Flying wing challenge!

[beomagi]

Here's my attempt. Take off at under 40m/s, so i probably don't need the air brakes. Only mods in use are KER, Precise Node and Ambient Lighting.

https://imgur.com/a/COxoo

Edit: gave up trying to post an album...

 

 

High enough Jeb. 

Edited April 12, 2018 by beomagi

[beomagi]

Don't mean to spam, but here's a second take on it.

https://imgur.com/a/gfZqA

 

Now this is pod racing...

 

 

Made the altitude. This is pretty much a flying carpet.

 

 

Under 3 tons with the module used to get Jeb to board. Without the module and docking port, the craft is under 2 tons.

Edited April 12, 2018 by beomagi

[Lego_Prodigy]

16 hours ago, obi_juan said:

Flying wings, I think that is my favorite type of plane, but the lack of vertical stabilizer give it a lot of troubles flying it. I usually follow the Alexander Lippisch designs, with vertical stabilizers. I also love the Horten brothers planes and other tailless planes, but they have a sophisticated combination of different curvature parts inside of the same wing, and we can not do that in the game. 

 

 

 

You are in Luck! YOU DONT NEED THE STABLIZERS! I found that my design works quite nicely until you activate SAS, which then proceeds to be dumb and pitch up and down. Just put control surfaces along the wing's trailing edges, and maybe add a little more wing area (like on the Horten Brothers designs) for more control surfaces, namely for rolling and yawing.

[GKXS]

I like this idea of this one, so I created an entry, which can be found here.

I combined it with my entry to the Shuttle Challenge - using it as a rescue shuttle. This necessitated the cabins and service bay (with the Xenon, Batteries, Monoprop and RTGs) so it kind of has a fueselage, but it's as slim as it could be.

Flies quite happily to 10km, and can turn around and fly home. It has no directional stability at low speed, so routinely lands going sideways, backwards, or any other direction. It also is a pain to take off, due to bicycle landing gear (why not) which is un-steerable.

I used I beams for landing gear - they have 80ms^-1 impact tolerance, and work in any direction, so make excellent landing skids. They're also very high friction, thus necessitating the detachable gear for takeoff.

Edit - forgot to say: No Reaction Wheels required to fly, and it flies without SAS. SAS in fact puts it into a horrible horizontal oscillation, which leads to a crash if uncaught, due to the slow reaction times of the AIRBRAKES used for steering.

Edited April 15, 2018 by GKXS
Forgot to mention something

[doggonemess]

I went kind of literal on this one. Believe it or not, it works. 

 

It'll do Mach 4 at 25,000 meters for two hours, too! I wouldn't recommend trying to turn or change pitch at full speed, though. It's pretty stable with or without SAS, but it's difficult to control, at best. Landing is nearly impossible. Bring a chute!

Jamie

 

[Klapaucius]

Funny, the only good planes I have built so far have been flying wings. I just happened to be scrolling through the posts and this caught my eye.  I don't know if I have any skill or just that simpler is better, but I really love this little plane. I call her Ursula after sci-fi author Ursula LeGuin who died this year. It does have winglets; the difference in handling without them is pronounced.

The video is 4 minutes. I trimmed it down from a 12 minute flight.  The landing and takeoff are from a different flight. The takeoff because it was just cooler with the roll, and the landing because the first time around I tried to put it down in a sketchy area in the mountains and messed it up. Takeoff and landing are a bit twitchier with stability turned off but regular flight is more fun that way.

 

 

Edited May 24, 2018 by Klapaucius

[Scarecrow]

This is probably my simplest and easiest to fly wing design that doesn't utilise vertical surfaces.

 

 

Edited May 24, 2018 by Scarecrow

[Samwise Potato]

My flying wings usually have some form of vertical surfaces clipped into the body to provide yaw control, so it was interesting to try to build a wing without any vertical surfaces whatsoever.

I ended up building a little pancake plane; 10km ASL is pretty straightforward with a Panther engine. In the screenshot, I was over 11km, still climbing, and still accelerating.

Aside from being supersonic, the massive wing surface makes pitch control a cinch. Just dived from 10km to 100m, pulled out of the dive and and buzzed the SPH with no problems.

Landing's probably the hardest part of the entire flight, since throttling down the engine causes a significant loss of horizontal stability, but the pancake design lands at an angle pretty easily if necessary.

Having a wide 4-wheel base to land on also means it's pretty hard to tip it over if you come in anywhere close to correctly.