Home-built 1/3 Scale B-17 - Single Seat - Walk-around Vid In Comments
Posted May 21, 2023, 3:56 PM UTC
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Can't find any freely-available sources, but there's a Tom Hodgson (this guy, though that article is unrelated) who's developing a Honda engine conversion kit for the experimental market, who's similarly building a 1/3rd scale B-29. He wanted a four-engine airframe so he could test the engines to their limits and not be in trouble if one failed, and those don't exist at small scales. So he started with a wing from a Cessna 210 and scaled B-29 drawings to fit, because a circular fuselage is easy to build.
Full story in the March 2023 EAA SportAviation magazine.
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Very cool. I'd heard about someone selling Honda K engines already converted a little while ago. It's a great engine.
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He's using the L engine, which I think is what Viking bases their engines on too. But yeah, same concept.
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Oh yeah Viking is who I was thinking of, I must have remembered the wrong engine.
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I've been casually following this build for over a year now, and I'm quite skeptical of his notion that four experimental engines on an experimental airframe is better than one experimental engine on an experimental airframe. It is a well-established aerospace truism that you shouldn't mix a new engine development with a new airframe development, and this breaks that rule four times over. All that said, Hodgson has a flight test background so I assume he's no dummy.
To your comment: circular fuselages can be remarkably difficult to build straight and true. The only things being more difficult than a straight circular tube (like a B-29) would be a curved circular fuselage (like a Constellation) or a pure organic shape with no constant curvature anywhere.
At any rate, I don't intend my comments to be criticism. I'm firmly in the camp that supports strange and unconventional homebuilt aircraft projects, and I love this thing.
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To be fair to the "new" engines, in the EAA article he says he's been flying one on a Wag-Aero Cub for 14 years now, so not exactly an untested engine design. But yeah, reading the article I kept thinking... "okay this is amazing, buuuuut why not just stick these engines on an Aircam?"
Circular fuselage comment was also from the EAA article, was the reason he gave for doing the B-29 design.
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Haven't read the recent article yet, so your information is better than mine. Having been flown in something for over a decade changes things a bit. And I really appreciate you bringing up the notion of an Aircam; yes!
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Walkaround Video. The builder used plans for a RC 1/9 scale model, and simply made it 3x the size.