This Cutlass ain't Gutless

[The Rat]

Two Avons, that'd sort it. 

Durn tootin'! I'm wondering if I might have to derate them in case the wings tear off. 

[Spino]

Two Avons, that'd sort it. 

Durn tootin'! I'm wondering if I might have to derate them in case the wings tear off. 

Probably not, the F7U was tough if nothing else.  It could handle 16G maneuvers apparently, I doubt even a pair of Avons could make it go fast enough to bother the wings 

[The Rat]

Some tubing allows for those Avons to chuck a lot more out the back end. I'll be increasing the size of the innards later.

[Old Wombat]

 

[Spino]

Very nice! 

[DogfighterZen]

[Stan in YUL]

 

[The Rat]

[Wardukw]

I  like power ..and I like it when it's a ton of power and the bill fits very nicely here 👌   

Always liked the Cutless as it one of those strange planes when ya look at everything else...this I'll keep watching  mate 

[The Rat]

I  like power ..and I like it when it's a ton of power and the bill fits very nicely here 👌   

Always liked the Cutless as it one of those strange planes when ya look at everything else...this I'll keep watching  mate 

Until the B-2 came along, the Cutlass was the closest the American military had to a flying wing in service. Not quite, but close.

[Spino]

If it hadn't been underpowered, it might have performed very well against the MiG-17s in Vietnam...

Of course that assumes that it had the right armament, Sidewinders and Mk-12 cannons most likely would have been the best choice.

[Spino]

Well apparently Vought was kicking around the idea of redesigning the entire rear end of the Cutlass to add wing area and fit a single J57-P4 in place of the twin J-46s. Not sure if they meant to use the P4A with afterburner (16,000lb of thrust) or a version without AB, but either way that could also have turned the Cutlass into a real fighter instead of a lemon - except they were doing all that redesign work for a ground-attack variant...

Even with a J57-P4A, the thrust output wouldn't be as good as two Avons, particularly if they are the kind that the Lightning had, but it still would have been a huge improvement over the terrible engines the Cutlass had.  Makes me want to build one myself sometime, likely 3D-printed due to my limited budget.  Thankfully I'm fairly handy with Solidworks and Blender...

[The Rat]

That looks nice.

[Captain Canada]

Looking good !

[Scotaidh]

When I built my J79 Cutlass I did a ton of research - reading pilots' stories, and so on.  Turns out that not only were the engines - the only ones available at time of build - not powerful enough, but Vought built it with a 3000psi hydraulic system - which operating pressure was more than double what previous &Y in-service Naval aircraft used.  So when an original piping part failed, it was usually replaced with ... something already in stock!  (Tell me you didn't see that coming!)  A half-inch fitting is a half-inch fitting, right?  So now you had sub-spec parts just waiting to fail and spray hi-press. oil all over the insides of the aircraft, including those oh-so-hot internal afterburner nozzles ,,, Can you say Fire!  I knew you could ...

I found, that when I showed pics of my Whiffy Cutlass to "non-aircraft people," so to speak, they had no idea what my changes were.  Anyone else have this problem?

I then came up with the idea of making and OOB to put next to the Whiff - but that effectively doubles the price of my builds.