[Stratospheremodels]

Now you see it ! The classified FDL-6 SOMV from the AFFDL Air Force
Flight Research Laboratory (now known as AFRL) was an hypersonic high-lift-to-drag ratio
lifting body which was developed in the 1960's and early 70's at the same time as the better
known Lockheed FDL-5 and MDD FDL-7 hypersonic aircrafts. A lot less was known about the
FDL-6 which remained hidden in obscurity for decades, but now you can see it !

EXCLUSIVELY from STRATOSPHERE MODELS, which used the USAF CAD blueprints
to recreate this precision model kit, the FDL-6 made a brief and
rare (unamed)appearance in the Bill Sweetman book "Aurora" , which
featured a photograph showing many of the FDL shape wing tunnel models from
the US Air Force Flight Research Laboratory, along with other models
such as the Wadd II configuration, Asset, Prime, etc.
I identified two of those models as being FDL-6 models, one a finned version, and the
other a finless version.

The 1/48th scale model of the FDL-6 SOMV is right now available at the NEW LOW PRICE of
ONLY 45.00$US !!

Model lenght is about 21 cm.







another view, showing the pre-master next to the several of the precise drawings and
blueprints from the source i found which i used to design the model kit.




Just a little note: i spent a good 8 years doing research on a variety of hypersonic vehicules, in particular the Air Force Flight Dynamics Laboratory lifting body low-lift-to-drag-ratio reentry vehicles, of which the FDL-6 is part, as well as the FDL-5, FDL-7, etc, on which i will post much more details here later (because i found a lot more about the FDL-5, on which my research centered a lot more), as well as other upcoming aircraft and spacecraft of which i am doing upcoming kits. All of those were mostly in the black up to very recently (and i still have not seen any other data on the FDL-6 apart from the drawings i found (shown on one of the pictures above) and that one black and white photo of the family group picture of the desk models of all those hypersonic shapes taken at i presume the Wright Patterson AFFDL lab (the source was David Selegan, and ex-boss at the Wright Patterson lab) and shown in the Bill Sweetman book on Aurora, so that makes that bird and the data about it very rare.



Stephane Cochin
Stratosphere Models.
website: Picturetrail.com/stratospheremodels
email: stratospheremodels@yahoo.fr

This post has been edited by Stratospheremodels: 22 March 2009 - 03:33 AM

[Stratospheremodels]

A picture of the model painted black (the actual spacecraft would have been covered with a black or dark gray
anti-oxidation coating to preserve the Tantalum and Columbium super-alloys it was made of from being damaged
from the extreme heat of reentry.




This is the fiberglass mold i finished just 2 days ago (been very busy last week, working on this and making the wings of the FDL-6 more flat and the fuselage more smooth, as well as heavily working on a yet to be announced other hypersonic vehicle (a larger one, on which i did much progress).

I will use the fiberglass mold to make a casting which will become the final master for the FDL-6 SOMV kit.



Stephane Cochin.
Stratosphere Models.
website: Picturetrail.com/stratospheremodels

This post has been edited by Stratospheremodels: 22 March 2009 - 03:14 AM

[Stratospheremodels]

Clean castings:



these are the parts that are now the final master for the kit.

Stephane Cochin.
Stratosphere Models.
Picturetrail.com/stratospheremodels

[Stratospheremodels]

The final master parts for the classified FDL-6 SOMV sub-orbital spaceplane are completed :




Stephane Cochin,
Stratosphere Models
Picturetrail.com/stratospheremodels

[afterburner]

I'm going to keep watching this- the subject matter fascinates me greatly. Nice work on the design. Can't wait to see more!

[Stratospheremodels]

afterburner, on Mar 4 2007, 09:33 PM, said:

I'm going to keep watching this- the subject matter fascinates me greatly. Nice work on the design. Can't wait to see more!

Hi Afterburner, thank you !

I was just looking at some charts again yesterday, the FDL-7 and the FDL-5 were right at the top of the chart in terms of performance, they had the highest lift-to-drag ratio, which means they had the highest performance: highest maneuvering hability, and they had what they call the biggest footpath, which means they could land anywhere they chose (and swoop by to drop stuff or take photos anywhere they wanted). The FDL-7 was a bit below both of them, and the X-20 Dyno-Soar was way below.
I will take photos and post that chart, plus some other little details to add to the FDL-7 thread.

Stephane.
Stratosphere Models.
Picturetrail.com/stratospheremodels

[Stratospheremodels]

Ok, here is a little more background info i promised 2 days ago. The 9th page will be the page where you see the graphic showing the FDL6 and FDL-5 right at the top of the chart for the highest lift-to-drag-ratio of all hypersonic reentry vehicles (the best shapes they ever designed for reentry and maneuvering in the atmosphere at hypersonic speed).

The one upper left side shows you the lift-to-drag-ratio for the FDL-5, FDL-6, FDL-7 spacecraft lifting bodies. It is at 3.0 (actually 2.8 and a bit lower, but around 3.0 anyway, the highest rating, and you see how much they can move around when they de-orbit (compared with Apollo, Gemini, there is no contest).



Stephane.
Stratosphere Models.
Picturetrail.com/stratospheremodels







A rather crude picture of the family of FDL shapes from the Wright Patterson Air Base AF-FDL lab, from the same paper.



