Stock Howard 250 Tri-Gear Replica

[Pieliker96]

HB told me to post this here, hope y'all like it. I've been on KerbalX and r/KerbalSpaceProgram for a while under the same username. Dunno how active I'll be here.

 

The Howard 250 is a passenger conversion of the Lockheed Lodestar. It also looks really slick.

Here's some shots of my replica:

Getting this thing to fly well was a bit of a pain, to say the least. It's been heavily craft-file-edited to get it to a reasonable weight (13 tons down from nearly 50). Despite this, its top speed is only 35 m/s, due to the drag from all 817 parts. It has fully stock (no DLC) custom retractable main landing gear and props. The retract mechanism can be seen below, and is hopefully pretty self-explanatory. The central elevon actuates everything, with the tapered RCS bearings holding everything in place.

Here's the retracts in action:

 

Controls/Action Groups:

1 - Front Gear Doors (Can be closed when the gear is extended)

2 - Rear Gear Doors

3 - Flaps

Stage: Detatch props

 Keep the props at ~80% trim for reliability purposes. Throttle them back more if the solar panels start to break.

KerbalX link

Edited October 15, 2019 by Pieliker96

[IkranMakto]

Great mechanics and awesome fuselage

15 hours ago, Pieliker96 said:

It's been heavily craft-file-edited to get it to a reasonable weight (13 tons down from nearly 50)

What do you mean? 

[Pieliker96]

On 10/16/2019 at 4:35 AM, IkranMakto said:

Great mechanics and awesome fuselage

What do you mean? 

Cheers man, glad you like it.

Parts can be reduced in mass by editing the craft file and adding negative ore to them, as long as the overall part mass remains positive. 

For example, the extra large landing gear has a mass of 0.6 tons. The following is some pseudocode of a 0.05 ton large landing gear.

PART
{
    part = GearLarge

     //A bunch of part data and modules, omitted

    RESOURCE
    {
        name = Ore
        amount = -55          //Mass of one ore unit = 0.01t. Removes 0.55 tons.
        maxAmount = -55
        flowState = False
        isTweakable = False
        hideFlow = False
        isVisible = False
        flowMode = Both
    }

}

 

I know it's sorta cheaty but there was no way this thing was flying on prop power otherwise.

Edited January 22, 2021 by Pieliker96
inserted code, which was previously not working, and to correct a spelling error in this edit.

[IkranMakto]

4 hours ago, Pieliker96 said:

Parts can be reduced in mass by editing the craft file and adding negative ore to them, as long as the overall part mass remains positive

Thank you for explanation

---------- upd

Where's all activity? 1 like for this craft in 20 hours? 

Edited October 16, 2019 by IkranMakto

[Yaeah]

This craft is beautiful, how long did you spend on it?

[Pieliker96]

Somewhere around 40 hours, give or take. Definitely one of my most time-consuming builds so far.

Edited October 18, 2019 by Pieliker96

[NIGHTSWITCH]

that landing gear tho

[sturmhauke]

Looks nice. But if you're gonna resort to craft file editing, why not just use procedural wings and/or other mods instead?

[Pieliker96]

2 hours ago, sturmhauke said:

Looks nice. But if you're gonna resort to craft file editing, why not just use procedural wings and/or other mods instead?

To each their own. Stock is how I've always done it, as have many others. From the offset tool to fairings to stock bearings and props, to fuel tank cockpits and landing gear noses, to CF editing and landing gear drives, to stock cannons and turrets, to grip pad spam and bendy-tech, to using flags as blueprints - I take pride in being part of a small community of stock builders that is constantly pushing the boundaries in what is possible in the base game: In mechanics, performance, replica realism, and more. It's fair to see stock parts as a limitation, but limitation breeds creativity. In this way, building craft in KSP becomes more of an art form, a way of playing the game that sometimes values scale accuracy and beauty over performance, low part count and utility. If I have to do a little bit of messing around in notepad adding negative ore to get the mass down enough to get this beautiful bird in the air, it's well worth it. the real 250's fuselage wasn't made of a bunch of landing gear, wing panels, and fuel cells, so I don't have any qualms about using a little trickery to remove some weight.  I could've replaced the props with spinners and clipped in a bunch of jets to get it to fly, but I chose not to to because of the alternate solution that was arguably more "pure" in its scale accuracy.

[sturmhauke]

I just don't think a file-edited craft is truly stock, at least not when you use out-of-bounds values like negative mass. The game and KerbalX may think so, but that's a limitation of their programming.

This is not to say that I'm a purist - my game is modded to Eeloo and back, and I've sometimes done weird stuff with file editing too. But I'm not claiming it's something else.

[Pieliker96]

1 hour ago, sturmhauke said:

I just don't think a file-edited craft is truly stock, at least not when you use out-of-bounds values like negative mass. The game and KerbalX may think so, but that's a limitation of their programming.

This is not to say that I'm a purist - my game is modded to Eeloo and back, and I've sometimes done weird stuff with file editing too. But I'm not claiming it's something else.

That's fair. I'll also clarify that I'm not causing parts to have negative mass - I've tried that before, the game does not like it. I'm adding negative ore to parts to lighten them up while the overall part mass remains positive. I will say that there are some useful craft file edits that don't affect performance of parts: for example, enlarging flag sizes for use as blueprints, allowing flags to surface attach to themselves, removing the little landing gear light shine that got added in the latest update and is persistent regardless of whether the light is on or off, and manually disabling staging for engines when they're used in aesthetic contexts. Other use cases include extending control surface deploy limits (used in this craft for the gear doors and gear, broke after 1.8 - though could easily be redone, along with better props, with the DLC) and enabling same-vessel interaction on parts such as thermometers and RCS balls for the purposes of creating stronger bendy-tech hinges. My point is that craft file editing is not exclusively used for performance-increasing means, which seems to be your criteria for determining whether it is acceptable to call "stock". 

It is my opinion that craft-file-modded craft are still "stock" regardless of any performance increasing modifications, as they can be directly loaded into a fresh install of the game of the same version and function as intended (I also won't get into the whole "Is the DLC stock" debate here, as it can change the definition of what the base game and therefore what my definition of "stock" is). Removing mass from parts and increasing the thrust of engines is certainly a bit cheaty, yes, but the F12 menu and kraken drives have existed for a good while. Also consider that the performance of the plane is not its primary focus or "sell": the beauty, scale accuracy, and clean implementation of stock mechanics is. I doubt this craft is being downloaded and used for transporting kerbals around. It's far too slow, unreliable, and part-count intensive to do so, there are much better solutions that exist and can be created. I would have qualms about posting a "stock" SSTO or rocket using CFE to improve its performance, as it then artificially increases the utility of the craft as it pertains to the game as it is traditionally played.  Ultimately, CFE is a tool that can be used in ways ranging from benign to cheaty. In this case, I believe I applied it in an appropriate manner.

Edited January 22, 2021 by Pieliker96
added example of useful craft file edits