RPAGF #443 - Big plane, CAC120 is ready to take off!
#443 - Big plane, CAC120 is ready to take off!
Whether it's the Yun-6 or the Yun-8 propeller-driven airliner, they are ultimately designs from the early propeller era. Although there is still much room for optimization and improvement, as a new type of airliner, the foundation is obviously insufficient, and the shadow of plagiarism is too obvious.
Therefore, Ren Zhong will not regard these two airliners as the starting point for the next generation of airliners in their future development direction. Instead, he plans to directly aim for the development direction of modern airliners and go directly to turbofan engine airliners after the turbofan engine is developed!
He will directly skip the current mainstream turbojet engine airliners in the world, such as the Boeing and Douglas models that are being developed.
Although Dongda has entered the world's advanced level in terms of turbojet engines due to Ren Zhong's purchases, it is only running at the same level as the world, and has not yet achieved overtaking. Now that there is a turbofan engine, this is the beginning of overtaking. When the turbofan era arrives, Ren Zhong will not have many opportunities to purchase goods in the main world. The engine drawings he can buy are only likely to be ancient varieties like the Spey.
Further down the line, he may be able to buy some physical engines, but design drawings are definitely out of the question.
Therefore, from Ren Zhong's perspective, he must let the Aviation Engine Research Center invest its main research and development efforts in turbofan engines, relying on the foundation of the Spey to continuously iterate and optimize new generations of medium-thrust and even high-thrust engines. At the same time, based on this core engine, it is necessary to develop new large bypass ratio civil aviation turbofan engines according to the characteristics of civil airliners to further reduce fuel consumption.
Of course, at this stage, we can only rely on the Spey for multiple purposes, and first support the sky for a new generation of aircraft.
The first priority is to complete a truly new type of airliner.
If you want Ren Zhong to come up with an airliner design himself, that's definitely impossible, and you can't buy it even if you spend money. Fortunately, in this world, in addition to McDonnell Douglas, Boeing, and Airbus, there is also a forgotten loser, the ill-fated BAC!
From the timeline, BAC has not yet been born at this stage. It is still the era of its predecessor, Hunting Aircraft Company.
In the main world's timeline, the BAC 1-11 project was initially proposed by Hunting Aircraft Company. The initial design had a passenger capacity of 100 people, and the airliner model was named Hunting 107 according to the company's naming convention.
Hunting Aircraft Company merged with Vickers-Armstrongs in 1960 to become BAC. During the integration process of both parties, the plan was naturally terminated. After BAC completed its integration, it re-proposed the plan in 1961 and renamed it BAC 1-11.
From the design point of view, the two engines of the BAC 1-11 are located on both sides of the rear of the fuselage, with a T-shaped tail and a wing sweep angle of 20 degrees. The passenger capacity of various BAC 1-11 models is 89-119 people. Thanks to the government funding after the integration of BAC, the progress was smooth this time. The first BAC 1-11 first flew on August 20, 1963, and completed various certifications and entered service in 1965.
However, precisely because it was born seven or eight years later, after the BAC was launched, due to the limited number of customers in its home country, the production volume of the first model was only a mere 58 units, which was simply insignificant compared to the sales volume of hundreds of units for Boeing and Douglas.
This led to serious under-amortization of research and development costs, and the cost advantage of the aircraft could not be reflected by expanding the scale. In addition, with the deliberate suppression of the rogue eagle aviation industry, BAC's operations have been very difficult. Without sales scale, the speed of model updates and upgrades could not keep up with the development of the times. After struggling for more than 20 years, it only sold about 150 units, and finally closed the production line and withdrew from the airliner production market in the 1980s.
Although the process and ending were quite tragic, Ren Zhong discovered after research that this was not because the product was not good. On the contrary, as a twin-engine airliner, the BAC1-11 airliner has good competitiveness in the regional market. From the development model, it can be fully developed into a 100-150 seat regional mainline airliner with a range of 2,000 kilometers to 3,000 kilometers!
Since this airliner can still be bought as second-hand goods that are about to be scrapped, Ren Zhong spent several million (without haggling) to buy a second-hand BAC 1-11-500 model that was about to be scrapped, under the guise of converting it into his private jet in Black Africa. During this period, he naturally gathered a group of tool people to completely disassemble, renovate, and structurally analyze this airliner, and by the way, he conducted a complete survey and mapping, and obtained a complete set of reverse design sketches of the airframe.
Combined with the design data of the Spey purchased, plus the actual Spey MK512 engine survey data and core component physical materials, it was brought into the Liangjian world.
For the Aviation Research Center of the Liangjian world, these materials are naturally invaluable. This team already has the localization experience of the C-47 and C-54 transport aircraft (airliners). In addition to the airliner's aero engine, they are already very familiar with the airframe design and avionics of other airliners.
They have already accumulated a lot of experience in airliner design and manufacturing on the optimized and improved versions of the Yun-6 and Yun-8. Now that they have the physical design drawings of this BAC1-11 airliner, not only do they have no problem understanding it, but they also directly assigned it to start design verification.
Because the source is reliable, and Ren Zhong is still very confident in the BAC1-11, the design work of the new airliner was quickly finalized under Ren Zhong's intervention. The first model actually adopted a one-to-one restoration of this airliner. According to Ren Zhong's consistent performance of being bad at naming, the naming of the new aircraft is unremarkable, and it is directly named CAC-120.
Abandoning the more popular naming method of the Yun X series, after all, Yun-10 is not a good omen, so this model is named directly by the number of seats, focusing on simplicity and clarity.
