THE P-36 PROTOTYPE

The Prototype

Our second design, our first airplane. While we started with a two-seater 5/8th scale F6F Hellcat as our first design, back in 2016 we decided to put that project on hold and start fresh. The thought being that we needed a smaller and more accessible aircraft for our first design, one that is afforable and potentially certifiable as an LSA, thus LiteFighters was born. This prototype is our baby. Designed as both a P-36 and a P-40, it is so flexible that a swapping out of the engine, firewall forward, and some specific fairings is all it takes to switch the model.

The prototype, N936SB (think of the 9 as a backwards P), is our ‘alpha build.’ While thousands of hours have gone into the design and engineering of this aircraft, being designed and built from the ground up, there is no replacement for the verification and validation that comes from building a prototype. It has allowed the team to iron out dozens of small design issues that would never have been caught in one of our calculations or in the CAD. Building your design is hands down the best way to learn what can be improved. The goal of this prototype is to prove out the design, get it flying, and determine the best changes for the next iteration.

After first flight, we intend to take applications for ‘beta builders.’ We are looking for a small group of experienced pilot-builders who love WWII aviation as much as we do in order to build the second generation of the LiteFighter. While we have documented extensive notes and lessons learned from the alpha build, we are hoping the beta builds will help us further refine our product and be able to provide future customers with through guidance. The hope is that a LiteFighter can be a lot of things for a lot of pilots, be it your first homebuilt or your 20th, we aim to make the LiteFighter build as accessible yet challenging; the flying as safe as possible, and still exhilarating.

The Preliminary Specs

Our engineers have spend countless hours evaluating, estimating, iterating, and collaborating the performance of the LiteFighter prototype. Design for light aerobatics (think Barrel Rolls and Immelman’s, not Pugachev’s Cobras or Snap Rolls) the Litefighter is designed to handle 3.8 g’s at max gross weight. While the production aircraft design is already being updated to meet 4.4g’s at a max gross weight. While the design of the prototype has erred on the conservative side in the name of safety, we think the aircraft will still be fun to fly:

Why the The P-36 Hawk?!

We get asked this a lot and we love to answer it. We decided to go with a the P-36 for a few reasons:

First: Its cool!

Second: It is extremely underappreciated. The P-36 saw combat from Day One (for America) and was credited with two of the first aerial victories of the War at Pearl Harbor. That said, the P-36 was already being flown by the French, the Finns, and RAF and they would continue to see service throughout WWII. Heck, the Argentinians flew it through the 1950s! The Hawk represents the the first generation of warbirds; what better way for us to start out our project than at the beginning.

Third: The P-36 is a great place to start to show off the modularity of the LiteFighter concept. We plan to convert the design to a P-40 which primarily only requires changes from the firewall forward. As the successor to the P-36 in the Curtiss line, the P-40 is the natural choice to evolve the Scalebirds line. The P-40 is an iconic fighter of the early war years, represented by the Flying Tigers in China, or the RAF and Free French in North Africa. More importantly, the basic design is so extremely similar that our builders can choose to build either the P-36 or the P-40 depending on the engine they want to use. Furthermore, we have already began preliminary design concepts using the existing LiteFighter design to modify the basic fuselage, empennage, and wing structure to build an A6M Zero, FW190, and P-47.

Fourth: We have a great partnership with Verner Motor and wanted an aircraft that can show off these excellent, modern radial engines.

Lastly: It has never been done. While we at ScaleBirds love Spitfires, Corsairs, and Mustangs; they have all been done before. We wanted something uniquely ScaleBirds.

Lt. Gordon Sterling Jr.

Like all great endeavors, we wanted to tie our efforts with that of a greater purpose and pay homage to the men who served in the P-36 during WWII. So what better way to do that than to finish our aircraft in honor of a local Connecticut hero. Lt. Gordon Sterling of West Hartford, Connecticut was one of a few dozen American pilots to get up in the air at Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. Still a pilot-in-training on that fateful day, he jumped into a ‘borrowed’ P-36 and joined into the fray against overwhelming odds. Lt. Sterling was lost-at-sea over the pacific and posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his courage in the face of the enemy. While we do not know exactly what the P-36 he flew that day looked like, we have tried to replicate it to the best of our knowledge. Special thanks to the gentlemen at the Warbird Information Exchange for sharing their knowledge and helping us try to get this right.