Kerbal Express Airlines - Regional Jet Challenge (Reboot)

[GDJ]

Considering the OP hasn't updated the front page, it may be worth making a new thread with all the tested and updated planes.

[CrazyJebGuy]

8 minutes ago, GDJ said:

Considering the OP hasn't updated the front page, it may be worth making a new thread with all the tested and updated planes.

I'll do it if there is some support for it, front post really needs updating.

But that does mean we now can choose to allow other mods, and that's probably going to cause a fight. I would suggest KAX, because it has 2.5m tail booms and structural fuselage, but if I do that I would put money on it that five people beg for five different mods, and then we either veto them and I'm a huge hypocrite, or we let them all in and this becomes much too complicated.

[CrazyJebGuy]

13 hours ago, neistridlar said:

Test Pilot Review: @CrazyJebGuy's GAI Sky Titanic

So how does it fly then? Well, the takeoff is rather long, with a takeoff speed of 90m/s it takes the better part of the runway at KSC, and that is with the afterburners. Without them it is unable to take to the sky before it falls of the end. We do however think that this could be greatly improved, as our test pilots reported that the plane could maintain stable flight as slow as 50m/s once it was in the air. A redesigned landing gear, allowing the aircraft to attain a 10 degree nose up while on the ground should remedy this.

The brochure warned that the plane did not handle heavy maneuvering very well, and we can confirm this to be true. In fact we would argue that it does only handle light maneuvering, breaking apart without even exceeding 2G in a turn. We would have liked to see at least the controls be limited to prevent this, as it is very easy to break the plane during normal operations. The landings are also a major source of breakage, so major that in fact, that we had more unsuccessful landings than successful ones, despite our best efforts. It even destroys the runway quite frequently. The few successful landings we had also revealed a second issue. The stopping distance is quite enormous, about the length of the KSC runway. Surprisingly it can ditch rather safely in the water, and we think this would be our preferred method of landing. Sadly the plane is unable to take off from water. This does however suggest that the landing issues are landing gear related as well.

We're really very embarrassed a plane could get through testing with faults like that, and we are working hard to fix it.

The problem (fixed now) is that the wings are too wide, and so when turning the high AoA gives them much more lift than the wing in between fuselages and so it twists the fuselages in opposite directions, so it looks like it just splits down the middle, as if you put something really heavy on the wing between fuselages. We just shortened the wings, problem solved.

Also it doesn't fly nose up in the air much more than smaller planes, you just notice it more because the plane is so much longer.

We also fixed the landing gear, having it rest in anything near the tail was not going to work, to get any appreciable angle would require absurdly large front wheels, simply due to the plane's enormous length. So instead we opted for no resting angle, but 3 sets of gears. One front one, a middle one, of equal height to the front one, and a rear, small one, so it doesn't get in the way of pivoting, and to stop tailstrikes. The middle set is placed slightly behind the plane's center of mass, and so it can easily lever itself up to rest on the middle and rear gears, and thus have a very good angle.

On a side-note, we added some engines to act as brakes, they point backwards, and are right near passenger cabins, so they are a huge pain for those passengers when firing, but we don't think this is an issue, since we don't expect them to fire much. They do get activated with staging though, so action group 3 disables them and enables all forward thrusting engines, AG 4 turns on the stopping engines and switches off all other engines though.

[neistridlar]

 

40 minutes ago, CrazyJebGuy said:

I would suggest KAX, because it has 2.5m tail booms and structural fuselage

I'm pretty sure that Airplane Plus has this as well. Though there are some issues with the drag calculations on the structural fuselages in Airplane Plus. I have not tested KAX.

Anyways has anyone tried PMing @Mjp1050? maybe we could convince him to update the OP if we gave him a post that was ready to just paste in.

[GDJ]

58 minutes ago, CrazyJebGuy said:

I'll do it if there is some support for it, front post really needs updating.

But that does mean we now can choose to allow other mods, and that's probably going to cause a fight. I would suggest KAX, because it has 2.5m tail booms and structural fuselage, but if I do that I would put money on it that five people beg for five different mods, and then we either veto them and I'm a huge hypocrite, or we let them all in and this becomes much too complicated.

I agree on the support.
As for mods, keep it as is or add KAX. Adding all the aircraft mods on this site would be problematic.

[neistridlar]

5 hours ago, CrazyJebGuy said:

But do submit it, it's worth a longer list. And anyways, If you do I'll review two planes today I wouldn't otherwise have done today, so it'll shorten it. Basically whenever I submit, I review two or more, It's just this time I'm reviewing on your behalf.

Alright I will submit it. After all I am starting to catch up to myself with 8 reviews to 12 submissions, and only 3 of those were after I started reviewing, so I should be caching up soon enough. Anyways I did a few more tweaks to make the ground handling better, as you might imagine this thing is quite tippy.

