Paul Fleming and James Lake Maiden the XP-72.
In 2016, Paul Fleming and James Lake started a project that eventually produced a scale model of the Republic XP-72 "Super Thunderbolt." A feature of this plane is the use of contra-rotating propellers. James Lake (Lake Microsysems) designed a new power system for the project, which includes a gear box driven by an electric motor: James machined the new gear box. See the "Resources" section for links to more information—including a couple of videos showing the engine testing.
On Saturday, July 22, 2019, the XP-72 underwent its maiden flight at Sanderson Field, Shelton WA. The images below were taken Saturday and include some of the other pilots and planes on the field.
The images below are 1400px wide and are best displayed on a desktop monitor. The images will, however, scale to small displays.
I hope you enjoy these images as much as I enjoyed capturing them.
Gallery
Resources
About the Images
The images were taken with a Canon Rebel T3i. I used Canon 60mm and 100mm macro lense for the images. All images received simple processing in Photoshop and were saved as low-resolution JPEG images that were optimized for the Web.