Mirage IIIVB

[Weaver]

So, my first idea when I started promoting the idea of this GB years ago was a low-winged Harrier. The concept was to take the middle section of a Harrier fuselage, flip it upside-down and reattach the nose and tail. However, in typical me fashion, I didn't actually get around to doing any relevent plastic fondling until earlier this week, and it quickly became apparent that the idea's a tad more complicated than it looks. The fairings in front of the nozzles have angle-cut back edges which would prevent the nozzles from going up (or down in my version). That means the side panels of the flipped fuselage would have to be cut out and flipped back, and this was all starting to look like the dreaded TMW - Too Much Work.

My next thought was to prune and putty the orignal wing stubs (it's an old Airfix Harrier, so they're left and right, not one-piece tip-to-tip), then graft the one-piece low wing from something like a Skyhawk onto the bottom. The first low-wing thing I could find was a Mirage III, and while offering it up, I had an epiphany (well it might have been a seizure actually: it's a fine line...): why not "just" stick the nozzles on the Mirage?

Then I remembered the Mirage Balzac V & IIIV with their serried ranks of Rolls-Royce lift engines, and the back story just fell into place with a loud splat. This would be the Bristol Siddeley rival to those aircraft, with a Pegasus-ized Atar at it's heart. Since there's no way a Pegasus would fit in a Mirage airframe, the solution will be a tandem fan: air from the original intakes will go through a shaft-driven fan and out of the front nozzles, while air from a new dorsal intake will go around the shaft and into the core, which has the hot nozzles on the back end. In effect, it takes the Pegasus fan section and makes it longer and thinner.

The back end of the fuselage will be closed with an F-4E radome. Half of another such radome will make a perfect (perfectly hideous, that is) dorsal intake for the engine core. Since the Harrier, the Mirage and the Phantom are all ancient Airfix kits that you'd never use to build actual models of those aircraft in 2025, I also hereby declare this build to be a load of:

HOAKUM - Horrible Old Airfix Kit Utilization Methodology.

Pictures when the camera battery is charged (because of course it was flat this morning. Why wouldn't it be flat this morning? What other morning could be more perfect for it to be flat on?)

[Old Wombat]

Sounds like fun!  

Pictures when the camera battery is charged (because of course it was flat this morning. Why wouldn't it be flat this morning? What other morning could be more perfect for it to be flat on?)

Tomorrow morning?  

[PR19_Kit]

A shaft driven lift fan at the front of the engine? You just invented the F-35B. 

I can put you in touch with a LARGE machine to make the fan............... 

[Weaver]

A shaft driven lift fan at the front of the engine? You just invented the F-35B. 

I can put you in touch with a LARGE machine to make the fan............... 

Horizontal fan though, i.e. with it's axis the same as the engine. In the quiet period between the AV-8B and the F-35, there were several real-world proposals like this: that's where the term "tandem fan" comes from. In those, the fan air would go through the core and out of a conventional, afterburning nozzle in cruise. For VTOL, diverter vanes would shut between the fan and the core, and the core and the afterburner, diverting those flows downwards, and auxiliary dorsal intake doors would open behind the fan diverter so that the core could still breath.

[Gondor]

The XFV-12A comes to mind

Gondor

[kerick]

This will be interesting!

[Weaver]

Been fighting internet problems half of today...

Anyway, the bits. No boxes here: these are all cheap bagged finds from either ebay or shows. The Harrier bag has bits from more than one kit in it.

[sandiego89]

I'm excited, I love bad V/STOL ideas. 

[Gondor]

I just remembered that I have a pile of aircraft, currently three, sitting waiting for me to get around to doing a VTOL aircraft, I even have elements of the backstory written. My idea is more YaK-38 ish than Harrier, I have a Mirage F.1 for the forward fuselage, just cant remember what the other aircraft is and if I should start it or not 

Gondor

[Weaver]

Well almost nothing has happened on this one, partly because I've been ill (again!) and partly because things have kicked into high gear with selling my late aunt's house again, so I've been doing a load of work up there to prep it for photography as advised by the new estate agent. Photos are tomorrow though, so I should have some more time in the next few weeks.

[kerick]

Sounds like the illness didn't last too long at least.
Nothing like sprucing up a house just so you can sell it and then the new owners just tear it up again.

[McColm]

I think that the Yak-38 was used in the ground attack role by the Russians in Afghanistan. Bad idea as it was vulnerable to ground fire.

[kerick]

I think that the Yak-38 was used in the ground attack role by the Russians in Afghanistan. Bad idea as it was vulnerable to ground fire.

The targets must have been a mile from the base!

[Weaver]

I think that the Yak-38 was used in the ground attack role by the Russians in Afghanistan. Bad idea as it was vulnerable to ground fire.

Large scale operational trial

I think that the Yak-38 was used in the ground attack role by the Russians in Afghanistan. Bad idea as it was vulnerable to ground fire.

The targets must have been a mile from the base!

Large-scale operational trial. It didn't go well, for all the reasons you'd imagine, including that one.