After seeing Habu industries successfully sell their Colossus, management at Neist Air decided they would make an even grander plane, and so they told the engineers to design the biggest plane they could imagine, then stick together as many of them as possible, to make an unimaginably big aircraft. Well, after many failed attempts, with planes falling apart the moment they hit the ground, the moment they left the ground, and just at random, they finally succeeded.

Flavor text: 
Neist Air presents the NA Slab 2592, the biggest production airliner to date! With seating for 2592 passengers and a range of 9700km it can transport a small city all the way around Kerbin twice without touching the ground! It can even operate from most runways as it can take off and land before reaching the spaceplane hangar at KSC, and the large number of wheels spread the weight out sufficiently not to damage the pavement on most runways. With a KPPM of 0.0048 and only 8 engines this aircraft offers astoundingly low operating costs. 

Craftfile: https://kerbalx.com/neistridlar/NA-Slab-2592

The numbers:
•    Price: 1,476,483,000
•    Fuel capacity: 75,600 Kallons
•    Cruising speed: 215m/s
•    Cruising altitude: 6.4km
•    Takeoff speed 50m/s
•    Optimal climb speed: 170m/s
•    Range estimate: 9700km
•    KPPM: 0.0048

Notes for the pilot:
Tail strikes are possible with this aircraft. To minimize the risk we recommend that pilots start to rotate at 45m/s, however with careful piloting it is possible to take off as slow as 43m/s. Optimal climb speed is achieved at ~5degrees nose up attitude. During cruise the autopilot can be set to prograde, for effortless flying. The structural limit for this airframe is 5G, which can be exceeded during maximum rate turns at initial speeds above 170m/s at 500m altitude. At higher altitudes higher speeds can be allowed. Our engineers say this should not be an issue during normal flight conditions, and that the structural limit for passengers is also 5G, so it should never be exceed anyways.
The yaw stability of this aircraft is fairly weak, and so it is necessary to use rudder actively during slow speed flight to keep the nose pointing in to the wind. The landing gear is quite sturdy, so don’t be afraid to touch down a little hard, the nose down attitude ensures that the aircraft will stick quite well to the ground after landing, at least bellow 80m/s, which makes it quite forgiving on landing. It is however somewhat top-heavy, so sideslip and yaw rate should be kept to a minimum during touchdown. 
 

Edited March 19, 2018 by neistridlar
Added more zeros

[hoioh]

Ehm, you might be missing a couple zeros on the price tag there @neistridlar

 

If we're restarting anyways, I made some badges if the new OP is interested:

Just a sunday morning's work (they don't look shiny enough jet, which will be worked on if they're going to be used)

Edited March 19, 2018 by hoioh

[neistridlar]

3 minutes ago, hoioh said:

Ehm, you might be missing a couple zeros on the price tag there @neistridlar

 

If we're restarting anyways, I made some badges if the new OP is interested:

Fixed it. Those badges look awesome. I wonder how we would use them though, would it be bronze for any submission, silver for anything between 1 and 10 orders, and gold for more than 10? That seems like it would be quite subjective, and not really fair, but I can not think of anything more fair on the top of my head.

[Kebab Kerman]

23 minutes ago, hoioh said:

Ehm, you might be missing a couple zeros on the price tag there @neistridlar

 

If we're restarting anyways, I made some badges if the new OP is interested:

Just a sunday morning's work (they don't look shiny enough jet, which will be worked on if they're going to be used)

Holy Kraken thats amazing!

[Andetch]

Who Liked Wings Anyway? Andetch Industries ADX-WTFWT?

Andetch has always believed in innovative ideas to save Kerbin's airlines money, and now we believe we have cracked it! No wings.

Yes that's right, no wings. We never really believed all that mumbo jumbo about wings anyway, and are proud to release our newest in what will hopefully become a new range in Kerbal transportation!

This jet is aimed at the low passenger count, high distance routes with long runways.... that also want to stay in contact with the ground, and any passing spacecraft at all times. We also felt that doubling up as a small power station was a good feature, so we added that too. It also has a place for the passengers baggage.

As far as the take-off speeds are concerned, your pilots could never seem to get the same results we do, so let's just say "fast". Also, same for the range, so lets just say "long"..... Carries 16 passengers though, that we can agree on.

 

Hope you have fun testing this.... I am looking forward to hearing the reasons why Kerbal Express Airlines will not be buying any - things such like "passengers really prefer it if planes have wings" etc.

https://kerbalx.com/Andetch/ADX-WFTWT

Edited March 19, 2018 by Andetch

[neistridlar]

1 hour ago, CrazyJebGuy said:

We're really very embarrassed a plane could get through testing with faults like that, and we are working hard to fix it.

