Concorde

Faisal and Dan- we've got to build one!

Piloting via remote could be made somewhat easier with an on-board camera and high powered radios.

 

I'm not exactly sure what to comment about this Hope he has his health insurance paid up LOL

 

Jet powered RC Helicopters

http://www.variousa.com

 

thanks, i did d/l it to my HD the first time. re-d/l'd it and it works now...and i still want one

 

Found some model jet contacts for you guy's in the usa,
http://www.crcja.org/manufacturers.htm

cheers
Dale.

 

Ben: I'm down!!

--Dan

 

Yep, happened to me too at the same point. What I did get to see was truly awesome. I'm amazed that a scaled down Concorde would actually be flyable since the real ones are so complex aerodynamically. It's a shame they had to retire them, they were fun to watch, especially here in NY, as we had both Air France and BA concordes on a regular basis in and out of JFK.

 

Just added it to my "must have" list very cool

 

Models often fly better/are easier to fly than the full sized aircraft, there's many a model built that flies perfectly when the original aircraft never flew.

For those that want to build something like the Concorde, I hope you've got a few thousand hours to spare as that's what to going to take to build one that nice, and there are no ARF (Almost Ready to Fly) models of this type available. Flying them is the easy part, building them is the real challenge. I've been building and flying models for the past 35 years and I know I don't have the patience/skill to build something that nice.

 

When I was a kid (well.....still am kinda) I always daydreamed about building a RC helicopter that could fire roman candles or some sort of pseudo-lethal projectile. Of course with a camera on board so that I wouldn't have to be at the scene of the crime


Never too young.....

 

How does one even start. Do you have to call up specialists and ask them to supply you with the dimensional specifics that you would need?? What's the most complex part of building the plane. Would love more specifics, as I find this very intriguing.

 

First you would get hold of some 3 view drawings of the full sized aircraft, an easy task for the Concorde, not so easy for military aircraft like the SR71 which is what I would like to build.

Then you pick a scale that that will fit the engines that are available and have a wing loading that will at least give it a chance of flying. Draw up the outline and start designing your model from there. You may need to alter the size of some parts to make it stable/controllable so it may not end up being exactly to scale.

Construction techniques are many and varied so there are a lot of ways you could build this model. My approach would be a moulded Carbon/Kevlar or Glassfibre fuselage, foam cored wings with C/F spars, hardwood leading and trailing edges and covered with balsa sheeting then vacuum bagged with a Carbon/kevlar/glass outer skin. Control surfaces would be built up balsa/hardwood again covered with CF/Kevlar/glass though you could also mould them if you have the right skills/equipment.

Hardware like the landing gear, engine mounts etc would probably have to be scratch built or at the very least modified from commercially available items. I would probably use titanium for a large proportion of the landing gear and 2024/7075 aluminium for the engine mounts. Probably get away with commercially avaliable control systems but would use dual servos for the control surfaces.

Radio would be at least 10 channel computer controlled.

Tough bit would be fitting the control systems, though the landing gear would also be a challenge. The hardest part would be keeping the nerves under control when you took it for it's first test flight

 

Great post Callum. Thanks.

 

Pics of the construction can be found at http://www.michel-concorde.com/concorde/imaufbau/index.html looks like balsa sheeted foam with glassfibre covering

Apparently he's considering making it as a kit, still a lot of work to build though but most of the hard stuff is done for you

 

Can only recall one such fatality of the manner you describe, we get about one or two a year worldwide, mostly spectators though which isn't a good thing for the hobby.

These planes are not toys, they are dangerous and loss of control is a lot more common than it should be, mostly it's just the wallet that suffers like this one;
http://pages.infinit.net/rcair/linkedvids/2003-09-DC10Crash.wmv

 

I've always wanted to build an SR-71 R/C. Scale would have to be pretty big, and I would think wing area would have to be increased (otherwise we wouldn't rotate untill 220kts...).

What I keep thinking about is, power:weight nessicary for the MODEL to go mach. I think it can be done with carbon and the modern jets.

 

Then you might be interested in this project http://www.mmrca.org/lance/sledframe.html 13ft long, 7ft wingspan

They've certainly got enough thrust in the latest generation (around 20kgs/44lb) but I'm not sure they've got the flow required to handle those speeds.

 

With more sophisticated computer "intelligence" are these very far removed from military pilotless "drones," like the Predator? How are those controlled over great distances?

 

I think the predator has both a satelite link to control it & it has its own onboard flight computer to handle simple things like orbits & avoiding weather, mountains etc

 

Given the limited thrust of these engines wouldnt something supersleek like an F104 Starfighter or an X15 be a more likely candidate to fly past Mach1 ?
How would you rig up the afterburner ? Pretty sick stuff. I dont think I would want to be standing in a field when that thing came in for a landing

Hey how about doing a jet powered flying Dragon ? Like on Lord of the Rings or Reign of Fire

 

Sorry if this has been covered, but do you need any kind of gov't license to do this?