Start with a blacksmith shop.

Chapter 130 Test Drive

On the shelf in front of me sits a turbojet engine that is 90 centimeters long and 29 centimeters in diameter.

Compared to a real aircraft engine, this engine is quite small.

However, compared to the miniature turbojet engines used in model airplanes, this engine is much larger.

How big is a typical miniature engine? It's about 25 centimeters long and weighs nearly two kilograms.

How much thrust does a micro-turbojet have? It's about 12 to 15 kilograms.

The one in front of him is different. It's only 90 centimeters long, but weighs a total of 120 kilograms, and its thrust is a whopping 1.4 tons!

With such data, it has already fallen out of the category of turbojet engines for model aircraft.

Compared to the miniature turbojet engines used in model airplanes, this is worlds apart. One has a thrust in the kilogram range, while the other has already reached the ton level!

The two engines he manufactured can generate a thrust of 2.8 tons, while the aircraft he designed is only 3.5 meters long.

How long is a VW Pineapple? Four meters! It weighs 1060 kilograms. A single engine can lift a Pineapple into the sky, which shows how powerful the engine is.

His model airplane is 3.5 meters long, and its final total weight will definitely not exceed 1.2 tons. With two engines producing a total thrust of 2.8 tons, the airplane can also carry 1.6 tons of other items.

Now that the engine has been built, it's inevitable that it needs to undergo ignition testing. Although it has already been tested in the laboratory, it still needs to be tested in reality.

Lacking a test bench, he had a makeshift one built on an empty plot of land in the Shuzhen factory area where nothing had been built yet.

They drove eight-meter-deep piles into the ground, and then used the highest grade concrete to build a two-meter-high platform.

A weighbridge was erected on the high platform, and the amount of thrust the engine could generate was displayed on this weighbridge!

This is the simple test stand that Li Zhenhua built himself.

After the simple test stand was built, he called Liu Xiaodong, who was at home, to come to the workshop to help.

The two men carefully loaded the 200-plus-pound engine onto a small truck that had been properly secured against vibrations, and then headed towards the test stand.

When Liu Xiaodong saw the cylindrical engine, he accepted it calmly, as he was already used to seeing such things.

Ever since the three of them returned from the Military Museum, in his eyes Li Zhenhua had been working hard on aircraft engines. He had first created a radial engine, and then the White Tiger motorcycle.

Even though he had developed a turbojet engine this time, he wasn't too surprised; in fact, he was quite relieved.

Fortunately, he developed a turbojet engine, which has no market in the civilian sector, so he didn't have to worry about how much of an impact it would have on him.

The two men went to the open space on the test bench and used a chain hoist to lift the engine onto the test bench.

After securing the chains connecting the weighbridge to the engine and completing all preparations,

Then they pushed a barrel of aviation kerosene to the test stand, inserted the fuel line directly into the barrel, and manually pumped some fuel into the engine.

All preparations were complete upon arrival; all that remained was the ignition test.

Under Liu Xiaodong's watchful eye, Li Zhenhua started the small turbojet engine in front of him.

As the engine started running, it emitted the distinctive whistling sound of a turbojet engine.

As the amount of fuel injected increases, the exhaust flame from the engine's nozzle also lengthens!

The tail flame initially turned red, then gradually changed to orange, and finally formed a blue tail flame.

When you see the blue exhaust flame, you know that the temperature inside the engine has exceeded two thousand degrees Celsius.

During observation, the engine ran very smoothly. Only after the fuel level was increased to the maximum did we start to check the data displayed on the weighbridge.

1400KG.

Upon seeing this displayed data, Li Zhenhua also showed a slight smile.

Liu Xiaodong, who was following beside him, also came over. Seeing the data above, he didn't understand it, so he searched online to see what level 1.4 tons of thrust was.

After searching, he learned what thrust-to-weight ratio was. Thinking about the engine weight he had obtained before, he calculated that the thrust-to-weight ratio reached 12!

I then searched for information about the US's top-of-the-line V-22 fighter jet; its engine has a thrust-to-weight ratio of 10-11.5.

Compared to the F119, the thrust-to-weight ratio of the F12 was even better, which horrified him.

This also demonstrates the extraordinary nature of this small engine!

After learning a few things, Liu Xiaodong moved closer to Li Zhenhua.

"Zhenhua, tell me the truth, what exactly are you planning to do?"

The list you gave me before the New Year included furnaces and lithography machines—you're really going all out!

Just by looking at this engine in front of me, I know it's something special. I just did some research.

This thing has a thrust-to-weight ratio of 12! That's 12! It's even higher than the thrust-to-weight ratio of the V-22 engine!

