Upcoming Local Legend: Dornier Do 31 by IniBuilds

Discussion Hub Aircraft
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According to today’s dev stream, apparently we’re getting this in a month (if I understand correctly, it’s coming in April based on the roadmap, not with the SU15 anticipated release in a week or two), which I believe is the earliest we’ve heard about one of these releases.

Looks like quite an off-the-wall aircraft, but a welcome change (if not the most popular) due to VTOL ability. Here’s hoping for a plethora of interesting fictional liveries.

Edit: I likely should have moved this to the Aircraft subforum but it’s also not yet released so…meh.

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Finally some large craft as Local Legends again, not that I didn’t enjoy general aviation or warbirds but I am longing for something like Caravelle as a French local legend or Avro 748 for the UK or L-410 for Czechia

As for the Do-31 itself it’s not really my jam, but given that it looks straight out of Lem’s “The Adventures of Pilot Pirx” I might try it

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Neat aircraft. The state of the Mu-2 leaves me little hope this will actually function properly or have any issues fixed, though.

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This. Really neat aircraft however I have issues with some ini products that have been communicated to them multiple times that have never been addressed.

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Two examples of the three made of the Do 31 flew, the Do 31E1, which was used to certify the aircraft for normal flight but was incapable of VTOL, and the Do 31E3, which was capable of VTOL. The version shown in the dev stream was the E3.

This version has a long and robust probe sticking out of the nose. It’s common for prototype aircraft to have additional instruments mounted to booms projecting from the front of the aircraft; though they don’t usually have mounts as spectacularly solid as the probe we see here.

I can think of three explanations for why this probe might be as it is:

it provided relatively delicate test instruments with protection from jetwash;
it provided a visual reference for test pilots who would not know how far they could trust the new, elaborate and at that point experimental stability system;
it contained sensors necessary for that system to operate.

I don’t know which of these three explanations is correct, or whether there might be another one (if anyone does know the true explanation, I’d love to hear it).

What I am absolutely sure of is that the probe completely ruins the appearance of the aircraft, and as far as I can judge, drawings of production versions of the aircraft never showed it.

So I would really appreciate it if Inibuilds would give us - even if only in exterior view - a version of the Do 31 lacking the probe.

Incidentally, here’s a description of the Dornier Do 31E from The Observer’s Book of Aircraft, 1967 Edition:

Dornier DO 31E
Dornier DO 31E1382×1080 257 KB

The photo is of the E1, the three-view drawing does not show the probe. The accompanying article describes the proposed production version - which would have had ten lift engines - as the Do 31S, to which designator Google can find me no other reference.

Edit: this YouTube video explains that the probe was used for gathering test data only and would not have been present on production aircraft. The explanation is at 3:20, but if you care enough to look at that then you probably want to watch the whole thing:

Just to be clear, I’m not asking for the probe to be removed from the prototype - it clearly belongs there. But I wouldn’t mind a second version that does have the probe removed - surely that would involve minimal work - which would look a bit more like a production version, even if functionally it’s the same as the prototype.

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In fact only two prototypes of the actual aircraft were built. The third you are referring to (GSG) was only a mock-up with engines for hover tests.
The engines also weren’t the same. Do 31 has the same Pegasus engines as the Harrier.

E3 is in the Flugwerft Oberschleißheim near Munich, E1 in front of the Dornier Museum in Friedrichshafen (Lake Constance).

Edit:
Looks I was wrong with the SG I posted a picture of earlier. Data from that particular “Schwebegestell” was used for the Do 31 but it isn’t the third prototype you referred to. Sorry about that. Corrected my statement.

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Wow. Cool. I would have never expected that this aircraft would come to MSFS!
Although it never went into production it’s definetely a part of aviation history.
I’ve been at Schleißheim and was in the E3 there.
Looking forward for this one. :+1:t2::blush:

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My German’s pretty pathetic, but I’m fairly sure the commentator is describing the aircraft (or at least a reasonable portion of one) shown here as the E2.

https://youtu.be/x3YueCf1JeI?si=5qkpP1tjZcs4_4Bn&t=195

But I was wrong in that I was given to understand that the E2 didn’t fly, when apparently it did. Blame Wikipedia for that:

“E2 was a static test airframe, and did not ever fly.”

