This page is dedicated to the 'Switchblade'
The Switchblade is detailed in Northrop Patent 5,984,231
The pictures below show the sketches from that patent.
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The important feature is the variable forward swept wing.
This allows the plane to be optimised for a very wide range of flight regimes.
I have had a landing speed of around 120kts with wings fully spread, coupled with a cruise speed of Mach 3 at
70,000ft. It also allows extreme agility for air supremacy (wings back), coupled with great stability as a bomb
platform (wings forward).
So far I have built two versions:
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This version can be recognised (hopefully!) as the first version in the patent.
I got a fair way into building it before deciding that the engine layout was all wrong. As soon as the plane starts maneuvering, the engine intake will be blanked off by the forward fuselage. This will starve the engines of air just when you don't need it. Hence version 2, which is very similar to Fig 3 in the patent (with the tail fins of Fig 2).
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At the moment most of my work is going into the flight model, trying to minimise the upset caused by the huge range
of sweep. The low speed handling is very good, in fact it might make a good trainer!
At high speed the artificial stability is very difficult to set up, and the centre of lift moves rather a lot,
causing drag from the canards. Still, I shall keep going.