RC planes/jets/heli

I hadn't either.

In deference, it still had 2 turbojets with the 2 turboprops. And they only made 2 of them.

I was surprised that it's top speed was still about 600 mph.

Saw B-47's a lot when I was a kid (along with the enormous B-36's)... at Kirtland AFB, a few blocks from my parents house in Albuquerque.

 

I lived in the foothills above NAS Alameda so I was a pretty good spotter of anything in Navy inventory. It was a major maintenance facility during Viet Nam so the late 60's and early 70's it was very busy air space.

 

Mine all went clockwise.


When I had them inverted.

 

Yes, or that's what I thought at the time but it doesn't really make any difference.

 

They only built two of them and they didn't last long when it was obvious that it not only was dangerous but slow. I think that I recall that it barely made it past 500mph. It sure made a weird sound with the jets harmonizing with loud props.i saw films of the pure jet version making LOB toss delivery of nuclear munitions. One was releasing the bomb on the entry to an Immelman and the other technique was to "toss it over the shoulder". Both designed to escape before the blast. That big B-47 did loops, Immelmans, rolls,etc.

 

Was no torque steer. You glued the rudder so that the nose pulled outward slightly to keep the lines taut.

Only control was the elevator... up or down... you could loop or fly inverted.

Two flew w/ short crepe paper tails... goal was to chop of the tail off the other plane. Fun.

 

ooooooooooooo
I've resisted the urge to get an RC B-17 or B-25 because although the models are able to do some mild aerobatics it would just look wrong, I would get bored doing simple circuits and low fly-bys.

But since the real B-47 did aerial acrobatics....

 

Go for it. It sounds interesting. The Boeing guy who flew all those tests was named R. Taylor. A foam structure would be of tremendous help in a large model of this airplane. When a B-47 returned to Boeing in the early 50's it did a buzz job that shocked everyone on the line. A high speed pass progressed into an almost vertical climb and into an Immelman. For something with a 116 ft. wing span to be doing fighter maneuvers was quite a sight.

 

I bet!!

Hats off to scratchbuilders but "foamies" (sometimes uttered in a derisive tone by snootier RC pilots) are really quite amazing these days. Sure without fiberglass or balsa covering they get dings and dents much more easily than fiberglass (though a few coats of clear water-based polyurethane helps quite a bit), and foam it isn't a suitable material for 200mph high-g jets but for those on a budget who prefer to spend more time flying than building (ideally, it doesn't always work out that way...) they're the way to go. Crashed planes are also much easier to repair and get back in the air over stick built.

Heck even though it was destroyed due to engine failure on take-off this MASSIVE B-29 was built up from blue-foam.
Mac Hodges B-29 Incident at Warbirds over Delaware - RC Groups

B-47, hmmmmm.... My hanger is running short of overhead storage space, but there MIGHT just be room for one more!
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Yikes. That was a close call in that B-29 crash. Looks like he had full right aileron applied, yet it still rolled and yawed left before it stalled. I'm thinking one or both of the left side engines had a failure, it looks like maybe the left outboard engine's prop was turning slower, but hard to tell for sure from the video. Any other thoughts on cause?

 

THAT is an impressive array of models! All beautiful. I'm digging for my drawings of the B-47 and B-47D. Might take a while but stay tuned.

 

I found some very accurate three views of the B-47D but they are quite small and I'll have to enlarge them and make a clear drawing from them. Interested?

 

Thanks Bob!
Wow I'd love to see those drawings. Sounds like something a lot of others here would enjoy as well.
Would you have to re-draw them though? What were the originals used for?

This weekend is quite windy but had to show my brother and nephew that at least one of my planes can fly so took the Vampire out to the local lot.
Mixed in-air footage with some video shot by my brother on the ground for a youtube video:
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZLB0-3W35o[/ame]
Highlights:
~3:30 couple full throttle climbs to about max altitude for my eyes
4:50 reduced throttle to almost nothing, just about hovering against the wind
5:30 landing (the good one. The other one cartwheeled due to gusty crosswind and dumb thumbs, but no damage)

The screengrab of the launch makes it look like I'm really straining to heave her in the air, but in truth the Vamp takes off beautifully at ~75% throttle with a medium strength toss. Really sweet flier!
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Here's an interview with the builder/pilot, including some incredible slow motion shots of the takeoff.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1uDT7p1JAg[/ame]
Good and lucky. Very lucky.
That's one reason I like permanently attaching the wings of my planes, so servo leads don't need to be plugged/unplugged. Wouldn't be practical with a 12'+ one of course but some pilots of <1500mm planes remove the wings for transport. Time to get a bigger vehicle I say! lol

 

The drawings that I found are small aerodynamic summaries but I can see that they are accurate. They will have to be redrawn to enlarge them. The best thing is that they are fully dimensioned but there is no lofting for the shapes. But I have that, too, somewhere.

