The 6 Seat 250 MPH TBIRD... A New Idea From The 'Aircraft Designer Wannabe'
Wednesday, December 19, 2012 at 08:40PM 
TBIRD: 6 seats, around 400hp, a 250 mph cruise speed... and she's pretty too!
Ok, it's not actually a new idea... I drew this fantasy design back in 2011 as part of a logo for a project I was working on. It was just meant to look cool as the 'airplane' part of that aviation related logo, but I noticed that it actually looked really cool. I dug up the drawing last night because I thought it might be fun to post it here, and once again when I checked it out I thought, wow, this thing is really pretty! I decided it needed a name, so this morning I came up with TBIRD since it's got a really sweet looking T-tail.
I wondered what it would be like if the TBIRD was run thru the aeronautical engineering lab in my head (note: I have NO engineering degree, NO experience, and NO financial resources... so this is just an aircraft-designer-wannabe fantasy) - here's the conceptual info I've come up with: It's kinda big but not any bigger than it needs to be. With six seats total, there's no center aisle, so it's not the kind of cabin you enter at the rear and walk up to the front. On one hand, a center-aisle cabin seems like a cool idea, but that aisle is usually so narrow that it's a pain to walk between the seats. I think that center area would be far better used for a wide fold-down armrest between the seats that includes cup holders, headset jacks, and maybe some inflight entertainment controls. To make entry/exit an easy task, the TBIRD has a door for each row of seats. I'm thinking the left side has the both the cockpit door and the last row door, and the right side has the middle row door.
The TBIRD is meant to be as simple as possible. There's only one moveable control surface on each wing; 75% span flaperons. It seems like a good modern laminar-flow airfoil could be found that gets a suitable amount of flap benefit from a deflection-limited flaperon setup. Another simplicity concept is to retract only the nose gear. I admit that the airplane might look a little weird in those awesome magazine cover photo shoots with the really slick faired main gear legs and wheels hanging out in the breeze with no nosewheel to be seen, but the idea seems to be worth considering for keeping both weight and complexity down.
And the hunk of metal for making the prop go round and round could be a water-cooled V-8 diesel or a small turbine (in the 400 hp range) so you skirt the avgas issue. And rather than be a wildly overpowered beast, the TBIRD is reasonably powered to offer a balance between cruise speed and cost to buy and operate.
I subscribe to two basic aircraft design philosophies: Bill Stout's awesome credo: 'simplicate and add more lightness', and, if the airplane looks right then it'll fly right. So the TBIRD is nicely proportioned with a gorgeous shape, and it's as simple and light as is practically possible while still offering a cruise speed of 250 mph.
Feel free to let me know if you like the look, or have other comments... but flame-throwers are encouraged to remain silent. Oh, and if you're interested in seeing a few more of the aeronautical ideas inside my head, check out the Dreambird, the Empress 400, and the Sharkbite : )
Reader Comments (2)
First question a designer gets : "Can I put a bigger engine in it ?" : D Looks proportioned right.
Give me the MTOW, wing area and horsepower, and I'll tell you how well it will fly