In 2009, Bob Sanford made a visit to Quest Aerospace.
Lots of great information and pictures in these YORF posts: CLICK HERE
Douglas Shrock (Shrox Rocket Designs) showed some of his prototypes.
He's holding the SHX-3 Stiletto, one of my favorite models.
Yesterday on RocketReviews.com I ran across this: CLICK HERE.
Geof Givens did a plastic model conversion of a Lindberg kit in 2009.
Where does design inspiration come from?
I never knew the Douglas X-3 Stiletto even existed until I saw the plastic kit. You can see the similarities.
Here's my Quest SHX-3 Stiletto, modified for 24mm engines. It's usually flown with a D12-5.
The build posts are HERE
Ah yes, the Douglas X-3 -- an aircraft that looks like it is breaking the sound barrier while sitting on the ground. Apparently designed to investigate speeds up to Mach 3, but as built could barely achieve Mach 1 -- in a dive. Main problem it had was that the engines it was designed for never materialized, and whatever engine that could achieve necessary performance were far too large to fit in the airframe. Probably just as well, as tail surfaces would likely have proven to be far too small. It wasn't a total loss as it provided much useful data for low-speed characteristics of high-speed aircraft.
ReplyDeleteThe Quest Stiletto does resemble a Lockheed F-104 with a tail of a CL-1200 (a proposed descendant of the F-104) grafted on.
ReplyDeleteHi Naoto,
DeleteYou know a lot more aircraft history than me! Your comment history was pretty interesting.
When I saw the X-3 Stiletto plastic kit, the Quest Stiletto was the first thing I was reminded of. That and it was the "Douglas" X-3.
Shrox first name is also Douglas.
One thing that keeps throwing me off on the Quest SHX-3 is that from certain angles it appears to have a more conventional tail than the V-tail it actually has (a relatively "flat" V). Neither the F-104 nor the CL-1200 have a butterfly tail (i.e. "V-tail").
ReplyDeleteI've noticed recently that the Quest SHX-3 and Quest AS-1 appear to be out of production -- they are no longer listed on the website (haven't taken a look at recent printed catalog to see if they're listed there or not).
Similarly, I was saddened when I'd noticed that the Estes Interceptor go out of production again (but I did manage to stockpile a few kits).
One paint scheme that I'm thinking might look nice is the blue-and-white paint scheme seen on some NASA aircraft ( http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Photo/F-104/Small/ECN-4647.jpg ).