Tornado-12 and M-400 "Typhoon"

[kapteenipirk]

 

Tornado-12 and M-400 "Typhoon"

 

Happy new year folks. Man it's been busy ever since i started living on my own and went back to school, it's been hard to find the time to play KSP in the first place, let alone upload stuff to the forums, but now it's time to finally upload my first project from my new place, and what better to start things of with, than the latest incarnation of the project that started it all, the Tornado 5.

I had been playing KSP around 500 hours when i made the Tornado 5. It was the first project i made that made me feel it was worthy of showing to the world is i taught it was quite cleverly built and looked and flew pretty nice.

Even after over 7000 hours of KSP (according to steam) the Tornado-5 still remains the closest to my heart from all the probably hundreds of crafts ive made over the years (started playing late 2013).

I made it my tradition to either build or majorly improve a Tornado aircraft after a major update, tough you haven't gotten to see it, i have actually kept up that tradition after Tornado-7 witch was the latest one i uploaded. The ones from 8 to 11 just didn't really feel right, or in the case of number 8, broke due to some unknown reason.

As a bonus present, and to say sorry for taking so long...

 

Evolution from 5 to now.

Here's a little collection of all the mainline Tornado craft's from the first to the one before this, yes, this includes the ones i haven't shown before.

Spoiler

 

Tornado 5

Ye original

 

This was version 1.3 of it i think. I remember adding that antenna and radio-wire in a later version.

 

I even made a version that was able to transform. Just flying in a straight line was hard, also the wings where flapping all over the place as i couldn't fix them together.

This version was made around the same time i made the Tornado-6

 

The one that started it all, and the one pretty much all the future ones are based on.

The bit that i was proudest of at the time was the custom cockpit with the MK-0 fuel-tank "floor" witch i taught was a pretty clever bit of design to fix the issue of "there's really nowhere to put any fuel".

This was built using B9 Aerospace, KAX and Firespitter, and thus didn't have a very long shelve life. Especially considering i don't use any of those anymore (Firespitter plugin yes, but not the parts)

As you can see on the picks, this one went trough quite a few improvement's.

 

Tornado 6

Ye original.

 

the aircraft received a paint job later in it's life.

 

I think there was also a future version with some ejector seats.

 

The main thing with this evolution was the switching from heavily modded to 95% stock.

Other than that, the design was pretty much the same

 

 

Tornado 7

I dunno where all the screenshot's of the unpainted one went.

 

This time around i wanted to change things up by tweaking the overall looks.

Adding some extra performance with a bigger elevator and a new sleeker engine was also a thing i wanted to do.

 

Now on to the ones that didn't see the light of day.

Tornado 8 and Typhoon

 

 

I really wanted to change things up with the Tornado-8 and go with a more classic bi-plane look.

I really did like the more traditional looks and was gonna show this off...but like i mentioned earlier, an update came and after that the thing went insane and exploded on the runway as soon as the physics kicked in.

 

The Typhoon was designed to be as sort of multi-engined bi-plane VTOL mother-ship to the Tornado-8.

The Tornado 8 would be carried inside it's belly.

The VTOL functionality (witch i didn't even try to implement) would come in the form of tilting main wings and a giant tilting engine at the back.

The aircraft also came with a laser based missile-defence-system.

Oh, and it also came with a chaos-reactor on top of the aircraft that would power the engines and everything else (aka the infinite propellant cheat).

The Typhoon was always a bit of a love-hate relationship for me.

 

Tornado 9

With this one i wanted to create a sort of mix between the regular and transformed version of the Tornado 5.

The main new design feature was the twin-tails that was inspired by...well, i think it's pretty obvious. Now that i look at them, it just reminds me more of Cream's bunny ears more that anything.

The design just didn't feel right in the end, and the aircraft suffers from the unfortunate case of not being able to pitch and roll at the same time at certain speeds, witch kinda makes you have accident's more often than not.

I wanted to try something new with the paint-job as-well, but that didn't really feel right either.

 

Tornado 10

Wasn't really even a Tornado craft at all, dunno why i gave it the name.

