I am looking for some one in the bay area (northern california) to help me in converting two planes to be airworthy for turbine operation. both are fiberglass/balsa/foam wings in a kit form.

The first one is one of my favorite: It is an F8 Crusader. The kit is very basic. F/G Fuse, glass sheeted foam wings, no retracts. My goal is to have it built light and strong for turbine operation but is does not have to be scale in the gear area to keep it simple. It was designed for a byron DF 91, so a 14+lbs turbine will be perfect. I think it is 90" long and about 56" WS.

the other one is a navy Intruder. Same story as the F8, but this one will be a challange. It is a twin engine design and the ducting is too short for a bifurcated pipe. So, either two micro turbines or two EDF!!!!!!! It is about 78" long and 70" WS

I will provide all the materials and I have a lot of ideas on what to do but I need some one to take a lead in seeing them to completion. I can have the two projects in my garage or the person's helping me garage!

This is for some one who want to do something unique for sure. They are in my storage now and I will get some pics soon.

I am open to constructive suggestions/opinions....
No personal attacks please

That could only be the JD Enterprises/Masterfly/ITP Crusader.
I did one, flew it with Byron power, then converted it to turbine, but never got around to flying it with turbine.
It flew very well with Byron power, faster than expected.
For turbine, you need to beef up some things, like the fin, gear mounts, stab mounts...not that big a deal. But if I were you, I would take the kit out and examine the fit of the glass parts, like the hatch, canopy frame, and gear doors, before starting. You can spend a LOT of time trying to get them to fit if they do not match. The tooling for that kit is very old.
Century Jets made me struts with the 45' angle on them. I think there may be better gear out there nowadays, maybe the new JL scale F-16 gear or something, the Yellow scale F-16 gear. You really need gear doors. It looks pretty hideous without them. As they come with the kit, they are enormous one piece doors, if you make them two piece it would be better.
You can also do something about the stab servos sticking out the side of the fuselage, they could go inside.

Tam did the pipe for me, for a Ram500, he probably still has the specs.

The vacuform plastic wing LE extensions and ventral fins are very subject to hangar rash, you might consider replacing them, or filling their leading edges with CF rod or something.

The Intruder...

Just put a single larger turbine out one exhaust.


I saw some German guys who did that with an F-15, no problems at all. It's a pretty brillant solution, great sideways thinking.

ET, surely you are talking about the F-15 from Graulich. It is huge and has the turbine blowing out a single exhaust. I believe some Liebetrau F-15s also had this solution sometimes.
I've seen the Graulich fly, and all changes in power setting were noticeable.....whenever the setting changed it was "skidding" sideways slightly. And the F-15 has engines that are fairly close together. An A-6 would be jerking around a lot....it works, but it'n not pretty, especially when flying a lot with the throttle stick.....

With the great pricing of the FunSonic line i'd go with a twin setup....

Regards
Hank

I saw one in JetPower, I think, they SAID they had no trim issues...but I have not seen it fly, myself. In theory, you can get the angle right on the turbine and just about cancel any issues out.
A twin is a totally different story. 70" is not that big, and a twin is going to be much heavier and much more complex than a single. I'd say twin if it will be MW44 type engines, or if they plane was BIGGER, 54 class engines. I know you like overpowered airplanes, though!
I was looking at one of those GIANT A-6s hanging in a friend's shop the other night. Has not moved in years. My friend is losing his shop space, if anybody is interested in a HUGE A-6, I can ask about what the deal is to buy it...

They might not have trim issues, but the look is certainly off :-). The system will work perfectly....at 1 certain airspeed, with 1 certain throttle setting. Everything else will cause momentums. It's easily flyable from the looks, nothing serious, but from the ground you can see that something is "wrong". If you can live with that, go ahead, it certainly saves money :-). I'd put in a bifurcated pipe or twins....

As to the "overpowering"....well, you can always throttle back or even limit rpm in the ecu. This will give you better efficency on most engine types.....there are no overpowered airplanes, there are only pilots working the throttle stick to agressively ;-)

By the way, do you have pictures of the large A-6? Just out of curiosity ;-)