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You could argue that any or all of the above could cripple any 5th generation fighter and put it on a level playing field with some 3rd gen. types

AI is already doing rapid stock trading and in vehicles so rather than 10 years away arguably already here. True, given enough operational leeway they even might enact a solution before a human observer could intervene. Automated trading bot flash crashes can and have wiped out real fortunes and livelihoods and yet their use is growing and growing

There’s lots of designs have been proposed in the last 20 years dusting off the venerable W. Petter’s rationale behind the gnat and proposing small, subsonic light jet attack aircraft but no buyers. I imagine that drone warfare and AI will make any predictions about the future uses of expensive fighters seem silly in hindsight. If you look at how machine learning has revolutionised the play of chess and go in the last couple of years it meant people having to completely rethink how the games are played with machines making baffling plays, sacrifices and positions that humans would never have made. An AI using antagonist with expendable cloud networked drones might make top-line fighters redundant sooner than we expect and mean that the arms race is all on AI. Deep Blue in the mid 90s managed to beat Kasparov but cost some $55M, was enormous and a 1 of a kind. 20 years later the Playstation 4 was launched as a toy that was is twice as fast. Between that rate of advance and the speeds of 5G wireless connectivity I can’t see how drone aircraft won’t utterly change the strategic landacape

It could be argued that that was a war waged by economic means and that the collapse of Soviet Communism was due to the failure to provide that “fairly decent standard of living”. Even from the winning side we racked up public debt, ruinous environmental and social damage and forwent investment into healthcare, education etc. to pay for it.

Much like our gracious thread author adds as a sound effect while he swooshes the test print around pretending to fly it?

Now that seems like destiny. If this prints out ok would you like the prototype parts to assemble for your collection? I’ve got a lot of other half-done projects to do so there’s every chance that this’d languish for ages waiting for me to get round to doing it It does, reading the chapter on early transonic designs that led to the Fairey Deltas and English Electric P.1 there were a couple that had that look about them. A Fairey swept wing proposal, a Bristol and a Gloster... hmmm... I can feel a new to-do list brewing in the back of my mind already

I agree, I think there is a lot of knowledge in the forum it is just a case of gathering it all in and making it digestible for the mainstream reader Added link to @PhantomMJI's article on safe handling, use and disposal of resin and prints

I have to concede the point to @Gorby and say that I'm finding it less and less ugly now that it is closer to the point of printing plastic (and having checked in Tony Buttler's Secret Projects book 1 it is very clear that the P.1 at the same point in development was no oil painting) @Mattlow - this is where I ended up with that model I was using for our discussion about lofting and rails So. Checking it out against the drawings... not looking too bad In dim light, from the right angle and after a couple of drinks it might even consider itself ok looking. Add the couple of 30mm cannons specified and you almost have a 2nd generation jet fighter Exported as the stl with wheels up, wheels down and as a kit of parts it almost looks like it has a bit of purpose about it

No doubt tempted into relocating by the Texan steer steaks. (insert your own longhorn joke that would get you a spell on the naughty step from the forum gods here)

Some do sell stuff claiming to be crystal clear e.g. https://www.3djake.uk/fillamentum/pla-crystal-clear-1?sai=2689&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIn9r-ypv86gIVQ7DtCh19cQqREAQYASABEgIvFfD_BwE but in printing small air voids trapped between layers or bits of airborne dust will scatter light make it difficult to get a really nice transparency. I’d say translucent rather than a true transparency and the quality surface finishes will be critical to getting a nice look.

You can certainly with good tuning and part orientation minimise the impact of the lines. @Simon Cornes if it is RAF jets that you like then here is a typical example below of some parts I made for a 1/72 scale Fairey Large interceptor to F.155 which will take pretty minimal filling and priming. You can see around the cockpit framing where the line width starts to be a struggle to the FDM printer. This'd be a doddle for a resin printer and I'll go back to the base design and add much more detail if I were to print on a resin machine

I've tried the smaller nozzles and the main product was increased extruder wear, failed parts and blocked nozzles. Not worth the effort and grief. I plan to get a resin printer to complement. Totally, they are complimentary technologies.

I struggle on FDM with anything less than 0.4mm horizontal resolution and 0.16mm vertical. Any finer than that and reliability starts to goes out of the window.

Even earlier than that, I think it was about 1948 that this was drawn up. That Lightning point is one I keep coming back to - the P1A initial sketches also looked a bit unpromising but it blossomed once it had grown past gawky adolescence I might do a 2nd version based on the tailed delta, Sapphire engined redraft and print and finish both off to compare

Finbar Saunders has crossed the pond?

I’m sick with envy at how well this is going. Bloomin’ lovely

No two ways about it - this plane is ugly as sin. I've faffed about adding wheel bays and undercarriage and growing to like it less and less. I'm not sure even some roundels and a sharkmouth could rescue this monstrosity

I normally model at the 1/72 size I intend to normally print so that I can read off what dimension each element is going to be. I find it helps me visualise what it’ll be like in real life and judge how printable and mechanically robust it’ll eventually be. For 1/48 I’ll likely take the same base model, tweak here and there then print at 150%

Lo and behold! It has innards and a canopy. Still doesn’t look very charismatic mind you. The more I work on it the less I like the lines of it. Wheel bays, undercarriage, leading edge slats and maybe a rudimentary seat and then it is possibly time to print and see how it looks in the flesh. Most things look better once they’ve gained a roundel or two and got some serial numbers on them

Good save!

When Worlds Collide? Love that era of Sci-Fi films. That’s how I aspire the workshop to look eventually but at the moment everything is piled haphazardly in the loft as I’m between workshops so it looks like a fossil dig in the middle of a geometry convention with part finished hominid, sabre toothed cat and dinosair printed skulls and lots of lasercut scultures are mounded up The SR does have a firm Thunderbird 2 thing going on. The raising/lowering nose really adds a bit of retrofuturism

Doesn’t he have a name yet? Gort? Pants. Anyone want to buy a slightly used 3D printer? I’m scoring 0/3 on the prerequisites list

The article I’ve got on it describes wing fences at 50% and 70% of span although the sketches don’t show them. I’m swithering on whether to add them as I fear it’ll become even more MiGish

This is probably a klutz approach but I tend to include guide horizontal and vertical lines in each profile which intersect the outline where I want to snap the guiderail to. I’m not sure if it is sheer placebo or a cargo-cult approach but I think I get fewer errors of the kind you describe and even when they crop up it makes doing the manual coincident constraint to fix it a little easier

That’s really helpful @Schwarz-Brot - I don’t have any background at all in CAD or design so I’ve been feeling my way based on the Autodesk tutorial and trial and error (lots and lots of). I had hoped that books and magazines would have filtered out the better