Can You Build Your Own RC Jet Engine

Build Your Own RC Jet Engine

I′ve been doing a lot or research on the subject of RC Jet Engines, and up until now these engines have only been avalable to a few lucky modellers due to their very high price. Jetcat USA produce a fantastic range of real RC Turbine engines and are excellent quality, but they do cost 4 figures to buy. Many budding turbine users are priced out of the niche.

Can you make your own RC Jet Turbine? The main problem we will encounter is that the turbine wheel itself needs to be of the correct shape and material to work efficiently and aborb the immense heat and pressure involved. This was the same problem that the designers of the early Jumo series engines faced at the end of the second world war, they simply could not obtain the correct alloys to ensure reliability.

As I researched this issue I have descovered that a company called March Labs produces an off the shelf Turbine wheel that will form the basis for your home built RC Jet Turbine. This company also can provide CNC ready plans so your local engieering firm could produce all the parts required, allowing you to assemble the parts into a working RC Jet Engine. I appreciate that you will still need a degree of engineering knowledge to complete assembly and test, but this is well within the scope of many talented modellers.

This Turbine is used to produce a centrifugal type jet engine. This is exactly the same format favoured by the majority of commercial RC Jet engine manufacturers. It is the same type of engine first designed and developed by Sir Frank Whittle of Powerjets Ltd, and used in many early designs of post war aircraft such as the Gloster Meteor, the UK’s first operational Jet Fighter. Whittle is widely credited as being the first person to produce a successful jet engine in the 1930′s. Later developments saw a switch to the slimmer axial flow engine design, such as the Rolls Royce Avon engines these engines went on to power the BAC Lightning, the UK’s first supersonic fighter.

So the options are to produce your Jet engine from scratch using the plans from March Labs (I′ll leave that to the people out there with real talent) or use those plans to get the parts made locally. The third option is simply to buy a complete kit of parts from March labs.

Clearly this will be a major project, but the satisfaction gained, not to mention the money saved, will certainly make this project a truly worthwhile one. The only question is, are you up for that challenge?

RC Jet’s are the ultimate, now you can Build your own RC Jet Engine, and this for more RC Info