 

Bob -
What do you mean by "lofting for the shapes"?

Unfortunately I don't see myself having the time to scratch build a B-47, but you might try contacting a guy on another forum at RCGroups.com that is customer cutting and selling unusual (i.e. not already made by a manufacturer) RC Planes from foam. He goes by the handle "Oldman1980" and started a thread here: Rare WWII Bombers - RC Groups
I don't think he'd pay much but maybe there's a small market for RC B-47s?

Everyone here would of course love to see whatever you've got.

cheers
Kurt

 

In between the plan view and profile there must be some lines and points to smoothly define the shape. If I may, in the old days the curves of the frames of a ship were layed out in a large clear building space in the loft that was usually above the wood shop. The lines of the hull were usually taken off of a large model and translated into a smooth full size expression of the shape. Large airplanes were done using the same process of lines and points hence, " LOFT LINES". But modern methods defined the loft by mathematical means thus doing away with the builder's model. The hull or fuselage is cut vertically by STATIONS, the position of the frames. WATER LINES that cut the shape horizontally. BUTTOCK LINES that cut the shape vertically and parallel to the centerline of the shape ( Buttock line 0) All of these lines intersect each other and scribe a point that is used to form smooth loft lines.
Forgive me of any confusing words. I'm doing this on only one cup of coffee. You ought to see it after a couple of scotches.

 

I used to teach this stuff a long time ago and I found that the best way to describe the system is to compare it to every day items. IE; Stations are comparable to slicing a loaf of bread, each slice would be a station. Waterlines describe themselves, like incrementally immersing the object in a liquid. Buttocklines are comparable to filleting a fish, slicing parallel to the back bone.
There is always a low spot somewhere in a trace and in the old shipbuilding days they used wooden fairing strips tacked on to the frames to find and fix any high or low spots in the shape. These were called fairing strips. In the airplane work we used either wooden (maple) or plastic strips to check the loft drawings These strips were called splines and they were held firmly in place on the drawing by heavy lead weights called "ducks", due to their shape. The loft lines were drawn along the curve described by the strips or splines. Any point that did not lie on the natural and smooth (fair) curve had to be corrected and that sometimes meant meant a correction to all three planes that determined that point.
Okay, a simplified explanation of the old style. Now we have the CATIA that does the hard work and no more "lofting" on the hands and knees. No more ducks and splines. No more metal sheets to draw on.

 

I always thought that duck weights were misnamed; to me they looked more like "whales"!

 

Yeah, I'm with you on that one but then, who would say, " Whales and splines?"

 

I still can't believe all the hard manual work that was done in the old days for pay that would be laughed at today. Looking back at it , though, I think that it required a lot of personal dedication, training, and pride in producing quality work.

 

Bob - I saw your posts earlier today but wanted to save reading them for later when I could take my time, whiskey and coke in hand, and take them in.
Fantastic stuff.
I was talking with a young (24) engineer at work the other day and found out that he didn't even take mechanical drawing in school. It's all done on computers these days, of course.
Drawing/sketching complex objects is something I used to do more of, but for personal pleasure never for "work". Closest I came was laying out and cutting simple shapes in cardboard for a flame cutter in my first real job at Trenton Alloy Fabrication while I was still in engineering school. Then CAD came along and no more cardboard.
Thanks much for sharing the "old way" of doing things. I will try to pass on as much basic knowledge as I can remember to my son when he's of age, but the artistic and mechanical skills of true professionals like yourself I'm afraid will be slowly but surely lost as technology marches on.

 

I have realized for some time now that the skills that we used 50-60 years ago is no longer needed and that's the way it goes. How many blacksmiths do we see now or draftsmen? Time marches on. I have a large box filled with thousands of dollars worth of worthless tools, templates, and instruments that I used many years ago. I have a triangle that I used in 1950 that is now crazed from age. I use the equipment occasionally when I'm drawing up things by hand but I know that they will be thrown away soon when I also will be part of the past. I got to thinking about the planes of a shape and drawing things and thought about the computer system of the X,Y,Z position of points location and I'm glad that I was able to learn how to use it in the computer stuff. I couldn't do it now without a lot of help so I just paint and draw things. I feel that progress in the manufacturing world is necessary in today's fast moving environment.

 

Not only mechanical drawing is gone, so is cursive writing and even the proper way to hold a writing instrument. I recall a comment at work when we switched to Catia for everything, " We are going to miss seeing your drawings." But the CATIA does a much more accurate and complete delivery of data in one drawing now.

 

I don't have any real expertise in this area, but I really wonder whether the requirement that drawings/design be done with software imposes some limits on creative types. I've dinked around with CAD software and find that unless I invest a lot of time in learning the tools, my design ability is limited by the software. I think there's a basic problem with that. My reaction is, "Screw this." and I give up. I don't think Da Vinci had that problem! (Not to imply any Da Vinci-like talent, of course.)