@3_14159 They have two sections of plains, not one.
@Azzuro Sorry - I didn't mean to snap. Your concerns are valid, and I was frustrated to suddenly hear all the problems with a design I'd been tweaking for a few days.
That being said, I still think "Thunderbird" is a boring name - Fuckbringer was just a placeholder name, and no one decried the Reckless effect until Sensei mocked me ;_;
Spanwise airflow is a real thing btw, and swept wings pull the airflow away from the elevator and give it turbulance to work with. Putting the elevator higher up the rudder gives it a cleaner airflow to work with - this is why the MiG 15 has its tail the way it does.
I know what spanwise airflow is. Swept wings 'pull' the airflow away from the elevator? If aerodynamics were that simple, I don't see why we're arguing so much about a jet plane. FYI, at the higher speeds a jet fighter operates at, spanwise flow becomes less and less important as a factor. The thickness of the main wing is much more important, as is the downwash angle of the airfoil, in determining whether the tailplanes will be blanketed in the main wing's wake. But if you're really really paranoid about spanwise flow, go Full Soviet and install wing fences everywhere.
Also, the MiG 15 has a cruciform tail because of that? The MiG 15 is a mid-wing design, and the horizontal stabiliser can't go any lower than the main wing because of the jet engine tailpipe in the way, so it has to go upwards. Cruciform tails, although not as difficult to make as T-tails, nevertheless require more structural reinforcement of the vertical stabiliser and thus complexity. The Thunderbird is already a low-wing design like the budget ripoff of the Me 262 it is, its elevator being at the mid-to-upper part of the fuselage is already enough to bring it out of wake turbulence,
let's not complicate the construction any further.Assuming that we can't just build a jet engine (Instead of the whole plane at once), I'm voting for eS's proposal because we're GOING to be spending a lot of time on this, regardless. We're stuck. Might as well shoot high and get a fully functional jet fighter ASAP. This way, we have a slim chance of not using two turns, because it's basically the epitome of what we want to have.
As I already explained in an enormous post earlier, the Sobriety is flat out a postwar jet-fighter akin to the F-86 or
Supermarine Attacker. There's shooting high, and there's shooting straight upwards and waiting for the bullet to land on your head.
Going for a design 7 years ahead of OTL when we haven't even got a jet engine working is the latter.But if we rename the Thunderbird "Sobriety" (to strike fear in Cannala's heart) and mention the elevated rudder (me 262 had trouble taking off because the turbulance of its engines off the runway would make its rudder ineffective), the gyroscopic reflective sights (old tech, but necessary for accurately aiming at insanely high speeds), and the tricycle landing gear (makes catapults easier, and prevents nose-stands on landing), then I will begrudgingly support that design.
Oh my god, is this where the cruciform tail came from?
If you're going to copy-paste the Wikipedia article on the Me 262 as a design, you could at least bother to read it in full. Relevant quote:
The V3 third prototype airframe, with the code PC+UC, became a true jet when it flew on 18 July 1942 in Leipheim near Günzburg, Germany, piloted by test pilot Fritz Wendel. This was almost nine months ahead of the British Gloster Meteor's first flight on 5 March 1943. Its retracting conventional tail wheel gear (similar to other contemporary piston powered propeller aircraft), a feature shared with the first four Me 262 V-series airframes, caused its jet exhaust to deflect off the runway, with the wing's turbulence negating the effects of the elevators, and the first takeoff attempt was cut short.
On the second attempt, Wendel solved the problem by tapping the aircraft's brakes at takeoff speed, lifting the horizontal tail out of the wing's turbulence. The aforementioned initial four prototypes (V1-V4) were built with the conventional gear configuration. Changing to a tricycle arrangement — a permanently fixed undercarriage on the fifth prototype (V5, code PC+UE), with the definitive fully retractable nosewheel gear on the V6 (with Stammkennzeichen code VI+AA, from a new code block) and subsequent aircraft corrected this problem.
As very clearly explained above, it was the landing gear arrangement that was the issue,
not the vertical location of the elevators. The whole problem of the jet blast exhaust and wing turbulence blanketing the elevators was only because of the aircraft changing attitude in the takeoff roll, which was perfectly solved by tricycle landing gear arrangement. The Me 262 was not noted to have any such deficiency in straight and level flight, or in a dogfight. So you've just added in a complex solution to a problem that doesn't even exist if the design also has tricycle landing gear. Success?
P.S. Rudders control the left-right direction of the aircraft (yaw) and elevators control the up-down direction (pitch). Unless Cannala now has weather mages casting violent crosswinds on our airfields, or we've started building circular runways for shits and giggles, I don't see how the rudder helps an aircraft take-off.
I'm going for eS's proposal. It's aerodynamically well-researched and not that ambitious for a research credit.
Considering Cannala leapfrogged the flat-top era of carriers on a 1 to get a Lexington-class carrier, I don't think it's unreasonable to want to leapfrog the small twin-engine era of jets to get a large single engine with a research credit. We have aerodynamics research, German scientists, and an air general. We're not even angling for a Cheap design! We're investing in something they won't surpass for years. Yes it's ambitious, but it's our forté and it makes sense to go for something bigger and better - especially since we're commited to putting the revisions into fixing whatever breaks, so I'd say it's worth it to shoot big.
On a 1, then a 4 on the revision to fix it. The
carrier in question was
launched and operational 15 years ago, the F-86 won't be put into service until 9 year later. The two are not remotely equivalent.
The point now isn't to make a jet interceptor to become our airforce's mainstay. It's to break into the sphere of jets so we can actually do things with them later.
THIS. If you all are sure that we will get a postwar jet-fighter immediately, on our very first attempt to even make the engine, then sure, vote for the Sobriety. I guess incremental technological and scientific advance isn't a thing anymore, so we should hope for miracles instead?
I am just concerned with our ADHD - as powder mentioned, we're already looking for ways to minimize our investment in this design. I am concerned we if we make a modest, unimpressive working jet that doesn't blow Cannala away first try, then people will wander off to design other stuff. The Sobriety was designed as a "we put this much effort in and we're done - then you can go play with other toys" type of design. The worst thing we can do is make a plane that is one "step" better than Cannala's Falcon - we'll move on, and two turns later they'll roll out an even better plane and we'll be utterly outclassed once again.
I am just concerned that you seem to be treating the rest of this thread like little children who don't understand anything other than instant gratification - I think the rest of us are perfectly capable of deciding what to do next.
we can't doom ourselves any better than undershooting and thus having nothing to fix (If we go for the weak fighter, and get it at an OKish level, we won't be making a better one in a revision, and will thus be stuck with an OK fighter that the ADHD portion might just go "OK it's fine let's get moar rockets guys" or whatever floatplane bad idea is floating around now.
Same as above. Seriously, quit assuming the rest of us are just idiots to be herded carefully into winning the war.
It's possible we're losing focus here, so let me pull the conversation back to the Design at hand.
This Design ultimately boils down to two options:
1) Start small, build smaller, less powerful engines with less effect but safer difficulty. Short-term investment.
2) Start big, build a large, powerful engine with greater effect but more dangerous difficulty. Long-term investment.
Nice way to strawman, there, putting up my design as the short-term investment. Remember what happened with the ERA?
If we fail the Sobriety, there is a higher chance that we get absolutely no experience from it. I'd say a more accurate way to describe it would be "more of a gamble" rather than "long-term investment". AKA, what Chiefwaffles said in the next post.
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Topic: Intercontinental Arms Race: Finale (Read 602183 times)