Beijing SuperWing CY-1 and LFC-16

I remember seeing an article (1990's) in either Flight or Aviation week about "fuselage strakes" which could be added to "any current fighter" to give it "fly by wire like agility" simply by adding these full length fuselage strakes to a fighter like, say, a Mig-21 for example.

The article had a picture of a mockup aircraft with the featured strakes.

Anyone have the article and info? Havent seen this idea used on any upgrades of older aircraft, seemed like a great idea if it worked.

I think the idea was from China.

adding strakes to existing aircraft idea "originated from China in 90s"?

are you serious?

well, it's basically because of the added lift and vortex generation though they are shaped for specific angles of attack

but really, you also need to put into consideration the fluid interaction with the fuselage, the *vertical stabs* and some inlet configurations

also, strakes were around earlier than that(F-16,MiG-29,Su-27,etc.)

He's referring to the Guizhou CY-1 or later LFC-16, which was actually based on a hevily modified JL-9 fuselage with these strange plates ... :

Guizhou claimed to buit a vey stable configuration with a good STOL-performance without a sophisticated FBW-system.

Deino

is that 2 sets of fins ???

I remember seeing an article (1990's) in either Flight or Aviation week about "fuselage strakes" which could be added to "any current fighter" to give it "fly by wire like agility" simply by adding these full length fuselage strakes to a fighter like, say, a Mig-21 for example.

Click to expand...

i am puzzled...i guess if you were to put aerodynamic surfaces ahead of the cg, they would have a destabilizing effect. You reduce static margin, but without FBW to tame the resposnse characteristics, it's a little bit risky.
???

Thats it Deino! Thanks for sharing that.

Any insight into why isn't this being used? I remember the article said they could "be fitted to existing fighters" seems like it would be a good upgrade for older but still operating aircraft.

Seems like installation on aircraft would be very specific to the type being implemented on. Same array of strakes on different aircraft would have different effects. Still not convinced that there is anything of substance in these claims...

Some more images I guess the Chinese were calling them "side plate canards".

Those are patented by Barnaby Wainfan...
http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=1_obAAAAEBAJ
http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=WY0XAAAAEBAJ

This idea was pushed by the Beijing SuperWing Technology Research Institute Co., founded in China sometime in mid 90s. The idea was to develop some very cheap but effective trick to modify the old fighters (mostly J-7 or MiG-21) to increase their performance. The solution was proposed strictly for the export (Cina never considered to buy it for the PLAAF) and it was designed for the countries, that cant afford even the new cheap modern supersonic fighter like FC-1/JF-17. The idea was demonstrated on the small RC model. Beijing SuperWing wanted to find the investors to get some money, so they decided to present the idea on the Zhuhai airshow in 2002.

In 2004, the management of the Beijing SuperWing decided to increase their chances and they started to cooperate with the state-owned Guizhou company. Their joint proposal was named LFC-16 (Light Fighter China with the internal designation 16) and its new version was based on the Guizhou FTC-2000. The idea was the same - to develop the cheapest usefull successor of the MiG-21 for the next century, but they failed to find the investor. The idea is dead now. The second reason of its fail, except the missing investor, was the relatively smooth development process of the FC-1/JF-17 fighter.