Of course, compared with competitors, they did not consider the aesthetics of the model. Boeing named it 7XX, Douglas directly used DC-xx, and Airbus, which will take a long time to rise in the main world, also reflects the atmosphere of following the trend with the naming of A3XX!
In terms of model specifications and performance indicators, Ren Zhong basically referred to the original indicators of the BAC1-11-500, but in terms of seat layout, the initial version is prepared to directly adopt a 4-seat, 30-row economy layout, which is basically the same as the original version, and does not need to adjust the counterweight, which is the least modified plan.
If in the future, certain airlines can consider the function of differentiated reception for distinguished VIP customers, they can consider reducing 5 rows to convert them into 2-seat, 4-row first-class cabins. Of course, corresponding adjustments need to be made in terms of baggage counterweight. If it is designed in this way, the new layout will be a first-class luxury airliner with 108 seats.
Since Ren Zhong guarantees the integrity and usability of the design in terms of airframe structure, the Aviation Research Center chooses to keep the first generation of new airliners completely unchanged during the conversion and production.
This model, as the first generation of "indigenously designed" jet airliners of Dongda, has directly skipped the model demonstration and entered the prototype production and manufacturing stage under Ren Zhong's promotion!
The Aviation Research Center has long been accustomed to this fast-paced model of Ren Zhong purchasing goods and them performing physical displays. No one asks where this design came from, because there are too many high-tech things that come directly from Ren Zhong's hands, and everyone has chosen to be indifferent!
Of course, in order to thoroughly understand this model, necessary aerodynamic research is still required. The research center plans to first use wooden models to quickly create a prototype of the aircraft body and blow it in a wind tunnel to test the force on all aspects in the air. This data is not readily available and must be accumulated little by little through wind tunnel experiments.
Fortunately, since the beginning of aircraft manufacturing, Ren Zhong has guided the Aviation Research Center to gradually develop large-scale wind tunnel clusters in both Jin and Yan. These infrastructures are essential for aerospace, so Ren Zhong did not think about saving money, but invested heavily in developing two wind tunnel clusters.
The wind tunnel cluster in Jin is more suitable for military and aerospace purposes. All military aircraft and rockets have undergone wind tunnel testing there.
For large transport aircraft and airliners, these wind tunnels are built in the Yanshan Mountains, adjacent to the current Aviation Research Center.
Since there is no concept of the BAC1-11 airliner in the Bright Sword world, Ren Zhong is not afraid of running into the British side this time. Instead, he regards this airliner as a completely independent design product. Now, many design aspects are directly submitted for patent application to solidify our achievements.
Although nominally this is the first generation of Dongda's independently designed and produced jet airliner, Ren Zhong knows that this model has undergone a lot of testing and production in the main world, so he has complete confidence in it.
Therefore, in terms of production, Ren Zhong did not squeeze toothpaste. Instead, he organized prototype production, and in order to speed up the verification process, the prototypes were directly planned according to the pre-production model of 4 aircraft. In this way, many future tests can be carried out simultaneously, greatly reducing the time for multi-aircraft verification testing.
On the other hand, Ren Zhong began to let machine tool and material supporting factories directly start organizing and preparing a complete production line according to the aircraft body and structure designed for this airliner!
This is a rhythm of preparing for a big and fast start. Once the model verification is no problem, mass production will start directly!
Unlike the modern airliner research and development process in the main world, early airliner research and development was fast-paced, generally based on improvements to previous transport aircraft or airliners. In terms of time, it would take 2-3 years to come out, and then it would be put into civil use after rapid certification. On this basis, larger and newer models are continuously iterated and updated according to market conditions.
Ren Zhong's side is also in this rhythm, but he wants to go even faster!
According to the plan, this airliner will complete the Dongda domestic aviation verification and certification process within two years, first put into use on domestic routes, and then obtain airworthiness certification in Europe and North America.
After all, Ren Zhong is preparing to use this airliner as a trump card to compete with similar models from McDonnell Douglas and Boeing. In the future battle for aviation hegemony, the CAC-120 is the real starting point.
According to Ren Zhong's plan, after the CAC-120, the new widened and thickened CAC-150 will be designed in quick succession, adopting a 5-seat 30-row layout; new models with Spey turbofan engines iterated to obtain greater thrust. After having more powerful thrust, the CAC-180, which continues to lengthen on the aforementioned models, will be designed to form a 5-seat 36-row layout!
After this, Ren Zhong will consider continuing to stretch and thicken it, and finally change it to a new demand for a 4-engine intercontinental airliner.
People still have to have dreams. Ren Zhong's dream of a strong aviation country has not only been realized, but has also begun to enter the practical stage.
Now Dongda's machine tool industry has almost reached the peak of the Bright Sword world. There is obviously not much difficulty in putting together a machine tool-like equipment for an airliner production line. In the midst of intensive planning, the new airliner production and manufacturing links are rapidly evolving.
Most of them have been practically verified in the Yun-6 and Yun-8, so drawing on past experience, the construction of this new airliner production line is also very fast.
It even completed assembly and formation nearly a month ahead of schedule!
In this way, the four experimental productions can also be accelerated!
According to the current schedule, the first flight can be achieved in about a year!
At such a speed, let alone the great powers hearing it and shedding tears, even Dongda's own aviation people will be surprised.
In Dongda's aviation history, no model has ever entered the mass production line state so quickly. This time, it is also an exception. However, since Dongda's aviation industry started producing the Mustang P51D, which time has it not been developed as an exception? There is no problem until now. Although there are fewer early model verification tests, the quality control in the middle production links has always been strict, ensuring that every aircraft has a reliable supply of parts.
Ren Zhong also has strong confidence in the latest CAC-120.
(End of this chapter)