Barnes Wallis Swallow Design-Build

[Bhelliom]

The Barnes Wallis Swallow, an SST design from 1955! Swing wings, and swinging engine pods, too. Started this one 2 nights ago, and finished most of the main design the first night. Yesterday I just added some detail and refinements, and started the first test build last night. Sure wish I hadn't run of of color ink again. This one looks great in Pan-Am markings (like the Fantastic Plastic kit version I'm using as a reference).

The first pics of my "half-fast" build were taken in my current cramped building area on the kitchen table, next to my building case and a pile of printed kits. The port wing parts are just dry fitted. I still need to decide how to, or if, I'm going to make the swing function workable.

I'm following my usual design process, 2d development, test build, adjust and modify the design as I find issues.

Scott K.

 

[Zathros]

That is really cool! With a little tweaking, I bet it would glide really nice, though I would rather see someone through theirs, not mine!

 

[trt]

Interesting build. Nice to see a tidy work area :mrgreen:

Getting the engine pods to swing will be a bit of a bit tricky.
And if they'd built the thing in real life, it would be a difficult engineering challenge.

 

[Zathros]

Interesting build. Nice to see a tidy work area :mrgreen:

Getting the engine pods to swing will be a bit of a bit tricky.
And if they'd built the thing in real life, it would be a difficult engineering challenge.

You could just have a guy in each wing turning a crank! :mrgreen:

 

[Bhelliom]

Interesting build. Nice to see a tidy work area :mrgreen:

Getting the engine pods to swing will be a bit of a bit tricky.
And if they'd built the thing in real life, it would be a difficult engineering challenge.

It's been a while since I've had the luxury of a dedicated work space. I used to use a card table with everything I needed set up on it. My cats put a stop to that, or, rather, I did, after finding one of them asleep on the squashed remains of one of my in-progress models. Now I just set my briefcase-'O-paper-modeling-stuff on whatever table I have available, then pack it all away again when I'm done for the night. I did have a bit too much other stuff on the table that night, though.

As for the engines swinging, that'll be the easy part. I'm planning on using a toothpick shaft between the top and bottom engiines through the wing, with a small bit on the wing surface to act as a stop. Now, if you meant lnking them to the wing sweep automatically, that will be a bit of a pain. maybe on a later (and larger) version.

"Cool looking" as this design is, I'm assuming the complexities of making the engines swing, as well as insuring that they remained firmly attached at the same time, is one of the main reasons the board turned it down. I'm also wondering about the strength of the wings themselves. I wanted to put the main gear in the wing, but my references clearly show them in the fuselage. I wonder how Sir Wallis planned on keeping the lower engines off of the runway?


Scott K.

 

[Zathros]

Actually, a pair of parallel arts inside the wing going out to a pivot mounted on the engine could work. String could be used too, under tension. That's a lot of work though, considering it would take all of a second or two to set the engines where you want! Is this going to be available? She's a beauty!

A Plastic version:

 

[Zathros]

Thought I'd add this link to the genius's website:

http://www.sirbarneswallis.com/index.php

 

[Bhelliom]

Thanks, Zathros. I'd seen some of the individual pages on my searches, but was too lazy to backtrack to the main page yet. The "back" button didn't point to the index, just back to my last location, Google Images in this case. Looks like lots of interesting reading ahead!


Here's 2 pictures of tonight's progress. Fuselage completed, and wings dry-fitted in both positions. The hinge areas still need work. Sorry for the poor pictures, I'm getting rather tired (and lazy again). Not sure why the flash went off the second time, but not the first. It was set to auto this time. I'll try to take better ones next time.

Scott K.

 

[Zathros]

It's looking really good. You will see some other good candidates on his webpage. I had no idea he lived so long and worked on so much. This man has not gotten the attention he deserves.

Sir Barnes Wallis

 

[sjsquirrel]

Fascinating

A fascinating subject Scott. I'd never heard of this plane, or the designer. It's amazing to me what you accomplish in so short a time. It takes me months to get anywhere on a development, and you've already got textures too.

I'll be watching this one.

Steve

 

[Bhelliom]

Thanks, Steve.

I "finished" the first build last night, and took my usual poor pictures. I'll try to take some better ones outside later, if anyone wants to see them. Hopefully the next build will come out better, once I tweak the design a bit, and try to avoid making the same build mistakes.

Hard to see in these pictures, but the extended cockpit (removable) is in place on the extended wing shots.


Scott K.

 

[Zathros]

What a beautiful model. I think the world would be served by seeing jets like this flying around, peacefully. There is something to be said for aesthetics. Though I'd hate to try and fly that on one engine!





.

 

[Bhelliom]

Thanks, Zathros. Hope you still think it's beautiful after seeing these!

Here's a few more shots, taken outside on my picnic table. Now you can see the building errors, like the mistake I made with the starboard wing spar. The abuse the tip of the nose has taken shows too. I set the removeable cockpit extension aside in some of the shots, too.

Scott K.