The problem (fixed now) is that the wings are too wide, and so when turning the high AoA gives them much more lift than the wing in between fuselages and so it twists the fuselages in opposite directions, so it looks like it just splits down the middle, as if you put something really heavy on the wing between fuselages. We just shortened the wings, problem solved.

Also it doesn't fly nose up in the air much more than smaller planes, you just notice it more because the plane is so much longer.

We also fixed the landing gear, having it rest in anything near the tail was not going to work, to get any appreciable angle would require absurdly large front wheels, simply due to the plane's enormous length. So instead we opted for no resting angle, but 3 sets of gears. One front one, a middle one, of equal height to the front one, and a rear, small one, so it doesn't get in the way of pivoting, and to stop tailstrikes. The middle set is placed slightly behind the plane's center of mass, and so it can easily lever itself up to rest on the middle and rear gears, and thus have a very good angle.

On a side-note, we added some engines to act as brakes, they point backwards, and are right near passenger cabins, so they are a huge pain for those passengers when firing, but we don't think this is an issue, since we don't expect them to fire much. They do get activated with staging though, so action group 3 disables them and enables all forward thrusting engines, AG 4 turns on the stopping engines and switches off all other engines though.

I figured that would solve the breaking issue. The nose up issue is indeed very common, and not severe in this case, it did not it self detract from the score directly, however I would be willing to bet that you could increase the top speed, and thus the range by at least 5% if you added 3 degrees of angle of incidence. I only mentioned it because I thought the overall design of the aircraft would lend it self well to this sort of modification. In fact I would go so far as to say that for all aircraft there exist an angle of incidence that is more efficient than 0 degrees. I look forward to trying out the new version though.

[hoioh]

2 hours ago, neistridlar said:

Fixed it. Those badges look awesome. I wonder how we would use them though, would it be bronze for any submission, silver for anything between 1 and 10 orders, and gold for more than 10? That seems like it would be quite subjective, and not really fair, but I can not think of anything more fair on the top of my head

thanks for the compliments on the design. I was personally thinking on similar lines as you are, since the whole challenge is pretty subjective as it so stands anyway. I would say: Bronze for anything that doesn't explode and is flyable and landable, Silver for anything that does so reasonably well and Gold for things that are simply mind blowingly good IE handle perfectly, fly like a dream and fulfill the specs as requested in the briefing to their finest. And yes, it's subjective. Or we could just give everyone a gold star for participation 

[GDJ]

Those badges do look really good.

If I recall my plane was tested and the results were mostly positive. If I resubmit my Prop-Star with improved flaps that would earn me a gold badge.

Incentive. A good thing!

[CrazyJebGuy]

5 hours ago, hoioh said:

thanks for the compliments on the design. I was personally thinking on similar lines as you are, since the whole challenge is pretty subjective as it so stands anyway. I would say: Bronze for anything that doesn't explode and is flyable and landable, Silver for anything that does so reasonably well and Gold for things that are simply mind blowingly good IE handle perfectly, fly like a dream and fulfill the specs as requested in the briefing to their finest. And yes, it's subjective. Or we could just give everyone a gold star for participation 

But that factors in not cost at all! Nearly any fool can make a plane handle wonderfully without a limit on cash. I think Gold should be for if you do it on less than 750k/passenger or something.

Anyways, off to start new thread. Won't include the badges until we get that sorted out.

[RedPandaz]

8 hours ago, Andetch said:

Who Liked Wings Anyway? Andetch Industries ADX-WTFWT?

Andetch has always believed in innovative ideas to save Kerbin's airlines money, and now we believe we have cracked it! No wings.

Yes that's right, no wings. We never really believed all that mumbo jumbo about wings anyway, and are proud to release our newest in what will hopefully become a new range in Kerbal transportation!

This jet is aimed at the low passenger count, high distance routes with long runways.... that also want to stay in contact with the ground, and any passing spacecraft at all times. We also felt that doubling up as a small power station was a good feature, so we added that too. It also has a place for the passengers baggage.

As far as the take-off speeds are concerned, your pilots could never seem to get the same results we do, so let's just say "fast". Also, same for the range, so lets just say "long"..... Carries 16 passengers though, that we can agree on.

 

Hope you have fun testing this.... I am looking forward to hearing the reasons why Kerbal Express Airlines will not be buying any - things such like "passengers really prefer it if planes have wings" etc.

https://kerbalx.com/Andetch/ADX-WFTWT

I was working on something like that

[CrazyJebGuy]

 

[TaRebelSheep]

So we aren't using this thread anymore? Is there something someone can do with it to make sure people know where to go when they click on this challenge instead of the other?