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never heard of an E2. Interesting

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Strange: The German Wikipedia states the three aircraft as SG, E-1 and E-3, but the English Wikipedia as E-1, E-2 and E-3…

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Wikipedia’s generally pretty good for anything that’s not politically contentious, but ‘pretty good’ is not quite the same as ‘infallible’. :smiley:

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Here’s a good article with more info on what each airframe (and the testbed0 achieved:

https://military-review.com/12497675-dornier-do-31-the-worlds-only-vertical-take-off-and-landing-transport-aircraft

A bit on how the engines worked (and good shots of them) in this Flying article:

Seems the engines in the wingtip pod were mostly there because if one of the Pegasus engines failed in VTOL it would be unrecoverable.

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Unfortunately only in German this seems to be a very comprehensive website:
https://do-31.de

Who ever runs this seems to really know the history. And according to them the three prototypes were GSG, E-1 and E-3.

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I’m pretty sure my actual Bundeswehr contemporary video trumps your historian, however knowledgeable. :slightly_smiling_face:

To save you looking back:

https://youtu.be/x3YueCf1JeI?si=5qkpP1tjZcs4_4Bn&t=195

Of course, it’s possible, even likely, that the E2 was also known as the Großen Schwebegestell (GSG) - the Big Hovering Frame. After all, that’s what it was. The E1 tested the airframe, but lacked the vertical lift capability. The E2, or GSG, tested the lift capability, but had only a rudimentary airframe. The E3 combined both the airframe and the lift arrangement.

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Sorry, my last post was meant to be a reply to you, but I clicked the wrong button.

Just because I’m right doesn’t mean I’m not an idiot.

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inibuilds has their own forum. Perhaps a request can be made there: https://forum.inibuilds.com/

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definitely for me to, when I was about 10 years old the do-31 in friedrichshafen started my love for VTOL’s leading me down a 15 year long (and still continuing) rabbit hole, first during my college years where I built a vtol for my college end papers and now ending up in mechanical engineering at university, all thanks to an amazing guide in the dornier museum who himself worked on the do-31.

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Although interesting, there’s so many countries that are not or under represented in this series. Germany has certainly been well, if not over represented.

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While I agree that Germany has done well in the representation department it’s also clear that there aren’t that many countries that actually HAVE a long tradition in aircraft production. South America, Oceania, Africa and Asia (apart from Japan) long had barely any aircraft industry. And even today China, who started only a few decades ago by copying Russian designs, certainly still isn’t a global player.

The major aircraft developing countries still are (not in that order):

  • The U.S.
  • Germany
  • Great Britain
  • France
  • Italy
  • Brasil
  • Soviet Union/Russia and of course Ukraine with Antonov

Then there are a few countries with limited and often specialised aircraft industry like

  • Sweden
  • Switzerland
  • Canada
  • Japan
  • Austria
  • Netherlands
  • India
  • Spain (although their aircraft industry was held aloft for a long time by manufacturing licensed aircraft)

So all in all I see a pretty good representation. Probably not perfect or completely fair, but what is.
We won’t be seeing any Russian and probably Chines aircraft from Asobo, I could imagine since that probably would start discussions or even s**t-storms due to the sensitive global situation.
On the other hand the three biggest markets for MSFS currently are: The U.S., Germany and the UK, so I expect that Asobo and MS would want to cater to the crowd that brings in the most bucks. If anything I would say that British aircraft are the most underrepresented currently.

I guess who the pilot was and where it was flown for presentation purposes is the least of the factors that make the plane German.
The engines are a different thing of course. On the other hand after WW2 many NATO countries have started to cooperate in order to minimize costs. Even DURING WW2 the P-51D Mustang used a British Merlin engine because the Allison didn’t cut it. That didn’t make it any less of an American bird.
The whole idea and concept of the Do 31 was devised in Germany. It was specifically designed to work with the Pegasus engine, and it was built on location by a German company. That makes it a German plane.

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Probably just me, but I don’t really see the difference - maybe a language barrier. Like with modern automobiles it’s hard to put a nationality on some products. Volkswagens are built in Germany, the U.S., Mexico, Brasil, South Africa, China, Hungary, Spain, Belgium and several other countries, but they will always be considered German cars because the manufacturer is German.