1/37 scale Moonraker Shuttle R/C rocket powered flights (2 min 34 sec)

Large Highpower R/C Battlestar Galactica Colonial Viper Rocket glider flight (1 min 52 sec)

I flew an actual Vulcan Bomber piece on my R/C Vulcan Rocket glider! (4 min 47 sec)

I flew actual SR-71 pieces on my R/C SR-71 Rocketplane! (5 min 16 sec)

I got these the other day, vertical stab composite from SR-71 617967, titanium skin from 617964, and some trailing edge and bracket titanium from SR-71B 617957 most likely....I had to quick go out and fly my scratch built 1/32 scale rocket powered fleet, A-12, YF-12, SR-71 and FEDEX What a nerd....Continue Reading

I was honored to have Michelle Evans include my X-15 rocket glider and details about the 199 flights replicating the x15 program that I did on her web page under the model section http://www.mach25media.com/models.html
Her web page has a lot of excellent information including some of her talks on the x15, if you haven't gotten her excellent book I highly recommend it she goes into a lot of detail into the human stories around the program.

Took a group photo of all three tail numbers today, these are the R/C rocket powered models I built to complete 199 total flights replicating the X-15 program.

Some flights from yesterday...

1/21 Scale X-15 R/C rocket glider flying on E rocket motors. (2 min 42 sec)

here is one I designed that can look good as a sci fi 50's scheme or in pseudo ww1 german or post ww1 US markings!

Dynasoar Rocketry Dragonship R/C rocket glider flights, german and allied (6 min 39 sec)

Dynasoar Rocketry Iron Dragon R/C rocket glider (1 min 46 sec)

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Shrox Sea Sting navy Cruise Missile R/C rocket glider upscale (2 min 47 sec)

Here's a few shots with the full decal set applied.

I finally removed the foam tail on my Klingon battlecruiser and replaced it with a clear polycarbonate .035" tail, works great,, looks great, doesn't impact flight performance at all, and I still have the green flashing LED firing from the nose.

30" long, 25" wingspan, 14 oz rtf using grayson microjet V-3 and apc 6x4 prop with thunderbird 18 castle esc(or talon 25), and venom 35c 3s 800mah pack, led is connected to a 16" servo extension and plugs into a spare receiver port to get the 5v supply and flashes automatically. 6mm depron scratch build.

R/C Klingon D7 Battlecruiser park flyer (4 min 25 sec)

I was really bored yesterday, and as they say, idle hands....so I started looking back through old catalogs for inspiration, lo and behold I saw the Astron Space Plane. I know several people have done upscales with more or less success, so I thought I'd try my techniques on it. I know George Gassaway did a sort of 4x upscale for G12 motors back in the day, but for regular flying I like the 24mm E-6 motors as more economical and I have plenty of big H powered upscales already.

It's about 3x upscale, which is a swag based on just looking at the original photos, and the main body tube length, nothing else. The PS-II nose cone I had was much longer than the original so I shortened the body tube to compensate to keep overall length and CG requirements as needed.

I started with an 11.75" root chord with slight taper and angled the wing tips in slightly to avoid the tendency for the big wing tips to oscillate or flutter, it also adds some drag stability like a shuttlecock. I just eyeballed the shapes. For the wing I went with 9mm depron since I needed stiffness with the wingtips to avoid flex and put 3mm carbon rods 1" back from each wing tip and a cross spar right behind these, grooved and glued in place and taped over with blenderm medical tape. I then used 3m-77 spray adhesive to glue 3mm panels over the spars on the bottom to add more stiffness and allow a more than normal(for me) rounded airfoil shape. I went with 1.25" wide full span elevons which looked...Continue Reading

I just completed my 199th RC x15 rocket plane flight, matching the number of actual flights that the real aircraft flew. This was done over several months with three aircraft each modeling one of the tail numbers and having the identical number of flights on each tail number. Of course I was wearing my Accutron astronaut, buzz aldrin edition, the official watch of x-15 pilots. And yes the final flight landed right on the center of the runway. I have over a hundred more x-15 flights on five more aircraft that I built over the years.

