various parts from the different aircraft they produce.  I'm going to dip into a lot of technology that has been already developed, and some that had gone on the drawing board but not proceded with and I hope it comes out somewhat plausable.

So far the idea is to make a supersonic Harrier (or Harrier type) and the plan is to mix parts of the Harrier with an F-15, and also use a non-afterburner high bypass engine somewhat on the lines of the Pegasus.  Making a Harrier go supersonic has a lot of problems but just reading up on the F-35 I see we'll need an engine that can put out about 40,000 lbs of thrust in forward flight, (this will be a single engine project) to do the job I think.  So my high bypass engine will have a hot core producing somewhere between 18-20,000 lbs of thrust with the remainder by the bypass. The problem is, what engine that's around now does that ? all the high bypass engines I've found info on seem to work out to have the hot core thrust at max about 12-14,000 lbs of thrust.

My engine idea will revolve around how the CF6 line of engines work, but elaborate more on that later, it will involve having the cold air exiting through louvers on the fuselage bottom while in the hover but blow straight through as in a regular bypass engine when in forward flight.

I've still got some thinking to do, but some other items will be an F-35 swivelling hot exhaust nozzle system, F-15 style wings but of a reduced size, and twin booms and fins something along the lines of the BAe P.1216.  Main u/c will be similar to a Tornados as I'm going to use the left over parts from a Tornado kit which was the donor to my TSR2 GR.7 project (which has to be finished too).

Anyway, I hope this doesn't interfer with my other on-going projects  

[Supertom]

Dear sir,

Re: My response re McDonnell Douglas Alternative Harrier Replacement

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6ALySsPXt0

(no this is a legit response, my account has not been hacked)

[kitnut617]

Dear sir,

Re: My response re McDonnell Douglas Alternative Harrier Replacement

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6ALySsPXt0

(no this is a legit response, my account has not been hacked)

       

[kitnut617]

Here's a pic of some of the bits I'm going to use.



I've not decided whether to go with a single seater or the two-seater yet.  The 1/72 F-15 fuselage will provide the twin booms & intakes, and the 1/100 scale F-15, the wings.

As you can see here, the 1/100 wings are quite a bit bigger than the 1/72 GR.5/AV-8B wings



I'm going to use some slightly modified 1/72 F-15 intakes as I worked out the opening area of both the Harrier and F-15 intakes, each sides area is 110 square mm's for the F-15 and 88 square mm's for the Harrier (this is in 1/72 scale mind).  This works perfectly for a bigger diameter engine (you can see the fan front in the top pic which is about 3.5mm bigger in diameter than the Harrier's fan front.

[kitnut617]

While gathering the parts for this project and matching bits to each other, it seemed that a single engine F-15 tail end would be about as wide as the Tornado rear end (from u/c bay backwards) so I carefully cut down the centers of the two engine tunnels of the 1/72 F-15 and then glued the outer halves all together.




That did indeed match the Tornado quite well for width, so I cut out the lower half of the Tornado fuselage with the u/c bay included.



With a bit of notching and juggling I got the two bits to fit together.



From here I can now base the rest of the build so this thread will be moved to the 'Current' build directory as it seems to be progressing quite well to continue.

[arkon]

super cool so far

[anthonyp]

So... this may end up being something like the YAK-141, but F-15-ized?  I'm intrigued.

[McColm]

Could have used the XF-32 instead
or not?

[kitnut617]

So... this may end up being something like the YAK-141, but F-15-ized?  I'm intrigued.

Similar but no dedicated lift engines will be used.  The concept is to go the Pegasus way, cold air at the front and hot air at the back when in the hover.  The difference is how the cold and hot air are directed in forward flight.

To keep a connection to the Harrier though, the forward fuselage / cockpit will be Harrier as will be the fins I think.  The F-15 connection will be the proven wing design only scaled down for the smaller aircraft.

[kitnut617]

Could have used the XF-32 instead
or not?

Some people have expressed their opinion on what they think is an 'ugly' plane, for me this is the ugliest one put together in a long time. It's so ugly I won't even buy a model of it -----    So it wasn't even considered ---   

But this is supposed to be something other than the X-32/X-35 program because of the delays at the beginning (in my Alt' World anyway)

[Eddie M.]

That is an incredible idea! Looking forward to watching this one....

[SinUnNombre]

You've barely even started, and yet it looks so clean already. I'll definitely be following the progress on this one.

Jon

[McColm]

I've got a 1/72 kit of the Mig 1.44, that might do as a conversion.

[kitnut617]

You've barely even started, and yet it looks so clean already. I'll definitely be following the progress on this one.

Jon

Thanks Jon ---

I glued the Tornado and F-15 parts together and this is a side view of the arrangement;



My plan is to blend the lower half of the boom into the rear end of the wheel bay, so it was out with the razor saw, a couple of cuts and a bit of a bend and I got this.




Then using a bit of styrene card and a bit of putty, got it to look like this.




I think that pretty much sorts out the rear end of the fuselage, so now it's on to the front end.  I hope that goes as easily --- 

[Pablo1965]

I wait the next. It´s a very interesting work.