[1.3.1] Ferram Aerospace Research: v0.15.9.1 "Liepmann" 4/2/18

[Sentmassen]

If that is caused by SAS simply decrease the max deflection angle of your control surfaces.

If it's not SAS please send a pic of your craft, there are a few things that can cause oscillations.

I turned them all down to 10, then 5, which seemed to work but also neutered my maneuverability. Isnt the dampener also there to beat that occiliation?

[Crzyrndm]

Jets will definitely run at 20,000m, unless you've skimped on intakes to an extreme degree. Build a high altitude specialist, and you can keep the jets running well over 30,000m.

How low-tech are we talking about?

This one uses nothing over tier 7:

He looks to be limited to basic jets, so T4 or T5?

Using basic jets also means he's going to be flying at ~400-500m/s, so he'll also want a fair bit more wing than is normal for high altitude flight to keep the AoA reasonable (lift is ~v^2, but only linear with area IIRC) and probably will have a notable impact on intake efficiency

Edited February 24, 2015 by Crzyrndm

[futrtrubl]

He looks to be limited to basic jets, so T4 or T5?

Using basic jets also means he's going to be flying at ~400-500m/s, so he'll also want a fair bit more wing than is normal for high altitude flight to keep the AoA reasonable (lift is ~v^2, but only linear with area IIRC) and probably will have a notable impact on intake efficiency

He only needs to get over around 17500m for short periods for quests so he shouldn't need to have level flight up there. I have made a very early tech plane with 28 parts that has a 4000km total range with just 200 units LF with the basic jet and can get over 20km altitude for short periods.

[blowfish]

Well I thought that entire part is an air intake and therefore it should remain open, but now after You mentioned it i suppose that those parts are actually fuselages with intakes visible at the bottom.

The intake part is on the bottom. Just stick circular intakes on the ends and you'll solve both that and the lack of intake area.

This 0-1 junction is supposed to be a bulb (or how to call that) helping during transsonic speeds, but originally there were another one cockpit making smooth pas, but i had to remove it when i reached 30 parts limit after adding more control surfaces. Now if I could remove 2 fuel tanks I could put it back. But would it work ? Is it good idea at all ?

Probably not worth it. With a properly balanced craft you should have no issues at transsonic speeds. And like I said FAR counts that kind of junction as creating a lot of drag.

I thought Rocket engine is easier way to get 18k for short time, than making efforts to keep jets running that high. I'll give it a try. How many intakes would I need to reach let's say 20k ? And do You consider 1 dual intake part as a 1 or 2 intakes ?

I don't know exactly. Like I said though, adding circular intakes on the front will get you a lot of that way. If that's not enough you could always stick a couple of XM-G50s on.

[Crzyrndm]

He only needs to get over around 17500m for short periods for quests so he shouldn't need to have level flight up there.

Er, good point. Basic jets would probably work best going for a vertical ascent anyway (assuming the plane is small enough for >1.0 TWR) since they have more thrust the slower you are moving. Makes wings area irrelevant

[Wanderfound]

He looks to be limited to basic jets, so T4 or T5?

Using basic jets also means he's going to be flying at ~400-500m/s, so he'll also want a fair bit more wing than is normal for high altitude flight to keep the AoA reasonable (lift is ~v^2, but only linear with area IIRC) and probably will have a notable impact on intake efficiency

Ah, missed that; thought they were turbojets.

Khazar: for sustained level flight, basic jets aren't much good above 10,000m. But you can exceed that temporarily with a zoom climb, and with added rocketry you can reach orbit. I'll post a couple of examples (one with rockets, one without) later today.

[Wanderfound]

Okay, Khazar: try this.

Nothing above tech tier 5, no building upgrades, not quite enough fuel to hit orbit but can effortlessly make suborbital hops.

Full flight demo at http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/craigmotbey/Kerbal/Beta/Kerbodyne%20Showroom/Lotek%20Suborbiter/story

Alternate pic format at http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/craigmotbey/slideshow/Kerbal/Beta/Kerbodyne%20Showroom/Lotek%20Suborbiter

Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/ww6u5xp348yv7p6/Lotek%20Suborbiter.craft?dl=0

[Khazar]

Thank you guys for your help. Thanks to yo now I have a plane for the job.

http://www./download/p3zss6woayvyc7a/PRZECIER_IXc.craft

I decided to go with just 2 jet engines with additional air intakes and I just reached >18k alt.

I fell into spin soon after but it was caused by my error, I climbed at too steep angle and when plane started do fall towards side I countered it instead of reducing angle of climb.

Wanderfound: I have no access to radial air intakes other than the one being fuselage and they generate a lot of drag so I put them into the fuselage to reduce drag.

