XFV-1 Salmon, XFY-1 Pogo, Vertijet, Coléopthère, and other tail sitters

[ysi_maniac]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_XFV
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_XFY
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_X-13_Vertijet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleopter

[Weaver]

I just got one of the Pegasus XFV-1 Salmons that Colin at Freightdog found. My immediate thought was to use a set of spare Blue Angels decals on it, but it turns out they're all the wrong shapes and sizes (from an F-11 Tiger). The Blue Angels idea would be pretty funky though: imagine a mass take-off followed by synchronised hovering maneuvers......

[ysi_maniac]

I just got one of the Pegasus XFV-1 Salmons that Colin at Freightdog found.

Me too

[PR19_Kit]

I just got one of the Pegasus XFV-1 Salmons that Colin at Freightdog found. My immediate thought was to use a set of spare Blue Angels decals on it, but it turns out they're all the wrong shapes and sizes (from an F-11 Tiger). The Blue Angels idea would be pretty funky though: imagine a mass take-off followed by synchronised hovering maneuvers......

And imagine the NOISE too! 

How about trying them on a Pogo? The delta wing would work better with the swept 'Blue Angels' decals?

And see here :-

   The two Osprey squadrons carried on being used in similar fashion for
   a number of years, although they never again fired their guns in anger.
   Some carrier deployments were undertaken during the '60s, although the
   difficulties experienced in hangering the tall fighters were never
   fully solved. Highlights of this period included the famous '59
   Farnborough display when four Ospreys took-off at the same time as four
   others made an interleaved landing. Ear defenders should have been
   issued to every spectator!

From my backstory to the 'Convair-Hawker Osprey'   http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,22263.0/highlight,first%20vertical.html

[JoeP]

I proposed the possibility of the Pogo working if given an adjustable angle seat, a window on the bottom of the aircraft for the pilot to see out properly, and a Beartrap-type system to assist in the landing. A flight of them, launched from an escort carrier or aviation cruiser, armed with cannon and Sidewinders, would be enough to defend a convoy from long-range Soviet bombers.

[Weaver]

I don't know if any of these would really have worked out in practice if persevered with. They were hard enough to land on a big, stationary airfield, let alone a small pitching deck. Watching video of one taking off, it also occured to me that that would be dangerous on a ship too. There's a long moment where all the weight's off the gear, but the aircraft's still near-as-damn-it touching the deck. If the deck pitches at that moment and swiped the aircraft, then a helo or flat-riser can take it, but a VATOL gets knocked over......

[Alvis 3.14159]

I did a 1/48th pogo with Blue Angel markings, and the ones from the Tiger fit it perfectly!


Alvis pi

[jcf]

I proposed the possibility of the Pogo working if given an adjustable angle seat, a window on the bottom of the aircraft for the pilot to see out properly, and a Beartrap-type system to assist in the landing. A flight of them, launched from an escort carrier or aviation cruiser, armed with cannon and Sidewinders, would be enough to defend a convoy from long-range Soviet bombers.

The seat rotated from horizontal to vertical flight positions, and there was nowhere to put a window in the 'bottom' as it was full of engine.

[PR19_Kit]

'Skeets' Coleman, the Pogo's test pilot, reckoned the landing was the ONLY problem with flying it. Take-off was a breeze, he just opened the throttle and went, which was somewhat of an act of faith with the reliability problems of the YT-40 engine! In level flight it was versy difficult to slow down, as the flight idle horsepower of the engine was so great that the minimum speed was over 300 kts!

'Skeets' was the only guy to have ever down the 'backing-down-to-land-while-looking-over-the-shoulder' business, so my hat's off to him, one hell of a pilot.

[Later] I just found out that they never closed the canopy of the Pogo at any time during the flight test programme, ever! Apparently the rarher basic ejection seat was regarded as too unreliable and 'Skeets' wanted at least some chance of bailing out if things went TU.

[Weaver]

There's a picture of it flying with the canopy shut on the Wiki page.

You'd imagine that the landing problem would be easily solved with modern technology, wouldn't you? Rear-facing TV camera and a small joystick that feeds inputs to a 3-axis autopilot.

[Weaver]

I did a 1/48th pogo with Blue Angel markings, and the ones from the Tiger fit it perfectly!


Alvis pi

That sounds good. IIRC, the Skyhawks had swept US NAVY text on the underside of their wings, so the same principle would apply to the Pogo's delta. I'm thinking that the ones off a Panther or Bearcat would be more suitable for the Salmon, but the point of the exercise was to use up the spares, not buy more specially....

[sandiego89]

Weaver, IIRC from the Naval Fighters book on the Pogo, there was a potential fix to considerably improve control issues if the program went on longer.  An engineer had figured that since the controls were all hydraulic, a mixer box could have been plumbed to allow conventional controls when flying horizontally, then switched over when vertical.  In the the vertical mode forward stick you go up, back stick down, rudder right- move to the right without roll, etc.  Sounded like the improved contols for JSF- only 50 years earlier! Also a thumb wheel on the the throttle would allow for delicate thrust changes.  Love the Pogo- lot's of WHIF potential.

I think some big mirrors and a radar altimiter would have helped as well. 

I believe the closed canopy picture was modified at the time for publicity purposes.       

[PR19_Kit]

An engineer had figured that since the controls were all hydraulic, a mixer box could have been plumbed to allow conventional controls when flying horizontally, then switched over when vertical.  In the the vertical mode forward stick you go up, back stick down, rudder right- move to the right without roll, etc.  Sounded like the improved contols for JSF- only 50 years earlier! Also a thumb wheel on the the throttle would allow for delicate thrust changes.       

The development crew at Boscombe Down figured that control mode out on the CCV Harrier, I think that's the mode they call Unified. There's a superb write-up on it John Farley's book 'A View from the Hover', and he goes into some detail on the differences between that and some other proposed systems.

Auto-stabilsation would have made a huge difference too, but that wasn't invented until a few years later as well.

[Weaver]

Cheers folks - interesting stuff (I've only got the short entries in various reference books to go on).

The Pogo and Salmon did have some kind of simple autopilot/autostabiliser did they not?

American Secret Projects (fighters) says that control problems were not just due orientation/vision issues, but also ground effect, the rebounding airflow from the ground screwing up the airflow over the control surfaces. That might be one area where the Lockheed configuration might show some advantage actually, at least in roll control, since it's wing control surfaces were further off the ground that the Convair's. 

Another problem with all tail sitter proposals is ground access. Simply getting into the things is hard enough, imagine what it would be like trying to load guns and external stores or do engine maintainance? Now translate all that onto a rolling ship deck...... Yes it can all be overcome with the use of properly designed equipment, butthen you've got to accomodate all that gear and for every piece you have to have, you move one step further away from the "simple" concept of a fighter on any ship with enough deck space. In any case, as Sea Harrier studies have repeatedly shown, it's just not cost/support effective to maintain SHARs in units of less than six per ship, and I suspect the VATOLs would have the same limit.

[kitnut617]

I have the Ginter books of both the Pogo and Salmon, excellent reading ---