Hunting H.126
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The H.126 was an experimental aircraft designed and built by Hunting Aircraft in order to test the concept of blown flaps, or as they were known in Britain, "jet flaps". Only one aircraft was built, being flown in a series of one-hundred test flights at the Royal Aircraft Establishment's Aerodynamics Flight at RAE Bedford. It was then sent to the US for wind tunnel testing by NASA, and eventually made its way to the museum at RAF Cosford.
The aircraft was designed purely for test purposes, and thus lacked features such as retractable landing gear. The wing was mounted shoulder-level, and featured a set of struts, not for support but in order to provide piping for the compressed air used in the blown flaps. The rear control surfaces consisted of a fairly small triangular T-tail, similar to the one on the Gloster Javelin. The fuselage was fairly simple, similar to the Hunting Jet Provost in layout, but with a smaller cockpit for a single pilot. The air intake for the single Bristol-Siddeley Orpheus engine was located in the extreme nose. The jet flap system consisted of a series of sixteen nozzles arranged along the trailing edge of the wing, which were fed about 1/2 of the engine's hot exhaust thrust. A smaller amount, about 10%, was also fed into small nozzles on the wing tips to provide control thrust at low speeds. A similar system was later used on the Hawker Harrier for similar reasons. This left little power for forward thrust, and the aircraft was limited to low speeds, but the takeoff speed was a mere 32 mph, a speed most light aircraft would have trouble matching.
Hunting was awarded the contract in 1959 to build two aircraft. The first of these, XN714, flew on 26 March 1963, painted overall yellow with a matte black anti-glare area on the nose in front of the cockpit. The second was never completed and did not receive a hull number. Test flights were carried out between 1963 and 1967. In 1969 it was shipped to NASA and returned in May 1970, staying in storage until September 1972 when it was struck from the RAF records.
[edit] Specifications ()
General characteristics
- Crew: 1
- Length: 50 ft 2 in ()
- Wingspan: 45 ft 4 in ()
- Height: 15 ft 6 in ()
- Powerplant: 1× Bristol-Siddeley Orpheus BOr.3 Mk805 , 4,000 lb ()
Performance
- Stall speed: 32 mph ()
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