Some very cool cartoonplanes I’d like to introduce!

Well, considering I tinker with cartoonish style Rc aircraft on occasion (amongst other things), I happened across some very cool cartoon machines that I couldn’t resist turning folks on to. And not only do they fly well, (unlike some of my experiments!), but you can purchase and fly your very own, and at very minimal cost. The following images are of some of the cartoonish flyers that the kind folks at ParkFlyer Plastics offer.

 

 

They have all of these and more, so stop by http://parkflyerplastics.com/cart/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=24_62 and check em out. Then you can have something stubby and cute in the air too!

Scale fanfold Me109 Emil

So this is the latest, somewhat envelope pushing design. Being more traditional, (and very scale), we should be in a more success laden area. The only element of risk in the design is the quite small .049 Surestart in the nose. These don’t tend to like being cowled in, and this one certainly is. Lets hope the cooling elements incorporated ,such as the intra spinner fan, will help with keeping that little internal combustion engine running, and flying. Some shots:

The first shot isof the Fiddlers Green Card model that this design is scaled up from. You can check the build thread at the following: http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_11362320/tm.htm

Wow…..not again.

 Thomas Edison was purported as saying, when asked about the struggles involved in inventing the electric light bulb, that he failed at least 1000 times before he finally got it right. Also, when asked why he wasn’t discouraged during this process he stated (and I’m paraphrasing here) that he wasn’t disheartened enough to quit altogether because at least now he knew he was one step closer to success, because he knew one more way that it didn’t work, and was thus closer to solving how it would work. As much as I’d like to say that I believe he was that rosy during failure, or for that matter that the light bulb wasn’t just one more idea he “borrowed” from Nikola Tesla, I must say that for myself, the last few concept designs I’ve tried here have been, well, less than succesful. Granted they have had very narrow self imposed success parameters. The Mig is the latest. Intended to be used only with the one engine I had on hand, and very much like the Toon P-40, the engine was not up to the task, in the Migs case to handle all of the inherent drag of the design. She struggled, and just barely achieved flight, and remained low over the ground in an extended glide at best, without ability to climb away. Ah well….new things are already underway. Something more standard so we can have a bit of success for a change, but fear not, there are some envelopes still being pushed. The details will appear here shortly!

In the meantime…….

Well, flight tests on the little ducted fan are moving ahead. I wish i could say swimmingly, but its becoming apparent that the little guy is somewhat tail heavy. It tries to relate this to you by backflipping every time you try to launch it. Thank goodness I have a soft testing grounds, that being a soybean field nextdoor over which I am testing the little one. Long story short,more nose weight is needed. Let’s hope it doesn’t need so much(due to its short length) that it overwhelms the engines ability to fly the design. Time will tell.

As the title of this post indicates, “In the meantime” you may be interested to know that a similar design has been tried before, and in a full size aircraft that actually carried people. The Caproni-Stipa was built and tested before WWII by the Italians. Click below to see this oddity in action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYqr2h_xQRk

As Solomon said a while back…..”There’s nothing new under the sun.”

……more to come re the little Toon-Mig soon. I also seem to be having an issue with the video link above. Will tweak shortly : )

Mig 15′s…past and present…..mostly present.

Yes this may seem a strange diversion from a WWII P-40, but there is a precedent. I did attempt a ducted fan Surestart powered Mig15 some time ago. Alas, as with many envelope-pushing experiments, (p-40 included) the design was just out of reach for the motor chosen. That’s the downside with pushing the edge sometimes…..and with having a very narrow window of success, insisting on using only one powerplant or nothing else. What can I say, all of my other,larger powerplants have happy homes right now. Anyway, here are some newly smuggled photos from the Mikoyan-Gurevich facilities.

    

And a brief foto of the older version…..

I might add that the older prototype failed because of one main reason….too much drag coupled with the limited power of the ducted fan. As you might note, the newer design does embody a number of changes to defeat this problem. First, the duct tube is straight and not tapered like the first, so much more thrust should be evident. Secondly, the wings are not undercambered, but flat bottomed, again, making her more slippery and still developing considerable lift. This all combined….MIGHT….make this design actually fly. I give it about a 50/50 chance of success considering all of the issues inherent in this design. Flight tests will be conducted soon.

Toon P-40 regress, and further top secret developments…

I regretfully must inform everyone that the Toon P-40, as beautifully as it came together and ended up looking, was a tad too large and too heavy for the Surestart powerplant for which it was designed. A slightly more beefy engine would’ve made her work, but my very narrow goal is to use the engines which I currently have on hand, so the Toon P-40 is retired at the moment. However, we have started another project intended for the same powerplant that will hopefully be a better fit and produce more satisfactory results. Top secret transmissions from behind the iron curtain have revealed that a Toon version of the following aircraft is under construction. More data will be released in the near future.  : )

Toon P-40 Progress

So, as promised, some rather fuzzy top secret photos of the Toon P-40.

 

 

All for now…but more on the way.