Hi everybody,
Excuse the long-winded post here, but it's by way of background and introduction.
I did a sort of "poll" thread here a while back, asking "Who wants a scale, pusher-prop powered jet?" and got an impressive variety of responses. (Years ago, I did a sport jet that looked cool, but didn't have what it needed, design-wise, to fly great. It was called the "Eliminator". See
http://www.nextcraft.com/eliminator.html )
This year, I took a serious look at drawings of the aircraft mentioned in my earlier thread, along with some of my favorites, such as the (X-32 and F-35) Joint Strike Fighters. Keeping in mind that I wanted something fast and nimble, but not "scary", I came up with these answers...
The planes with the long skinny noses, like F-16's tend to be nose heavy models, unless the wings are moved forward, which I think screws up the appearance.
Delta-ish planforms, like the Rafale (which I love) and the F-15 work, but their attribute (like the actual aircraft) is that they are draggy and loose a lot of energy in turns.
Pusher-powered planes work, but they tend to have cooling problems, and pusher props in the size we need are sometimes tricky to find in a hurry. They also have trouble on take-off and landing, with prop strikes. Since I intend to use flaps, and possibly movable leading edge flaps, high angle of attack matters to me, so I put the pusher concept aside.
Finally, since I hate copying other people's work in general, and because this couldn't possibly be as scale as a serious turbine or ducted fan, I decided to come up with something new instead. So...
I'm looking at two versions of the same plane... One with twin vertical fins, and one with an F-16-ish single fin. It will be powered by a 2-stroke .60, and will definitely have slotted flaps. I'm re-exploring leading edge flaps, in an effort to come up with a way to do them that's not difficult to build. I've done them before, in the Larry Wolfe/Jet Hangar Hobbies style, but it was a pain. (Maybe molding the parts will make it easier for more of us to experiment with them.)
So, in the next couple of CAD images, you can see where the "Eliminator 2" stands at this moment. Latest updates will be at
http://www.nextcraft.com/j47_sportjet01.html
(One note.. I intend to modify the canopy profile to a slimmer, more "fighter-ish" shape.)