EDF Afterburner build log

by RCExplorer | March 18, 2013 | (43) Posted in Projects

 

Ever since my friends Christian, Susan and Peder took me to my very first air show I have been in love jet airplanes. They sound so amazing. I clearly remember the first time I saw a JAS-39 Gripen taking off with full afterburner. It sounded like the rumble of thunder, so loud that I could feel it in my lungs. The tongue of fire licking the runway is a sight I will never forget.

Ever since I've wanted to have a rc plane like that. But the price, safety issues and space needed to operate a turbine engine is not something that appealed to me.

So I tried Electric Ducted Fan models, which can have a pretty cool sound if setup properly, but they don't make that noise nor can they shoot flames... Or can they?

This is my journey to discover if I could add an afterburner to an EDF model.

This is the plane I chose. A Durafly De Havilland DH.100 Vampire. Maybe not the most obvious choice for an afterburner. But, there was an experiment to add an afterburner/reheat to a vampire back in the late 40's.

Unfortunately it never go to take off as the resonance created by firing the afterburner made the booms and fuselage shake so bad that it was deemed too dangerous to fly. I love the vampire and I couldn't think of a plane more worthy of having a working afterburner.

Time to remove and inspect the EDF unit.

The stock EDF unit out in the wild. Nothing wrong with it and it seemed quite straight forward to add the flame holder and e-flux ring to the back of it.

To make the flame holder I used 30 gauge (0.3mm) thick galvanized steel I got from Lows.

Wrapped in a circle.

Fit's perfectly on the back of the motor mount.

I chose to use butane for fuel as it's easy to get, has a great burn but yet is relatively safe. Igniting it is the though bit though. I chose to try a hotwire coil first.

Nicrome wire is almost impossible to solder. So in order to get a good solid connection between the nicrome wire and the the power wires I did this little trick.

A small piece of brass tubing and a big pair of pliers and you can crimp on a end that is easy to solder to.

Works great.

Coiled the hotwire around a round tube.

 

Installed in the flame holder tube.

Heated up. It's controlled by a RC swtich hooked straight to the main 4S lipo.

Time to make the e-flux ring.

Making some holes in the e-flux ring.

10 holes in total. 5 on the front and 5 on the back.

IT WORKS! Kind of... I had some real trouble getting the hotwire to work properly. When the EDF is running it cools the hotwire down so much that it's not hot enough to ignite the butane. But if the hotwire is shortened, which means it gets hotter, it can ignite the fuel but immediately burns up after ignition due to the massive temperature difference inside of the flame holder tube. I've seen others use the hotwire method on smaller EDF units with success but I came to the conclusion after a lot of experimentation that it simply doesn't work on a 70mm fan. So I tried another method...

A Stungun!

I got three of these of ebay for 25 bucks!

The inside of the stungun.

It works by simply stepping up the voltage from a 4s NiCd battery, which happens to be 5V. As soon as the flyback generator gets the 5V it starts outputting the ~30,000V

The only I needed. The flyback generator.

It weighs in at 50 grams, but it's going to be worth it.

I controlled it using a simple RC switch.

As soon as the RC channel the switch is hooked up to goes from low to high it opens up the output. In this case it just lets 5V through to the flyback generator from the stungun.

Test fitted in the plane.

Since there is going to be flames shooting out the tail pipe I though it would be a good idea to add a layer of protection in form of a aluminium foil. This particular one is copper colored on one side, which I think look pretty cool.

Marking where it need to be cut.

Installed in the exhaust tube.

The aluminium foil also doubles as a conductor for the stungun.

I used a 0.8mm MIG soldering wire to get the spark to jump in the low pressure zone of the flame holder.

Stungun glued in place using hotglue.

The improved flame holder. The blades help create the low pressure zone needed. Also added a metal "lid" to protect the motor from heat and sot.

Flame holder installed on the motor. The flame holder and e-flux ring are connected to the other output lead of the stungun.

Complete EDF unit installed in the fuselage. 

ERMAHGERD! SPERKS!

The tail pile is connected to one output of the stungun and the e-flux ring to the other.

To be able to dispense the butane in a easy and reliable manner, I made this little rig from some scrap wood.

The servo simply pushes the whole butane tube forward.

To save some weight and make space for the extra stuff I need to fit in there, I removed the landing gear.

Butane dispenser installed. Note the angle it's at. It need to be downwards to dispense the fuel fast enough.

Main landing gear removed.

163 grams removed.

Filled the landing gear holes with foam.

Sanded down.

To regulate the the flow of butane I added a limiter in the form of a small tube. I simply squished it in the middle until I got the optimum flow of butane.

Test firing. The exact frame of ignition.

Wohoo it works! Nice blue flame.

Time for some paint.

The Swedish air force had 70 Vampires in service up to 1952 when it was replaced by the J 29 flying barrel. Naturally I just had to repaint this vampire in the Swedish colors to honor my comrades.

Added the last trim.

It works!

Fire!

Wrong kind of fire!

DEFENITLY THE WRONG KIND OF FIRE!

Not good...

One of the servo wires had moved to close to the stungun wire and it arced over to the negative wire, passing through the receiver, which made it freeze up. I panicked and pulled the battery, thinking that the servo would stop pushing on the butane flask. But the servo had moved to far forward and locked on in the on position.

Plastic EDF units apparently don't like flames.

Melted tail pipe.

