This is a truly amazing project that just absolutely staggers my imagination. Lance Campbell has been building and flying RC ducted fan and turbine jets for several years. I met him at a fan fly about 10 years ago where he had a turbine powered SR-71 model that I thought was huge. It is small by comparison to what he has been working on for the last [size=“4”]7 years.[/size] He designed and built a 13 foot long SR-71 and has recently completed two test flights with the turbines. The model has only a primer paint job, temporary fixed landing gear, no inlet spikes and several other concessions to initial test flights.
He has created a web page for his modeling and a complete section dedicated to the big Blackbird. You can read a series of updates covering the whole 7 years, (which is the best way to get an accurate handle on the size of this project) or start with the 11-28-07 update for the finishing touches leading up to the test flights. The last entry has a You-tube video of the test flight.
Lance’s web site is: http://www.mmrca.org/lance/index.html Click on “the sled” to go to the SR-71 project.
Darwin, O.F. [alien]