What exactly are you planning to do?

Amidst the whistling of the engine, Liu Xiaodong's question was not clearly heard by him, but judging from the expression on the other side, he could guess the gist of it.

Instead of answering him immediately, she started calculating the fuel consumption.

Seeing that the data matched the previous data from the lab, he then reduced the amount of fuel injected and gradually brought the engine to a stop.

As they were testing, the engine's piercing roar had already attracted the attention of most people in the factory area.

Everyone saw the strange platform that was more than two meters high, and they also saw the cylindrical object placed on the platform.

Li Zhenhua walked over to Liu Xiaodong and sat down without caring whether the ground was dirty or not.

He patted the yellow earth next to Liu Xiaodong, gesturing for him to sit down.

After he sat down, he began to speak: "I didn't plan to do anything. It's just that when I went to the Canada Airshow last time, I came across the Buddha 14."

I sat in the cockpit of the Buddha-14 for a while, but as for actually driving it, that was just wishful thinking.

After I got back, I wanted to build a model airplane to play with. I'll install a 360-degree camera on it and make the ground control panel look nice.

"Wouldn't that fulfill my dream of flying a plane? That's just what I was thinking, purely for fun, nothing more!"

Liu Xiaodong didn't completely believe it after hearing this. If the engine was this amazing, could it just be a hobby?

But there was nothing he could do; after all, the other person was the boss!

During their rest period, the engine cooled down completely.

After the temperature was lower, they worked together to remove the engine from the test stand.

Back in the manufacturing workshop, he painstakingly disassembled the engine into pieces.

Check each part inside the starter motor to see if there are any problems with them.

After a thorough inspection, all the parts were as he expected and performed very well.

After receiving this data, a smile finally appeared on his face.

Now he can begin building the second engine, which will be faster than the first.

Some of the parts had already been manufactured beforehand, which sped up the process.

After finishing the two engines, the next step is to build the variable-sweep wing housing for the model aircraft.

This case is a complete copy of the F-14's design, but some modifications have been made.

Because he also had these concerns: what if the US discovered that the casing structure of his model airplane was identical to that of the Ford-14?

I'm sure the CIA in the US will try every means to get rid of him or bring him to the US.

The casing parts use lightweight, high-strength alloys, which are also structurally very stable single-crystal metal alloys.

Since discovering the advantages of single-crystal alloys, he has been making any materials he can smelt into single crystals, regardless of the high cost!

He worked day and night to create the chassis of the model airplane, and all the parts were produced.

After the casing is completed, the next step is to manufacture the wings and install the model aircraft fuel tanks inside the wings.

Apart from the space for landing gear and other essential parts, the rest of the space in both wings was converted into fuel tanks.

Furthermore, some unused spaces on the model aircraft were converted into fuel tanks. The model aircraft can hold a total of 475 liters of aviation kerosene, which is about 370 kilograms.

After obtaining this data, I silently calculated the takeoff weight of the model airplane with a full tank of fuel, which was less than 1.6 tons.

With a thrust of 2.8 tons, 1.6 tons is just over half of the data, which means that this model aircraft can also lift 1.2 tons of other things.

After six months of hard work, he finally managed to assemble the mechanical parts of the model airplane by hand.

Now it was June or July, and for the past six months, he hadn't paid any attention to company affairs.

He was oblivious to what was happening outside, focusing solely on building his model airplane.

During those six months, he secretly and painstakingly sculpted the 2.5-meter-long engine part.

With that batch of parts, he could assemble two 2.5-meter turbojet engines if he wanted to.

However, he always had reservations and never dared to develop the engine.

In the workshop, after the last piece of carbon fiber skin for the model airplane was riveted in place, only the nose section of the aircraft remained unassembled.

The remaining unassembled machine head is where electronic equipment is placed.

Once the flight control and avionics systems are installed in the model aircraft, it can now fly into the sky and stand shoulder to shoulder with the sun.

But all of this was not yet a start; his next challenge was the internal control system.

He had already decided what kind of control system he wanted to implement.

Moreover, some time ago, he came across a live stream of a flight simulation game on Kuaishou and Douyin.

That simulation game was very realistic; it had all the controls—joystick, throttle, pedals, and so on.

Moreover, there are various price ranges available, with the lowest price starting at just 30,000 RMB.

The most expensive one, the civilian version available on the market, costs around 5 US dollars.

This is a flight simulator cockpit; it looks similar to a gyroscope.

It allows the cockpit to rotate at any angle in the air.

He had his eye on this very thing and planned to use it to build his control panel.

(End of this chapter)