Facetmobile Lifting Body Airplane

The Facetmobile is an experimental lifting-body sport airplane. It was built by Barnaby Wainfan, Rick Dean, and Lynne Wainfan to explore the characteristics and potential of this type of airplane -- stall resistant, easy to construct, and voluminous.
For more information, please visit www.Facetmobile.com

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• Experimental
• sport
• airplane
• homebuilt
• lifting
• body
• flying
• wing
• radical

[RocketteSci]

You can see Barnaby's latest creation by searching

Edison2 Wainfan

on YouTube. It won the largest purse in automotive history, a $5M X Prize for efficiency.

[GerbilEssences]

Nice work, I bet this is pretty efficient?

[RocketteSci]

@GerbilEssences, it flew well on 46 HP. The key is its light weight, made possible by the triangulated truss structure and lack of a wing spar.

[frankensteinmoneymac]

I want one of these.....I dont think i would be brave enought to fly it....but, I'd like just set it up in my backyard, and invite chicks over...."hey....did I tell ya about my home built stealth plane?.....yeah...ya know, the military, are always buggin', me sayin' they want to buy the plans off of me....ya know...they say I solved some problem theyve been struggling with for years...but I just haven't decided if I will sell, yet...I dont like supporting war...yeah, Im sensatve like that babe"

[RocketteSci]

@frankensteinmoneymac, our test pilot says the plane flies about like a T-craft. "it doesn't do anything unexpected, and what it does, it does slowly," he reports. Barnaby particularly likes the auto-flair feature, where the plane pitches up very slightly before it lands. He has to remember to flair our C-150 now when he flies it.

[Boosteroid]

Kinda looks like a baby stealth fighter with a prop. :-)

[biscuitninja]

Nice! Paint it in "Have Blue" colors and you'll be the talk of the town!

[1955thekeeper]

@RocketteSci Thank you for your reply. Upon a second viewing I realized that the section of tape I made my comment about was during a climb for altitude. In the segment following, it showed your craft in level flight. I kinda jumped the gun on my assessment. Nice design over all, kudos.

[RocketteSci]

@airlinerdude; the 2-stroke was delivering about 46 horsepower. Its replacement engine (which hasn't flown) is a Jabiru 4-cylinder which should do nicely but is far from the 1:1 power ratio you mentioned. @Karri; the model that wouldn't fly was an R/C model and the front hatch came open. We are pleased to announce that the airplane's crashworthiness was indeed tested when the engine packed at 500 agl. The plane landed at 28 mph and Barnaby walked away. Swearing, but walking away.

[RocketteSci]

@1955thekeeper, the photography angle is a bit deceiving. The plane flies at about a 3 degree nose-up angle. There are windows on the floor in front of the pilot for good visibility.

[GerbilEssences]

@DevilMaster I know it's not proper plans, but the official website has a link to a cardmodel. Which is good enough if you want to make a glider/rc plane ;)

[KarriKoivusalo]

@airlinerdude12

Actually the little 2-stroke is not that powerful, this is not a "flying barn door" situation. An earlier model wouldn't fly at all with the same power/weight ratio, because there was flow separation around the rear fuselage. The FMX's crash is in fact a testament of that. When the power cut on take-off, the pilot did a 180 to avoid the trees (usually a VERY dangerous thing!) but the FMX did the turn gently, the damage was due to the airfield fence being a feet too tall!