Anyone with an inkling of interest in super-sized remote control aircraft probably has at least seen some of the mind-blowing projects that [Ramy RC] has worked on over the years, with examples like the ongoing Airbus A380-800 build approaching the size of a full-sized business jet. That said, they recently got the offer to build a flying prototype of the Natilus Horizon, a blended wing body (BWB) aircraft that’s currently being developed into a full-sized production aircraft.
Suffice it to say that BWB RC aircraft isn’t something that they have built before, but as co-founder of Natilus, [Aleksey Matyushev], explains, they want to prove in this manner that building scale prototypes of future production aircraft is not nearly as complex as it’s often made out to be. Meaning that even two blokes in a shed as is the case here should be able to pull it off.
Natilus was founded in 2016 amidst strongly rising interest in these BWB aircraft designs that may one day threaten today’s tubes-with-wings. Their Kona design would be the cargo version and this Horizon prototype that [Ramy RC] is building the passenger version.
In this first video of two total, we can see the CAD project of the prototype and how the basic aircraft structure is being constructed out of carbon fiber composite, wood and foam. To this the engine nacelles, landing gear and wings are mounted, readying it for its maiden flight. The Natilus engineers have previously done all the simulations that should mean that it’ll fly like a glider, but we will have to wait until the next video to see whether that is the case.
Looking forward to seeing this thing fly, and hopefully land, as its such an interesting shape that really isn’t like any other aerodynamic lift craft.
Though I would say calling Ramy RC blokes in a shed is a bit disingenuous – its a pretty nice tool collection set in a very very very big “shed”. So while I agree the available tools and materials are really making tasks formerly rather limited to large scale operations quite attainable now, its not quite traditional shed craft level still.
And the “shed” in question here is Tyler Perry’s SPARE GARAGE with a private runway. He’s been custom building planes for Tyler for quite some time now. And it’s more than “2 blokes” as well, Tyler’s got Ramy set up with a whole crew to build these things.
Here’s the Google Maps of Tyler’s property. Estate on the right and runway with garage on the left: https://www.google.com/maps/@33.7300042,-84.6453124,1075m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTIwOS4wIKXMDSoKLDEwMDc5MjA2OUgBUAM%3D
I am looking at this styling and can’t help thinking “Thunderbird 2”
Agreed.
This is the conjunction of art and technology, of skill and engineering. I hope that beautiful model is preserved, perhaps in an aerospace museum, and taken out to be flown.
Ramy is a true artisan. I’ve seen videos of some of his early, much smaller models. He has been making really amazing planes for a long time.
Without regard to the model, which is a magnificent achievement, I don’t think a passenger version of this design is practical. The Found and Explained channel on YouTube has several videos about proposed flying-wing airliners. All faltered on the problem of evacuation in a fire. In a tube-type fuselage everyone is reasonably near an exit; in a flying wing, not only does the wider cabin mean there is further to go, but when you do get to the edge it’s likely to be almost horizontal, unless it’s the leading edge of the wing, and you have to climb up to get out – then across the wing surface to safety.
That is assuming you have to leave by the edges – with a flying wing the skin of the aircraft is likely even more reliably close in the up and down directions than the tube… Just have to put in those inflatable ramp type things poping out to become a vertical drop slide type thing at a collection of hatches in the floor and you can end up I’d suspect with exits being much much closer on average.
The real challenge with flying wings is the airport infrastructure – how do you get folks and luggage on and off the aircraft when the airport is only set up to load flying tubes! Along with questions like do you want to make the runways wider as the landing gear can be way out nearer the wing tip in a flying wing and might want to be.
Bottom exits won’t be much help in case of landing gear failure or ditching.
So go up instead in that case… Ultimately no exits are going to be useable in all situations, so you require a few options!
Definitely one of the concerns. But i’m looking at the evolution of, like, ETOPS, and i think there may be wiggle room on both sides. It’s not impossible to have a door that opens through the bottom or edge of a lifting body with any number of slide designs, though obviously it’s a challenge. I mean, the tube-and-wing design is always up on stilts and quick evacuation of those was certainly a challenge when first proposed as well. And it’s not impossible to convince regulators that they can add a few seconds to the fire evacuation times, through fire-suppression systems or so on. And of course as operational history proves itself, people become comfortable with changing safety margins in the details.
From the rendering at the 0:43 mark in the video, it doesn’t look significantly wider than a typical airliner. It also looks like it has three doors on each side (forward , under the wing, and probably a rear door) like a typical airliner. It shouldn’t be any harder to evacuate.
Interestingly, the rendering in the video and the model don’t look like the renderings on the Natilus web site [https://natilus.co/]. Those are much wider and might be more difficult to evacuate.
Make every seat an ejection seat and in event of a fire it pops off like one of those Saturn rocket fireworks, spraying passengers everywhere over several acres
Ryan Air/Kamikaze Airlines (the airline that can’t afford to crash):
‘We are sorry the system is currently busy and we cannot process your parachute fee at this time. Next flight we suggest you take advantage of the prepaid parachute offer at the gate.’ (repeat)…splat.
Am I the only one, but this thing just does not look like it can fly :( …. Ok, maybe when empty, but what kind of passenger and cargo load could it carry? What, in layman’s terms, is the aerodynamic feasibility if it can fly with a load?
That’s the whole point of the design. It surprises your intuition. In a traditional airplane, the fuselage (the tube) makes almost no lift at any speed, and the big wing does all the lifting. Even the tail feathers don’t contribute to the lift. But in blended-wing designs, the fuselage itself generates lift. If you still have last night’s empty pizza box sitting on your counter, you can hold that horizontal in front of you and run forward, and then tilt it slightly upwards…it really generates a lot of lift even at low speeds. The problem with big flat lifting bodies like a pizza box is that they’re very inefficient (lots of drag), but that problem is being chipped away at constantly….it’s all in the detail of how the overall curve meets the edges.