Swingshot: a practical swing wing R/C glider

The Rocketry Forum

Help Support The Rocketry Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Maxout

Well-Known Member
Joined
May 28, 2015
Messages
118
Reaction score
25
[FONT=&amp]Several members here have purchased Switchblade XP kits from me over the past three years, and I really appreciate the business they sent my way, but I ended up dissatisfied with the product and ultimately discontinued it last summer. Nobody ever complained to me about it, but I flew my own XP quite a bit and finally decided it was too marginal on power. Alas, as soon as I marked it out of stock, people started asking me when it would be back. Whelp, guess I can't drop the product without coming up with a replacement!

The solution was to begin developing an alternative which would glide at least as well, but a little more robust, and launch higher. Time for an 18mm pod. I also opted to use a wire trigger instead of the kevlar hold-down lines. It's just a tidier option and involves fewer of those tiny wire bits people were struggling to even see, let alone install. The result is a much larger model which surprisingly actually launches very authoritatively on A engines, though the flight times are a little limited. B engines put it satisfyingly high, and Cs, well, be looking up before you press the launch button. A bonus is that I can actually add a little paint to this model and it'll still clear the pad on an A8-3. Piston launches on As are definitely capable of competitive performance against non-RC rocket gliders.

After three months of development efforts, the Swingshot has finally passed all the developmental milestones and the build video is finished. You can now enjoy a nice flight video, and you can purchase one if you wish to join me in the R/C rocket craze. It's not an aerobatic model like the Carbonette, but it makes up for this in being one of the easiest to fly R/C models ever. The acceptable power range is about as wide as you could ever hope for. You can fly this one off of a very small field and not worry about getting it stuck in trees.[/FONT]

[FONT=&amp]
[/FONT]

[FONT=&amp]Flight demo:[/FONT]
[video=youtube;eJi58me4eIM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJi58me4eIM&t=11s[/video]
[FONT=&amp]
[/FONT]

[FONT=&amp]Build video:[/FONT]
[video=youtube;fobGx8gYfeg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fobGx8gYfeg&t=4s[/video]
 
giphy.gif
Well... That didn't work the way I wanted... See the 2nd post from me, and you'll get the point.
 
Very cool. :wave:

What is the wingspan and weight?

In genuinely pathetic news, I have yet to weigh one of them. So I'm going with "light enough to make it off the pad on an A8-3". Span is 23.5" before dihedral (23.15" projected).
 
I did a brief search yesterday and didn't turn up anything- got a spot online where the Hot Turkey plans can be found?

kj
 
I did a brief search yesterday and didn't turn up anything- got a spot online where the Hot Turkey plans can be found?

kj

Hot Turkey was published in the August, 1984 edition of SNOAR: https://plans.rocketshoppe.com/pubs/Newsletters/SNOAR/SNOAR_News_8-84.pdf

I personally believe it to be the pinnacle of swing wing development prior to the Switchblade series which I developed. Unfortunately while Switchblade is probably the highest performance configuration possible on a swing wing, it is very difficult to replicate and I've been unable to eliminate the manual process required to make the wire wing saddles. I developed Fliplock to eliminate this problem, but it brings along its own set of troubles. I guess it's all a series of tradeoffs.
 
One of my former colleagues at Boeing referred to an airplane as a whole bunch of compromises flying in close formation....which applies to one of any size really.
 
One of my former colleagues at Boeing referred to an airplane as a whole bunch of compromises flying in close formation....which applies to one of any size really.
And it only takes one loose nut behind the controls to make them all come undone.
 
Hot Turkey was published in the August, 1984 edition of SNOAR: https://plans.rocketshoppe.com/pubs/Newsletters/SNOAR/SNOAR_News_8-84.pdf

I personally believe it to be the pinnacle of swing wing development prior to the Switchblade series which I developed. Unfortunately while Switchblade is probably the highest performance configuration possible on a swing wing, it is very difficult to replicate and I've been unable to eliminate the manual process required to make the wire wing saddles. I developed Fliplock to eliminate this problem, but it brings along its own set of troubles. I guess it's all a series of tradeoffs.

Nope... The pinnacle of swing wing development was the F-111E :wink:

aard-38-F-111E-80046-of-the-USAFE-77th-TFS-20th-TFW-pictured-on-arrival-at-the-1992-Air-Tournament-International-at-Boscombe-Down-in-June1992.jpg
 
J&H Aerospace has hit on an interesting niche: an RC rocket glider that uses B or C motors (around $4 per launch).

Has J&H considered a wing deployment mechanism that uses servo movement? For example, having the elevator servo attached to a string/pin mechanism that pulls a pin to release the wings at 'full down' elevator?
 
Also the:
B-1 bomber
F-14 Tomcat fighter
MiG-23 fighter (and MiG-27 fighter/bomber)
Sukoi Su-17 (also Su-20 & Su-22) fighter bomber.

Yet none of those have pivoting pylons. Only the F-111 Aardvark does.
 
J&H Aerospace has hit on an interesting niche: an RC rocket glider that uses B or C motors (around $4 per launch).

Has J&H considered a wing deployment mechanism that uses servo movement? For example, having the elevator servo attached to a string/pin mechanism that pulls a pin to release the wings at 'full down' elevator?

Considered, yes. Thus far shelved over fears of something bad happening. At this scale I don't think there's and advantage to be had. Maybe on a LARGE rocket glider.
 
Back
Top