Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules
I have a Mac, it turns out that it isn't compatible with it. That said, I'm curious if any of the programs depicted here have similar features that can be useful? The problem with attempting to rotate the image is that it requires such a small fraction of a degree that my program (GIMP) won't work.Not sure why you would need to go down that path to correct the image tilt. Do you have IrfanView? There is a brilliant tool in it to correct any image tilt. Wurger is very good with this - I suggest asking him for help.
View attachment 526805
I suppose a twin-boomer could be a possibility -- it would kind of be a P-38 ahead of it's time.XBe02Drvr said:Twin tails are generally a major boon to single engine-out handling in a high powered twin.
C'mon! It's just plain bad design to produce an aircraft in which some of crewmembers are guaranteed to be turned into salsa even if they bail out...Hey, you're only an enlisted guy. You're expendable.
I was thinking of doing that actually. I'm not sure when the first person proposed that idea, but it would need some kind of device to blow off the propeller or ejection would just be (in)glorified suicide...I've a small question concerning the YFM design itself. Does it necessarily have to be stuck with just the two engines, or, could the tail have been modified to accept a pusher configured engine, with a cruciform tail just ahead of it?
Whoa, Nellie! You thought the P39 turned into a tail-heavy SOB? You put a tail mounted pusher prop on this juggernaut, and you'll either have an impossibly tail-heavy machine or a midships mounted engine with an impossibly long driveshaft and all the problems that entails. The history of driveshafts in recip powered aircraft has not been a happy one. Or you could turn the wing mounted engines around into tractor mounts and hang a pair of DB601s with cannons shooting through the hubs?? Or stick an additional DB/cannon in the nose and have the world's first 4 engine fighter? Der uber-zerstorer!could the tail have been modified to accept a pusher configured engine, with a cruciform tail just ahead of it?
Worked on the XB-42...Whoa, Nellie! You thought the P39 turned into a tail-heavy SOB? You put a tail mounted pusher prop on this juggernaut, and you'll either have an impossibly tail-heavy machine or a midships mounted engine with an impossibly long driveshaft and all the problems that entails.
Yes, but did it? Over the long haul? IIRC, the B42 never entered service, so I guess we'll never know, will we? Historically, driveshafts in airplanes have tended to be problem children.Worked on the XB-42...
I'm not, I was just using it as a starting point and then morphing from there.If one is wedded to the XFM-1's general configuration
Surethe first thing to do would be to redesign the nacelles to get the loaders out.
Was that a design requirement, or simply the result of of the gun?This cuts down their size by at least half, eliminates 400 pounds of crew, makes the gun-laying system superfluous
I figure that the idea was completely stupid, but I wonder how much of this design was based around being usable as an attack plane?eliminating more weight, get rid of the internal bomb storage (at this time people had figured out how to hang bombs on the outside)
Definitely!get rid of the APU, and drive the generators from the engines (they had figured that out, too), getting rid of the APU's weight, volume, and a ridiculous failure mode that could have cost the aircraft.
Then why did they want a multiplace fighter? I can only think of a few reasonsI think the gun-laying system was a result of the low MV of the cannon and the desire to maximize hit probability.
The B-10 series had top speeds around 210-215 mph if I recall, this design could do about 277. It's still too slow for the job.The Bell design ended up with such poor performance, it couldn't intercept contemporary bombers — I think it was slower than the B-10, which looked like a flying airbrake — so the hit probability was zero.
Actually, they had anticipated around 300 mph or so.Getting enough performance to make the likelihood of catching an enemy bomber non-zero is pretty important, and the people in the USAAC and at Bell seemed to have missed that point.
That's true, and if I recall some of the bombs (or the sights) had a device called a petoscope. It basically would consist of several light sensors that would effectively detect changes in light (i.e. the shadow of a bomber) and detonate the bomb.I believe the bombs were for attacking aircraft, a somewhat popular concept of the time.
It seems an idea whipped-up by somebody who doesn't have really much knowledge of fighter-tactics.The idea ( bit like the British using formations of Defiants) was for a formation of fighters to fly above (and out of gun range?) the formation of enemy bombers and drop the bombs on the formation as a whole.
Yup... it turns out that it rarely worked, though they took out at least two planes with it.Could be wrong on this. I would note that the British were fooling around with towing a bomb (mine) on a long cable behind an aircraft and trying to drag the bomb/mine though a formation of enemy bombers and snag a bomber with with cable, for several years into WW II.
The concept does work well if you take a rocket-motor behind the bomb, then put it in a streamlined airframe with movable fins, and then put a guidance system in that, and use it to steer the fins into the bomber. It's very effective, and it's known as an air-to-air missile.Other people may have fooled around with the "bomb the bomber" idea.
Other people may have fooled around with the "bomb the bomber" idea.
Really? That's something newThe Luftwaffe actually did "bomb the bomber" on at least one occasion. Possibly one of the Schweinfurt raids.
I found a design that sucked more
Henschel Hs 124 - Wikipedia
What do you mean "where tween fanboys drove the design"?Sometimes it seems to be not just a poor design to a bad spec but something where tween fanboys drove the design.