[CrazyJebGuy]

34 minutes ago, TaRebelSheep said:

So we aren't using this thread anymore? Is there something someone can do with it to make sure people know where to go when they click on this challenge instead of the other?

Not really. Unless @Mjp1050 wants to put a little thing linking to the new thread.

[Andetch]

Unless of course the fabled admin can do something......

8 hours ago, CrazyJebGuy said:

Not really. Unless @Mjp1050 wants to put a little thing linking to the new thread.

 

@RedPandaz there is no reason why you should not work on something similar.... It is a concept that has bugged me since day 1 of  realizing that the MkII body parts give passive lift! Initially I was working on the idea that you can block off some LF tanks as ballast to keep the COM/COL aligned, but actually the canard is sufficient to move the COL to where it needs to be...

Next step of course is making a multi layered or delta wing style version

[RedPandaz]

14 hours ago, Andetch said:

Unless of course the fabled admin can do something......

 

@RedPandaz there is no reason why you should not work on something similar.... It is a concept that has bugged me since day 1 of  realizing that the MkII body parts give passive lift! Initially I was working on the idea that you can block off some LF tanks as ballast to keep the COM/COL aligned, but actually the canard is sufficient to move the COL to where it needs to be...

Next step of course is making a multi layered or delta wing style version

I got something, main problem is roll  

 

Delta Flight will get on it

[Andetch]

Ahh, well roll issues could be caused by no auto-struts allowing the body to flex, and also the position and authority of the tail fins. Is why I used the engines I did, because they have massive gimbal range so it helps with stability. 

9 hours ago, RedPandaz said:

I got something, main problem is roll  

 

Delta Flight will get on it

 

[Kerbinchaser]

Elluvon Industries Presents: 

The ET-25 "Lark Turboprop

16 Passenger Variant

This aircraft is only the TEST variant for the "Lark" Series. If the buyer decides they like the design and features, another aircraft can be made to fit the needs of the company. 

After one of the KSC engineers decided that the turbofans made good cooling systems, the aircraft development team decided to create an aircraft based off of the engine the KT6A "Kitty," which could NOT be used as an air conditioner.

The Lark can take off on a runway half the size of KSC's, which means it is good for regional and private airports.

Spoiler

The aircraft is unbelievably maneuverable, assisted with elevators situated in front of the cockpit. The aircraft is equipped with Wi-Fi and SCAN-Sat technology. 

Spoiler

As shown in this image, the aircraft is quite small, capable of very tight turns, with massive flaps that help to increase drag and slow the incredibly fast craft. 

NOTE TO PILOT: DO NOT BANK THIS AIRCRAFT PAST 85 DEGREES! 

Spoiler

Recommended cruising altitude/speed:

4,5000 Meters at 200 M/s with throttle at half.

Price: 302,290,000

Mass: 7.864 Metric Tons.

Fuel Efficiency: 0.156/sec at altitude.

Fuel: 300 Kallons

 

CREW:

Pilot
First Officer
One Flight Attendant 

 

CHECK KERBALX FILE FOR ACTION GROUPS

Edited March 27, 2018 by Lo Var Lachland

[TaRebelSheep]

If you aren't aware, all submissions should be entered to the new thread:

 

[Kerbinchaser]

6 hours ago, TaRebelSheep said:

If you aren't aware, all submissions should be entered to the new thread:

 

Thank ya much 

[SpacePigeon]

Pigeon Aerospace Supersonic Rapid X

Pigeon Aerospace is proud to present the next iteration of the Rapid series, the Rapid X!

Designed by Billy-Bobner Kerman, a thrill-seeker professional aircraft designer, there are 8 engines strapped on the back and enough fuel for them all. We even included a drogue chute in the back. This aircraft includes airbrakes, (to Billy-Bobner's horror) no exploding parts and no visibility from anywhere on the aircraft. It can carry 40 Kerbals (not including the pilot and co-pilot) according to our probably incorrect math, 5,166 km. The Rapid X can go to 1450 m/s and has a maximum height of 23000m. 

Here at Pigeon Aerospace, we don't understand why people don't like the sound of jets running at 100%. We think that jet noises are cool and thus, chose to have our office next to an active runway. We are proud to say that the aircraft only just takes off at 80 m/s and lands at 80 m/s. 

 

SPECIFICATIONS:

Price: 94,652,000

Cruising Speed: 1400 m/s

Maximum Speed: 1450 m/s

Cruising Height: 20,000m

Maximum Height: 23,000m

Range: 5166km (at cruising speed and height)

Calculations for range: 7380/s*1400/1000

Amount of fuel: 7380 kallons

Passenger amount: 40 Kerbals 

Link: https://kerbalx.com/Pigeon11/Rapid-X

Album WrqpQ will appear when post is submitted