Pedestal Fighter Challenge Contestant

Brief History

During the mid 1950s, the Tupolev Design Bureau company was experimenting with different designs of aircraft to better understand which ones were complete wastes of time and resources, and which ones would be global competitors. The "Pedestal" wing design was a favorite amongst the engineers and design team behind the Tuploev Tu-30M "Grechin". The aircraft featured nothing noteably special, except for the placement of the primary wing. It was mounted via a singular pylon in the center of the aircraft holding the primary wing below the main fuselage. One immediately noted feature of this aircraft during the airflow analytics in wind tunnel testing was it's streamlined airflow around the main wings due to the pylon seperating the primary wings from the fuselage. Similar to how modern turbo fans have a pylon seperating the engine from the wing for increased aerodynamic propteries. It so far seemed to be successful. Although, there wasn't many other benefits. And after progressing the design to a real life prototype model, it was then noticed the disadvantages to having a "pedestal" wing mounted design. 1 was the landing gear. It was challenging to properly mount a nose landing gear to fully account for the distance between the main wing and the bottom of the front of the fuselage. It was done, but a long lanky nose gear wasn't something the aeronautical engineers were a fan of. Especially with the nose gear retracting backwards, it required lots of bracing, which in return added unwanted weight. Secondly, for an aircraft of this size, it would have been preferred to have a bomb bay to carry bomb ordinance. Although once again, the "pedestal" design completely threw the bomb bay door idea out the window, as there was simply no where to fit one in. The design was then given 4 air to ground Kh-15 missiles and 4 R-60 air to air missiles. After about 5 test flights, the flight characteristics were not nearly great enough to prove the "pedestal" wing a design to push forward in production. Although had they not experimented with this unorthadox method to mounting a wing, they would have never known its disadvantages. The only prototype was then scrapped and destroyed. Leaving no real life models to exist anywhere in the world.

Controls
1=Nav Lights
2=Jettison Weapons
3=Drogue Chute
G=Landing Gear & Landing Lights
VTOL=Flaps (Flaps will auto retracts past 390 MPH)

Armament
4x Raduga Kh-15
4x Molniya R-60
Countermeasures

Features
Hollow cockpit with functioning buttons, levers, etc.
Hollow landing gear wells
Custom wing airfoils
Quality detail with low part count
Accurate speculated flight performance