View Single Post
  #12  
Old 04-13-2018, 03:44 AM
blackshire's Avatar
blackshire blackshire is offline
Master Modeler
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Fairbanks, Alaska
Posts: 6,507
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by BARGeezer
From what I can find, the only product of the Air Force Sandpiper program to fly was the AQM-81A Firebolt. It was a high altitude, high speed target drone that used the hybrid motor. It was a development of the HAST ( High Altitude Supersonic Target) program which followed on the promising results of the Sandpiper program. But it never went into production. Picture attached from Wikipedia.
Thank you for posting that. I used to have a copy of a videotape (shot at Eglin AFB) from which that picture came, when the MARS--Mid-Air Retrieval System--helicopter lowered the captured-on-'chute Firebolt onto the recovery net. The Firebolt had delta canards with slightly rearward-swept trailing edges, and its wing tip fins had straight, perpendicular (to the wing) trailing edges. I've long wished that a model rocket company would produce a Firebolt kit (its underside air scoop ram-air-driven oxidizer pump air intake could be used--on a model--to make it a ducted rocket). Scale models of any of these vehicles (AQM-37, Sandpiper, HAST/HAHST, Firebolt) would make super-fast RC rocket planes, but perhaps only someone like Ali Machinchy, who has cat-like reflexes (see: www.youtube.com/watch?v=orGca6G84U8 ), could fly them.
__________________
Black Shire--Draft horse in human form, model rocketeer, occasional mystic, and writer, see:
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperba...an-form/8075185
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6122050
http://www.lulu.com/product/cd/what...of-2%29/6126511
All of my book proceeds go to the Northcote Heavy Horse Centre www.northcotehorses.com.
NAR #54895 SR
Reply With Quote