 

Tornado 11 (was actually gonna be named something like Tornado-F)

My attempt at creating something more akin to the Tornado-X.

With the help of the new stock robotics, i wanted to create a craft that would have basically every function in the world...it was to be a Hyper-sonic variable swept-wing VTOL interceptor.

And i gotta say, it was pretty close, all the functionalities worked, but the devil was in the details. For one, the thing needed infinite propellants cheat to be turned on, then there where the wings that where flapping all over the place, and then there was the VTOL mode...man was it difficult as ever to keep under control, flying at full speed was fine, but take-offs would result in a crash 9/10 times.

The design on it's own is pretty fine, but it just didn't really have anything Tornado about it, so i dropped development and instead went with a new design.

 

 

 

And then we get to now.

Tornado 12

 

When you look at all the previous versions, you can see from where lot of the design choices come from. Stuff like the lighting, twin-tail, remote-controlled turret, idea for a mother-ship...etc, take out the bits that you don't really like and add the bit's you really liked, while also adding something new and adding to the performance. It can be a surprisingly hard challenge after so many versions, as there's not much new to add and the performance just keeps getting better and better with each version.

To give you an idea, this version almost also got dropped, but after creating a sort of 1,5 version, it started to feel just right. The "rocket engines for instance where not in the original, instead it had 4 juno engines.

But, as it should be, the latest version is bigger and better than ever before with even better performance to boot.

Here's some more picks

Spoiler

Some nice little spirals

 

Flying upside-down really close to the ground.

 

Flying under the walkway and barely making it.

 

Landing on the VAB helipad and taking-off from it.

The usual stuff .

 

Here's a little overview of the features in this one.

Cockpit with seating for 3 and a canopy for protection. Decided it would be a good idea to add an extra seat as the aircraft was beginning to get so big. The cockpit includes a little computer type thingie in the rear-most seat, while the middle seat has no extras.

The new engine has a large intake underneath to increase performance.

Under the fuselage you can find the remote-controlled twin turret, and the small Chaos reactor that powers the aircraft (it's actually powered by fuel, so no need for cheats).

The tail now sports an H shape. The rudders have been angled so that the "flames" from the engines do not burn them.

The wing intakes have now been integrated in the leading edge. those lead to the "rocket-engines" (just a pair of wheesley's) that give the aircraft a higher top speed.

Air-brakes have also been better and more realistically integrated this time.

 

As always, i wanted the aircraft to feel as best as it possibly can, something that has amazing maneuverability and is backed up by great acceleration and stability, that basically allows you to do tight maneuvers without having to worry about falling out of the sky or going out of control. This aircraft definitely allows you do just that, no matter the situation, you will always be in control...given that you have at-least some speed, even that you won't need much of.

 

IMPORTANT:  Before taking-off click on the pilot and say control from here or your controls will be backwards, and for whatever reason, even with full brakes on, the aircraft will slide around at 1.3 m/s, so best to recover it as soon as you land, or create some barrier to stop it.

 

Technical specs:

Top speed: 140 m/s

Stall speed: 20 m/s

Armaments: 2x dummy auto-cannon in underbelly turret.

Length: 15.6m

Wingspan: 13.4m

Height: 5.4m

Mass: 25.6 tons

Parts: 270

 

Miles M-400 "Typhoon"

 

And now on to the big beast, the Typhoon, a flying workshop that can take the Tornado to where-ever its needed by giving it a nice piggyback ride.

I wanted to create a sort of retro-future H-4 Hercules, as i felt for some reason that a modified giant flying boat just made more sense compared to the earlier Typhoon design.

The aircraft ended up being quite close in size compared to the Hercules, even tough i pretty-much eyeballed the whole thing from start to finish. The fuselage ended up being fatter than id like tough, but i think it fits the sort of Sonic series aesthetic more, so it's fine. The wings also follow the same style, a bit too fat for my liking, but they match the fuselage better that way.

 

 

The tornado would be carried on a catapult launch system on the aircraft's back. The catapult has little walkways to allow entry into the Tornado and ladders that lead into the Typhoons fuselage.