My 199th R/C X-15 Rocketplane flight (0 min 44 sec)

Got back from LDRS with some more F-20's so I could get flight video with 1/37 size Moonraker shuttle with the markings finished...

1/37 scale Moonraker Shuttle R/C rocket glider flights (3 min 18 sec)

Here are some photos from this weekend flying in the Tri-Cities washington missile mayhem launch. Most are 4" diameter, 5-6' long, but around 32 ounces ready to fly with 7.25 oz rocket motor installed, the Buran is slightly shorter and 18 oz, the Moonraker is a 2.6" model. The Atlas missile is built up structure using 6mm and 3mm depron foam and is 10" diameter and weighs 6.5 pounds with rocket motor installed....Continue Reading

I was able to get some F-20W and F-23FJ 29mm single use motors and flew them today in the 1/40 scale Buran. 38" long, 26.5" wingspan, 18 oz rtf with motor. Boost was nice and straight, hands off really, lovely glide, I really like this model. Based on sims, the F-23 should have gone higher than the F-20 but it was clearly the opposite and the white flame looked really good. I also have two F-10 motors being delivered to me at LDRS so I'll be able to try those out later on.

R/C Soviet Buran Space Shuttle 1/40 scale R/C rocket glider flights (7 min 8 sec)

Was doing some experimenting with techniques and materials on one of my shuttle kits I make, and it turned out so well I decided to just finish it to flying condition with Moonraker scheme...

Moonraker Shuttle R/C rocket glider flights (4 min 22 sec)

Here is a good video of the X-37B from today with multiple flights, the first one was to test the max rearward CG which I found, I had to push forward to keep the airspeed up till approach, following flights at optimal cg location. It wants to have some speed and low aoa after burnout till on approach, then level off and let it settle, if you try to get it too slow it just gets into a nose down mush which you can't get out of without letting it built more airspeed. Very flyable though. Thanks to Scott Todd for the inspiration and for his being the first air dropped X-40 R/C model built and flown.

X-37B R/C rocket glider build and flights (7 min 38 sec)

I'm revisiting this. I attempted to get an R/C X-37B rocket glider working back in 2011 with some help from someone who had built an X-40 pure gliding model. Scott used a combo of V tail controls for pitch/rudder and flaps/aileron.

To simplify, I tried using just differential V tail on my design which works on many of my other models, but I had issues with adequate pitch/roll control after boost transitioning to glide. Boost appeard to be fine, but I think the wing was blanking the V tail in glide with some aoa I believe, or I was getting some weird reversal effect causing a snap out, with very large cg ranges tried...

I eventually re-purposed the fuse into a buran that I flew a lot.

This time I'm using fixed tail and trying a pure elevon model and will see how that works. I used a 6" width, 36" length and 22" wingspan as the base. I made a really simple fuse and left off the rear fuse flare for now just to see if it will work and to save some tail weight.

It's built from 6mm depron bottom/wing, tail and formers, and 3mm formed depron skin. I did some indoor glide tests as I usually do prior to rc install when it is really light and think the CG is good.

I Got out this morning to fly the X-37B and am very happy. I was very nose heavy on the first two flights, but plenty of roll/pitch control in boost and glide with speed, but ran out of pitch to pull the nose up for landing, actually wound up moving the CG back a full inch, and dumping 1 oz of total...Continue Reading

here is a video of the maiden before I had completed the decals, and here she is finished!

SR 71 RC Rocket glider to be done in fedex scheme (2 min 47 sec)

Nice maiden of the 29mm upscale R/C Bluebird Zero rocket glider, it's a tad nose heavy for the maiden, I'm moving the cg back a bit at a time to dial it in.

Highpower Blue Bird Zero R/C rocket glider H motor flight (3 min 3 sec)