Small Scale Military Headquarters

I have new pics of my 1/18 Focke-Wulf Triebflügel I thought you would all like to see!!

2017-10-28_01-40-17 by jon newsom, on Flickr

2017-10-28_01-39-36 by jon newsom, on Flickr

This one looks strange but its not messed up, its the top section on top of the mid section that is on the La-5 /I-16 sheet

2017-10-28_01-38-19 by jon newsom, on Flickr

That came out great! That's a lot of work!! Don't know how you do it!

Wow thats going to be great in 1:18.

I always wondered how they expected the pilot to be able to bail out of that thing without being turned in to hamburger !!

Jon what are you using for these first test pieces? The green color reminds me of fiberglass resin.

Snake Man wrote:I always wondered how they expected the pilot to be able to bail out of that thing without being turned in to hamburger !!

That looks like it might be a problem...

I don't see anything to counter the incredible torque there would have been. It looks like a Chinese fireworks spinning whirley gig. You'd need counter rotating devices at best. Wouldn't it be like a helicopter with no tail rotor? What am I missing here?

"There was no reaction torque to cause a counter rotation of the fuselage, since the rotor blades were driven at their tips by the ramjets. Fuel was carried in the fuselage tanks, and was piped through the center support ring and along the rotors to the jets." From Wikipedia.

I think you got something there Axis.

normandy wrote:"There was no reaction torque to cause a counter rotation of the fuselage, since the rotor blades were driven at their tips by the ramjets. Fuel was carried in the fuselage tanks, and was piped through the center support ring and along the rotors to the jets." From Wikipedia.

I think you got something there Axis.

Those are going to be some twisted up tangled fuel lines. The spinning contraption is still connected to the fuselage in some way. It would have to be assembled around some kind of shaft in the fuselage. "Every action has a reaction". And how do you get fuel to the moving engines out on the tips unless the fuel tanks spun with them? The fuel lines have to go wherever the engines go and have to eventually attach to fuel tanks. The fuel tanks and fuel lines had to be in the center of the spinning contraption or in the blades themselves and the tanks and lines would have to be able to move with the blades at that high speed spin. Same with any oil or hydraulics. Even then, wouldn't the the extreme G Forces make it difficult to control pumping of fluids? How would you have any lines run for gauges for the engines, temperature, etc. ? Those big blades and the engines would be a huge drag factor to forward motion too. I can't even imagine the stress those heavy engines on the tips would be. Had they solved any of this or was this all just fantasy? This is what happens when you hang around pilots and mechanics.

Axis Nightmare wrote:I don't see anything to counter the incredible torque there would have been. It looks like a Chinese fireworks spinning whirley gig. You'd need counter rotating devices at best. Wouldn't it be like a helicopter with no tail rotor? What am I missing here?

I am no expert but from what I have read about the mechanical soundness it seems to be a workable design. Very smooth like a rotary engine of Mazda. The main thing I think that would have been a problem is if one of the Jets started to produce more or less thrust it would become unbalanced. There are control surfaces in the back, four of them that could be used to control trajectory but I have no idea how well any of it would actually work. The so-called green stuff is the Hydro span it hasn't been molded yet I'll do it after the lippisch is done. Also I believe there were fuel lines in the wings but were fed using a pressurized gasket system. It may have had some of the same issues that are rotary engine has with gaskets having to be replaced if warm-up times are not provided and any little gasket problem could cause a catastrophic failure. If nothing less it's fun to look at and I think of it as sort of like concept art, a lot of the 1946 luftwaffe stuff is pretty far out.

Rotary engines in cars and planes are not whirling around the vehicle. They rotate from a stationary axis. Thus fuel line, etc. are stationary to that spot and don't have to move with the rotation. This is backwards from a rotary engine. Here the blades are the only thing spinning from a stationary axis. The entire jet engine is moving around the ends of the blades. Think of the centrifugal forces on the fluids with it necessary for the various lines to spin with the blades. And yes, you are correct, anything out of balance would be a disaster. Any helicopter gurus out there that can figure out how this would work with all the forces fighting against it?

Anyway, it is a cool looking craft worthy of the model.

Actually, no torque is transferred to the fuselage: the rotor is being driven by the ramjets at the tip, and not from an engine mounted in the fuselage; hence, the whole setup just rotates around the fuselage, without transferring any torque.

This is actually one of the reasons why tip jets have been used in many experimental helicopter designs: this setup requires no tail rotor, as there is no torque to counteract. Several experimental helicopters have been flown successfully using tip jets, e.g. the Doblhoff WNF 342, Fairey Rotodyne and Jet Gyrodyne, to name just a few. Rotors powered by ramjets at the tips were tested in the Mil V-7, Hiller YH-32 and NHI H-3; the XH-26 even used pulsejets mounted at the rotor tips. So, technically, this is perfectly feasible, and it is possible to get fuel to the engines at the tips.