A much higher quality pic of the same. The 5th model from the left, on the back row, is the FDL-6 SOMV. The 3rd model from the left back row is another FDL-6 version, but that one finless and with a specially reshaped rear fuselage to provides directional stability.
The first model on the left, front row, is the unmanned 35`long FDL-5 A. Lockheed designed a barely different version of it (Lockheed manufacturer number CL-639) but later went on to design a much
larger and different version which i have also produced as a resin model kit.

The 2nd from the left back row is the WADD-II configuration.
The 1st one from the right side, front row, is the original FDL-7 configuration as conceived by the FDL labs(the FDL-7 was later heavily modified into a series of flat paneled versions of FDL-7 by Mc Donnell (into the FDL-7 C/D and FDL-7 Model 176, etc), and by Nasa (Hyper-III).

This post has been edited by Stratospheremodels: 22 March 2009 - 04:06 AM

[Stratospheremodels]

Another graphic, showing the evolution of studies that led to the 4 final FDL-5, FDL-6, FDL-7 and FDL-8 high performance, highest lift-to-drag-ratio lifting body hypersonic aircrafts (or spacecrafts actually, as most of them were designed to operate in space and reenter and maneuver in the atmosphere also at hypersonic speed).

Stephane.
Stratosphere Models.
website: Picturetrail.com/stratospheremodels





A very bad quality image of the FDL-5 full-scale mock-up built by the Wright Patterson AF-FDL lab mentionned in the page just above. They do this on purpose really.. (include very bad quality pics in technical papers (though not always, thank God, you do find very neat drawings and even blueprints from other sources, but in some of the old technical papers the picture quality is often terrible..).

This post has been edited by Stratospheremodels: 22 March 2009 - 03:20 AM

[Stratospheremodels]

A MUCH higher quality picture of the real thing (full-scale mock up of the manned FDL-5).
The Lockheed FDL-5 MA military reusable spacecraft. Designed in the late 1960's to early 70's by Lockheed, and completely retro-engineered and modeled by Stratosphere Models after 8 years of research (official announcement is coming very soon). The model kit is right now available and as we speak. You will see how much i found in the more than 10 pages of technical, research and historical background info i provide with each kit.



Stephane
Stratosphere Models.
website:Picturetrail.com/stratospheremodels

This post has been edited by Stratospheremodels: 22 March 2009 - 03:18 AM

[Stratospheremodels]

And the graphic i was talking about earlier:



The FDL-5 and FDL-6 are the best of the series, with the highest lift-to-drag ratio (and that's why i modelled the FDL-5 and FDL-6 spacecrafts first). These high performance hypersonic reenty spacecrafts wre designs from the start to use metallic skin panels made of Columbium shingles, internally stiffened and cooled with either water tubes or liquid sodium (depending on the version). Nose tip was cooled by transpiration cooling (injection of water through a porous ceramic nose). In comparision, the Shuttle uses a myriad of fragile, easily damaged tiles ceramic tiles, while we are talking here all metallic skin construction for the FDL-5, FDL-6 and FDL-7 hypersonic vehicles.
You would be surprised as to why Nasa totally refused to super-alloy / internally liquid cooled metallic skins for it's own spacecrafts, instead relying on the very fragile and impractical (or downright dangerous) ceramic tiles solutions for it's Space Shuttle. The X-33 program by the way recuperated some of the lessons learned by the FDL-5, FDL-6, FDL-7 shapes and used metallic skin panels, which were improved metal shingle versions of what had been designed for the FDL military lifting body program).

Stephane
Stratosphere Models
website: Picturetrail.com/stratospheremodels

This post has been edited by Stratospheremodels: 22 March 2009 - 03:28 AM

[Stratospheremodels]

An explanation and more details about these pictures are coming soon.


Stephane Cochin
Stratosphere Models.
website: Picturetrail.com/stratospheremodels
email: stratospheremodels@yahoo.fr

This post has been edited by Stratospheremodels: 22 March 2009 - 04:05 AM

[Stratospheremodels]

Here is a little explanation about these photos.

Over 10 years ago, i found these pictures in an old Lockheed Horizon magazine,
an internal publication of Lockheed showing many of their past projects in more details
than you would normally find in the public press. Some of the pictures and drawings were
real eye openers. I was doing this research specifically about several hypersonic lifting body spacecrafts,
specifically FDL-5, FDL-6 and FDL-7.
The pictures here were part of a longuer article about what is needed to build spaceplanes with metallic outer skin
heat shield, and it detailled some of the structures used at that time (in the 1960-s).

Now the real revelation here is that what is shows is a half rear-fuselage and wing metal structure for what looks very much like
the classified FDL-6 SOMV lifting body spaceplane (minus its vertical fin) (i purposedly put my model of the FDL-6, also without its fin
near the photo, to show you that if you chopped the rear top fuselage and left if flat like on the photo, the fin could be added to it neatly
(i chose to make my own model with a round rear fuselage top, a personal choice, it`s will be covered by the fin anyway).

In the first edition of his book about Lockheed, René Francillon had said that a thorough survey of Lockheed shows that
they had tested an hypersonic aircraft. Looks like the most likely candidate so far is the FDL-6 SOMV.

Or.. is it the ONLY one... ? Since i have also found numerous photos of build components ALSO for the unmanned version of the
Lockheed FDL-5 A classified hypersonic lifting body test aircraft (including a full size fin with metallic shingles heat shield),
that could now mean TWO build or flown hypersonic aircrafts from Lockheed..



Stephane Cochin
Stratosphere Models.
website: Picturetrail.com/stratospheremodels
email: stratospheremodels@yahoo.fr

This post has been edited by Stratospheremodels: 23 July 2009 - 01:18 AM