DH SEA VIXEN for 40 mm EDFs

Now I have most of the hardware (EDFs, ESCs & servos) I will start an actual build thread.
The two EDFs, with their exhaust tubes, will mounted pretty close together like this.

And positioned quite far back in the air frame.

It will have a span of 34" (863 mm).
My target weight is 13 oz (370 g) all up with an 1800 mAh 2s and 10 oz (284 g) static thrust.

Looking good I will be watching.

i will be following too

The "Incomplete guide to airfoil usage" gives the Sea Vixen wing section as "EC 1040" which in not very helpful as this is not a recognized name!
However it appears from reports of the period that the Sea Vixen did use a 10% symmetrical 'lamina flow' section developed by the RAE. The nearest by name appears to be RAE 104 which is symmetrical 10% section with its maximum thickness at 40% chord to promote laminar flow!

Not that the actual section is going to make much difference at the very low Reynolds numbers my plane will fly at but it should 'look' about right.
The next problem is that the tail booms almost completely hide the fuselage in a side view. By comparison the Venom was easy as with thinner booms and that only went up to the wing spar a side view showed the majority of the fuselage to wing blending detail.
I do have 3 fuselage "sections" although they give little detail as to the shape of the intake duct or how the fuselage actually blends into the wing. There are however lots of nice pictures and they show lots of complex double curves! :ohmy:

I think the only way will be to build the fuselage as a 'half shell' along the center line with the complete inlet duct with outer profile of each former carefully adjusted to give the right appearance and not forgetting to make a second copy for the other side!

All sounds fraught with difficulty so I will make the wings first - I know I can do them!

A modest start on the RH wing.

All Depron with no spar or even ribs, but it is light!

A composite picture of the completed RH outer wing although progress is rather slow at the moment.

Erm, wrong pic.

Really?
Mike

Oops! :ohmy:
How about this. Plan and end view in the same picture.

The wing is surprisingly thick with a 10% section so the 4.2 g aileron servo is fully enclosed.

The aileron servo glued onto the lower skin of the LH wing.

This is about as minimum as an 'all sheet' wing can be.
I think the tail booms will be next.

Given that the fuselage and its ducting would be the 'meat' of this project and would take most of the time to build I just had to make a start on the fuselage just in case it proved to be unsuccessful! :ohmy:
Without a full set of fuselage formers there has to be quite a bit of 'interpretation' of pictures to make up the intermediate fuselage shapes between the 4 that I have from the 3 view.
The first 'parallel' part of the LH inlet duct with 3 formers.

Forward of this the duct moves out into the wing and gradually changes shape to match the wing root inlet.

Just out of interest I did consider printing this inlet tube but it was going to weigh 20g. The equivalent rolled 2 mm Depron tube weighs just under 2!
'Printing' plastic does do some things well but being super light is not one of them.

Out of interest I superimposed the EDFs on the front view.

Does rather show how small they are but it does have the advantage that the scale intakes should just about be large enough.
A bit more visible progress with both EDFs and their inlet tubes fixed together by the formers.

Building the rest of the inlets ducts will be considerably more complex, in fact I have not yet worked out exactly how to do it.

I was not looking forward to the next bit, the fuselage and ducts ahead of the straight tubes. By far the most complex shape and I only have two fuselage sections to work from, well three if you count the circular nose cone.
Quite a pile of very delicate 2mm Depron formers.

Worked on it all day but eventually ended up with a half shell fuselage with the inlet duct inside it.

8 formers and 42 individually fitted planks!

It weighs 0.47 oz (3,3g).
Of course the killer is I have to do it all over again for the other half. :woohoo:

Nice work though Simon.

Tony B

It looking really good Simon. Great to watch it coming together