The Triebflügel design had reached a fairly advanced stage at the end of the war, with wind tunnel models being tested in the LFA wind tunnel in Brunswick at speeds up to 0.9 M. The main issue with this machine would have been transitioning from vertical to horizontal flight and back, and landing: these problems are common to any coleopter design (just look at the difficulties encountered by the Convair XFY-1, Lockheed XFV-1 and SNECMA Coléoptère); however, especially landing would have been particularly hair-raising in the Triebflügel, given that the rotating wings would have largely blocked the pilot's already limited view of the ground... Escape in emergency situations wouldn't have been as problematic as it may seem, considering that the craft would likely have been equipped with an ejector seat.

The mazda engine reference is just an anology, no fuel lines, internal fuel tanks are just on the inside of the wing in the fuselage and are turning with the wings. Here is some diagrams and a website with a lot of technical stuff on how to do it. Focke-Wulf designs were very advanced and a lot of thought actually went into this thing.



http://test.fiddlersgreen.net/models/ai ... lugel.html

pvanroy wrote:Actually, no torque is transferred to the fuselage: the rotor is being driven by the ramjets at the tip, and not from an engine mounted in the fuselage; hence, the whole setup just rotates around the fuselage, without transferring any torque.

This is actually one of the reasons why tip jets have been used in many experimental helicopter designs: this setup requires no tail rotor, as there is no torque to counteract. Several experimental helicopters have been flown successfully using tip jets, e.g. the Doblhoff WNF 342, Fairey Rotodyne and Jet Gyrodyne, to name just a few. Rotors powered by ramjets at the tips were tested in the Mil V-7, Hiller YH-32 and NHI H-3; the XH-26 even used pulsejets mounted at the rotor tips. So, technically, this is perfectly feasible, and it is possible to get fuel to the engines at the tips.

The Triebflügel design had reached a fairly advanced stage at the end of the war, with wind tunnel models being tested in the LFA wind tunnel in Brunswick at speeds up to 0.9 M. The main issue with this machine would have been transitioning from vertical to horizontal flight and back, and landing: these problems are common to any coleopter design (just look at the difficulties encountered by the Convair XFY-1, Lockheed XFV-1 and SNECMA Coléoptère); however, especially landing would have been particularly hair-raising in the Triebflügel, given that the rotating wings would have largely blocked the pilot's already limited view of the ground... Escape in emergency situations wouldn't have been as problematic as it may seem, considering that the craft would likely have been equipped with an ejector seat.

Thanks!! You corrected my assumptions on torque. This is the kind of expertise I was hoping to hear. Feasible yet not practical? Technology can overcome a lot but it would have had to be very complex. Look how long the Osprey was in development. Without a tilt feature and computer stabilization, the landing would have been a huge challenge not to mention what you pointed out as landing backwards and nearly blind. Would certainly have been a formidable and frightening weapon to contend with.

Jnewboy wrote:The mazda engine reference is just an anology, no fuel lines, internal fuel tanks are just on the inside of the wing in the fuselage and are turning with the wings. Here is some diagrams and a website with a lot of technical stuff on how to do it. Focke-Wulf designs were very advanced and a lot of thought actually went into this thing.



http://test.fiddlersgreen.net/models/ai ... lugel.html

Great Stuff!

Super info! How terrifying would it have been to see those coming at your bomber? It's fortunate those things weren't developed in 1942. At the modeler contest I saw a model of a German flying saucer. How close was that to being real?

It will be amazing in 1/18 on display!

YES it will!!!

nearly the same canopy like the Huckebein

"The so-called green stuff is the Hydro span it hasn't been molded yet"

Ah, ok Hydro span to the scale desired, then a mold made of that and then a 1:18 piece...got it.
Very cool concept.

normandy wrote:"The so-called green stuff is the Hydro span it hasn't been molded yet"

Ah, ok Hydro span to the scale desired, then a mold made of that and then a 1:18 piece...got it.
Very cool concept.

Yes! It's a very long and brutal process financially and time-wise. But it does produce an amazing result once you work out all the quirks. The big problem now I face is that the interest in 1/18 scale is so low that I figure I will be footing the majority of the cost of producing most of the airplanes I would want. The sales will help some but it is hundreds and hundreds and hundreds over month after month after month of hydro span and a lot of silicon which is not cheap. Right now as I speak I'm getting ready to auction off a custom I made and just to be able to afford the resin and the silicone to finish the lippisch orders.

Very nice looking model