DH Excalibur with photos

[McColm]

 SJMcColm Engineering Ltd bought the three Rockwell B-1A Lancer  bombers and had an idea to turn them into airliners. Using the Boeing SST and the BAC Concorde as inspiration. Fortunately for SJMcColm Engineering Ltd they managed to get hold of the second BAC Concorde prototype and made a plastic replica for their Museum of Flight.
 All four aircraft would be moved to the de Havilland facility in Canada with SJMcColm Engineering Ltd providing all the funding and technical support. From the beginning the interior layout would be Business Class. A single seat either side of the aisle with an upper deck which included a piano with a cocktail bar or an extra ten passengers making a total of 90 customers.
 The DH Excalibur would use a hybrid configuration of the Concorde engines fitted inside the Lancer engine bays. Two auxiliary engines provided extra power on take off and ran the electrical systems. It would be the first swing-wing airliner to achieve Mach 2.4 at 65,000 feet,  also the first fly-by-wire airliner.
Up in the cockpit the layout was; pilot,  copilot,  flight engineer and navigator. The flight engineer and navigator were fighter pilots, taking over the duties during rest breaks.
The swing-wings cut the take off and landing distances which meant smaller airports could be used.
Orders from Australia, Malaysia, Britain and Russia meant the first batch of 30 DH Excaliburs was built. Fibre optics and carbon fibre materials were used in the construction, technology from Formula 1 racing cars and seats that could be changed into beds with charging points, individual TV screens, headphones and fax machines. In-flight phone calls could also be made  on mobile phones.
 In the early 1980s the USAF under NORAD control kept seeing radar returns of a supersonic large aircraft, first thought was the Rockwell B-1A but this had been cancelled ,so could this be Russian made?
 Two F-106s were sent to take a look, they reported seeing a swing-winged, four engined airliner painted in Canada Airlines logos go whizzing past them. A frantic phone call to the British, 'It's not one of ours '.Hours later the Americans had found out that Canada had beaten them in the SST race. Pan Am and TWA placed orders, the DH Excalibur would be restricted to subsonic speeds over populated areas, this wasn't a problem as it would use the same engines from the B-1B and the two auxiliary engines would provide the supersonic speed over water redlined at Mach 2.5 for a 40 minute burst. Not often used by the pilot but a short burst of 20 minutes is still impressive.
The DH Excalibur made use of it's subsonic capability getting orders from airlines who would have bought the BAC Concorde had it not been the noise from the supersonic boom and fuel costs.

[McColm]

This is the general idea, kitbashing the 1/72 Airfix  BAC Concorde with the Airfix Rockwell B-1B.

[McColm]

Another photo of the four engines at this stage.

[McColm]

From four to six engines and the tail from the B-1B!

[McColm]

A few more improvements, just PSR to do.

[McColm]

I had a few people on the Airfix and other models on the Facebook page scratching their heads on this one.