But shame to those who give up. Here is the new EDF unit. A Change Sun 10 bladed 70mm fan.

The Flame holder and e-flux ring survived. It just needed to be cleaned off and re soldered.

Time to fix the tail pipe.

I used a hotwire cutter and some blue foam to cut a new cone.

Inside cut as well.

Fits nicely

Spackaled and sanded.

Added two coats of water based paint, so the spray paint doesn't eat up the foam.

As good as new.

Tada! Ready for flight.

Went out to test fly it, but I ran into some trouble. The cold weather made the butane stay liquid for too long and made the combustion unstable at higher RPMs.

This is the solution I came up with. A simple spiral of brass tubing.

The butane now has to travel a much longer distance before getting to the e-flux ring. That gives it time to heat up and make the transition from liquid to gas form.

To make it work in really cold weather I stole a nicrome wire from a RC car tire heater system and wrapped it around the coil.

Then I insulated the whole thing with foam. Plugged in to the main 4S lipo it gives about 16W of heating power, which is plenty for this application. Now time to fly!

It's working!

Watch the episode and hear that awesome sound

Extended episode

COMMENTS

ronnie.burchfield. on March 19, 2013
great job david . wonder whats next for you that will be hard to top !!! lol !!!
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x3mperformance on March 19, 2013
This is an awesome article.
And boy... Did that EDF get the smell of jet propulsion???
Epic, and the touches of the Swedish Air force markings, nice.
This is what all the RC are about. Having old fashion fun, and was I laughing. Yep. Was I entertained, Yep.
Way to go.
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Bolvon72 on March 20, 2013
That's what I love about FT, "DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!" now here's a build log to show you how to do this at home... I think I will stick with the led fiberglass afterburner project.
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liveyourdreamsRC on March 20, 2013
Did you guys just have a stun gun laying around then? And great Job to Dave, keep the ideas coming. Also will this work with other EDF jets?
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Ralphtsp on March 22, 2013
You guys continue to amaze me with every project. Great work David!! Keep it coming and I may give up the TV and watch you all the time. Thanks!
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Joseph S. on October 31, 2016
I already watch him full time. I don't care about that crap on TV
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ftwingnut on March 22, 2013
Great job! The first thing I thought when I saw this was, "Flames on a foam jet??" Apparently I was justified in that thought, LOL! One thing I would have done differently would be the butane preheater coil. I would do away with the electric heater, which shortens your flight time/increases your flying weight, and simply put a small loop in the tube entering the e-flux ring so the flame preheats and vaporizes the fuel before it gets to the nozzles.

Keep it up! We love you guys!
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baconflyer on March 28, 2013
anyone else think it would be awesome to have a 12" tall pet david? no? just me? huh...
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F14 pilot on December 17, 2013
Nice work David! after seeing this Im thinking of Making one of my own after burner for a hobby king Hawker Hunter.
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leo on April 8, 2015
I was wondering what material the pipe for fuel supply is used
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Auntor on September 29, 2016
Indeed it is a Piece of Fine work. But my question is What is the purpose of FLUX RING???
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Joseph S. on October 10, 2016
That is so cool
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Joseph S. on October 31, 2016
:)
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Razor7177 on June 28, 2018

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Razor7177 on June 29, 2018

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Stepan K on January 16, 2019
Nice job! I'm wondering why not to build a real kicking afterburner. I think it's sometimes referred as fan-ramjet. In order to start pushing, the subsonic ramjet (afterburner) needs 1/2 Mach of incoming air speed. RC scale EDF usually provide 1/4 to 1/3 Mach top output speeds. So theres a sligh gap to overcome. I propose to try to stack two (or three) small EDFs in series. Most people would say there is no benefit, or does he think he can create an axial compressor this way? No way. It's not that case. The benefit here is that the slight overpressure potential of an EDF will be transformed into higher output air speed using a cone jet behind the last edf (just smaller outpup pipe diameter then the EDFs). I guess that , with 2 edfs, you can almost double the airspeed. Next part in the chain is the ramjet/afterburner. There must be an open gap between the EDFs and the ramjet (pressure stuff). Just three pipes forms the ramjet: 1- diffuser cone, 2 - burning chamber cylinder (with simple flame holder inside), 3 - jet cone. The diameters of inputs of particular sections should be like 1 : 2 : 1.5. The lengths of sections should be 2.5xdia, 1,5xdia, 0.5xdia respectively. The fuel consumption will be like 5 times worse than the worst turbojet, but the thrust will be at least double than the EDFs allone. For 2 60mm EDFs the afterburner may provide 4-5 pounds total thrust, compared to 2 pound potential of the edfs alone. Worth a try? ...simple? ...and no more complex turbines. (Note: the edf choice is a high pressure one... ....many blades and minimum clearance).
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Stepan K on January 16, 2019
...For bigger models, a maintenance free afterburner jet could be an arrangement called motorjet. Comprising 10k/min 1-2kw electromotor powering small supercharger (e.g. AMR300). The supercharger would feed the burning chamber (with cage flame holder like in turbojet, but with no moving parts in contact with high pressure, and a simple nozzle. Lubrication of the superchager lasts for thousands of hours. So its all about fitting an industry standard supercharger to a set of welded pipes and a powerfull jet engine is here. The main drawback here is the weight, that is about 2-3x higher than that of a turbojet.
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EDF Afterburner build log