Taught it'd look better to take a more "Shuttle Carrier Aircraft" type approach as opposed to the hangar-bay...or more bomb-bay style approach of the old Typhoon. Plus, i don't need to make the aircraft as large.

I have done a working aircraft catapult system in the past, but i can tell you straight away it wouldn't work in this...no way. For instance, the aircraft i used on it was only half the size, maby even smaller than that as it had to fit my navy ships that are not life size, but instead more Kerbal sized (K.S.S Bongo is the first and only that had it).

You can also see one of the 5 missile-defence lasers behind the inboard engine. The other two are where the rocket-boosters are and the fifth is in the tail of the aircraft. They should give nice all-around coverage.

I had the idea for this sort of impenetrable anti-missile defence system pretty early on. I taught it would be more fitting than some missile-system or defensive MG's.

 

 

Behind the catapult system you can find the 4 core chaos-reactor that powers the aircraft (one core per pair of engines). A bit of tech i came up with that i taught would fit quite nicely, basically a sort of mechanical substitute to a chaos emerald.

You can also see the shuttle engines that allow taking off from water (you will need to put infinite propellant on to use them). I have always found the booster engines you can see on the original Tornado and the Sonic adventure/Sonic-X Tornado to be a nice little feature, and have included that on every of my own Tornado craft, so why not add them on this as-well.

 

I gotta tell you, i was pretty sure that taking off, or even landing on the water would be impossible with this thing...but...

 

To my suprise, it did actually work. I mean, i have great confidence in my engineering prowess, and i consider myself to be quite good at creating sea-planes/flying-boats, but it was that exact experience/confidence that made me feel that i was in over my head with this one, considering how much of a trouble they can be, even after all this time.

Tough to be honest, if i could make a full sized aircraft carrier fly, then i sure as heck should be able to get a H-4 Hercules type craft off the water.

But as impressive as that all sounds, and as great as it look on the surface, i still wouldn't classify it as a total success.

For one, as i mentioned earlier, in order to take-off from water you need the "infinite propellant" cheat to be turned on, secondly, thanks to the auto-strut tool not being there anymore for some reason, the aircraft is very wobbly and fragile as "ye-old" struts can only do so much, so the "no crash-damage" and "unbreakable joint's" cheats need to be turned on. Even when the cheats are turned on, the tweakscaled rudders are so powerful you can easily rip them off and say goodbye to the aircraft. It is also advisable to wait till you run out of runway before you pull-up, as the aircraft will explode otherwise.

 

I can't really say much about the flight characteristics of this aircraft as the test flight i did was very short, and i flew very carefully the whole time. I can however say with pretty good confidence given my experience, that if it wasn't so damn fragile, it would probably be pretty amazing for an aircraft of it's size.

So, if you are gonna fly this thing, be careful, and be gentle.

 

All in all im still pretty happy with the end result. Im definitely more happy with it than i was with the Old typhoon that i felt was a bit i dunno... and this time i put some actual effort in to the thing, creating a proper custom cockpit and fuselage.

Anyways, the Typhoon was always meant to be a bit of a thing on the side while the Tornado is the main star, so im more happy with using cheats and doing some scaling of parts.

 

 

Technical specs:

Top speed: around 100 m/s

Stall speed: i dunno

Armaments: 5x laser turret.

Length: 79.8m

Wingspan: 96.0m

Height: 19.1m

Mass: 721 tons

Parts: 779

 

Mods used:

Tornado 12: Airplane+ (DCK and Nebula decals where used for the paint-job, but as ever, you won't need those, as the textures will revert to stock if DCK is missing, and the decals have been removed before release)

M-400: Airplane+ and tweackscale.

Download link:

Tornado 12: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1xxka6e1a1y256a/Tornado-12 (painted).craft?dl=0

M-400: https://www.dropbox.com/s/9tkd9oukpz3cytv/Miles M-400 _Typhoon_.craft?dl=0

 

And there it is for you, the latest incarnation of the craft that started it all and a huge sea-plane to carry it around with. I hope you enjoy it .