FD AU 3

[Clonecommander6454]

A 707/DC-8 era airliner...

[sebu]

Ooh; that's a real good looking airliner Cc. Though; are you really sure you want that front landing gear so far front? Just asking

[odysseus1980]

Indeed, nose landing gear should be moved under the door behind the cockpit. Otherwise, very good design.

[eswube]

It's a very nice looking plane.
As for the nose undercarriage - I think, that while it's looks bit unusual, it's not necessarily an error (or perhaps it could be counted as "deliberate flaw") - the "weird" appearance results mostly from the lack of "nose" in front of cockpit and relatively steep curvature of the bottom contour of fuselage, but actually there are some airliners - even modern ones - that have similar position of the wheels (extended) relative (along the length) to cockpit.

[Clonecommander6454]

The nose design is inspired by XF-12 Rainbow and de Havilland Comet. The gear is placed there as I want to squeeze as much room for cargo as possible (ALCM carrier variant maybe?), and I like how Lockheed Connie looked when they have their gears extended. On a side note, the gears operate like those on the B-58 Hustler's.

[pegasus206]

Realy great looking plane just have to get use at the nose undercarriage.

[Progress]

Hi Clonecommander6454!
Very beatiful and well drawn design! It´s a reaaaly good looking aircraft, although I feel aesthetics beats funcionality on some features...
_ That nose it's pretty beatiful and clean, but seems to prevent the installation of a radar, already a common feature on those days.
_ That door over the intakes surely will need non standard air bridges/boarding stairs... If it's for evacuation purposes only, a smaller one like the one aft will do the job (although I personally prefer not to jump in front of an engine air intake during an emergency , so I would move it a little backwards maybe...)
_ That nose landing gear seems unnecessarily complicated, for a little gain in cargo loading area, and also will be unnecessarily stronger than a shorter unit, and weight matters on an aircraft...
_ Talking about cargo loading... Maybe cargo hold it's huge, but you will need doors to access them!!!
_ It's that a fixed/semi retractable wheel ahead of the ventral fin?!? In it´s current position it seems useless, only adding drag.... as long as that is a wheel...
_ I'm not sure of the aerodynamic impact of the rudder trailing edge fillet, but I almost always seen a straight trailing edge, these fillets being part of the vertical fixed fin
_ unlike radars, APUs where not a common feature of 707/DC-8 era airliners

[Clonecommander6454]

Aesthetics is definitely a big thing for this aircraft

_ That nose it's pretty beautiful and clean, but seems to prevent the installation of a radar, already a common feature on those days.

The radar is mounted on the left wingtip pod as there isn't room on the nose.

That door over the intakes surely will need non standard air bridges/boarding stairs

Door L/R2 are only meant to be escape doors. I went for larger doors as this will allow everyone to evacuate within 90 seconds even with a high density cabin.

That nose landing gear seems unnecessarily complicated, for a little gain in cargo loading area, and also will be unnecessarily stronger than a shorter unit, and weight matters on an aircraft

This aircraft is designed for operation on airports that are less than perfect (think VC-10) and that's why the gears are over engineered. That's also why there's an APU and an optional built in airstair on the aircraft, as they are designed for operations in less than perfect conditions. The nose gear design is a personal thing and probably a deliberate flaw.

Is that a fixed/semi retractable wheel ahead of the ventral fin

That's some sort of radar radome. Not sure that it is though :p

I'm not sure of the aerodynamic impact of the rudder trailing edge fillet

I don't see anything wrong with the fillet, as aircrafts like Caravelle and VC.10 have curved trailing edge too.

~Cargo door fixed~

[Dragan1212]

[APDAF]

That airliner looks very very good.
Makes me want to paint it.