I wonder how landing would go

Setting elevon as a flap prevents it form acing as a alieron or does it not interfere ? I guess flaps would be useful at landing but it mighnt not be worth lacking alierons. In other words do elevons stil act as elevons when they are flaps pulled up in position 0 ? How about other positions ??

[Van Disaster]

I have no access to radial air intakes other than the one being fuselage and they generate a lot of drag so I put them into the fuselage to reduce drag.

That won't do anything to reduce drag - you have to put them in a part which is recognised as a cargo bay, part clipping by itself won't shield anything. You might have centralised the drag, though.

[Wanderfound]

Setting elevon as a flap prevents it form acing as a alieron or does it not interfere ? I guess flaps would be useful at landing but it mighnt not be worth lacking alierons. In other words do elevons stil act as elevons when they are flaps pulled up in position 0 ? How about other positions ??

They'll keep working as elevons at any flap setting. Flaps mounted well behind CoM are going to generate a significant amount of pitch-down, however.

- - - Updated - - -

BTW, Khazar: it'd help a lot if you posted images at a high enough resolution for us to be able to see detail. See my posts above for examples.

As Van mentioned, clipping the intakes into the fuselage won't reduce their drag. Intakes are draggy by nature; that's just a function of what they do. This is why you want to close your intakes after you shift to rocket mode; the drag reduces sharply once they're closed.

[Crzyrndm]

As Van mentioned, clipping the intakes into the fuselage won't reduce their drag. Intakes are draggy by nature; that's just a function of what they do. This is why you want to close your intakes after you shift to rocket mode; the drag reduces sharply once they're closed.

Fairly sure it doesn't (and shouldn't) reduce drag. An open intake is a restriction on airflow, a closed one is a blockage.

The only real reason to close air intakes is to exploit the instant jet throttling to prevent any imbalances in thrust from occuring.

[Wanderfound]

Fairly sure it doesn't (and shouldn't) reduce drag. An open intake is a restriction on airflow, a closed one is a blockage.

The only real reason to close air intakes is to exploit the instant jet throttling to prevent any imbalances in thrust from occuring.

I just ran a little test to gather some screenshots proving you wrong, and...

You're right. Open or closed appears to make no difference at all to FAR drag. Despite folks consistently telling me otherwise from the first day I arrived here. Hmmph.

Anyone know if it makes a difference in stock aero?

[Crzyrndm]

Stock is stupid and sets it to zero IIRC (it's been a while though so I could be wrong...), current FAR version has it constant or very nearly so, and unless there's some wierd aero effects going on reality would probably drastically increase the drag from closing them.

Edited February 25, 2015 by Crzyrndm

[NathanKell]

In stock KSP, closing an intake lowers its drag (not to zero, AFAIK). FAR, quite properly, adjudges that nuts and leaves it the same. That's probably about correct--an intake is a pretty draggy thing, but "closing" it is going to put at best a low-fineness-ratio cone in the way.

[thorfinn]

Well, depends on what they look like: a typical 2D supersonic intake (like one from Concorde) would push the ramp fully down to close, and I'd be surprised if that wouldn't be any less draggy than windmilling the engine.

[Khazar]

This is my most recent plane.

http://www./download/p3zss6woayvyc7a/PRZECIER+IXc.craft

I made a flight to desired location, climbed above 18k and made raport. Unfortunately I used up 2/3 of my fuel suplies so I wasn't able to get back. I wander how much fuel would I save if I could fly straight ahead instead of constant fighting against sas. Is it normal that when I set up a course (usually climbing at low angle), sas slowly levels and then dives, rolling right at same time. It renders warp useless witch is quite problematic if flight time is around 1h just one way. Is there something I could do about that ? Or is it faulty plane ?

[DaMichel]

This is quite normal. SAS is not very good at handling FAR planes. The rolling is probably because of uneven flexing of the wings (an age old bug in stock).

Possible fixes: use trim instead of SAS (ALT+WASD). Add more stabilizer area. Perhaps add a bit more dihedral to make the plane more roll stable. There is also a true autopilot mod out there.

[Yemo]

Link to thread and download

This is a small spin-off package from B9 Aerospace for FAR/NEAR (thus redundant if B9 Aerospace itself is installed).

It just provides the B9 airbrakes by bac9 and the jet engine rebalances by Taverius.

Thus dealing with one of the major hardships for FAR/NEAR users, the inability to bleed off speed for landing approaches and

during the landings themselves, while having only a marginal RAM/catalog footprint.

[Van Disaster]

I generally recommend Pilot Assistant to replace SAS for aircraft, it's WW2-ish autopilot levels in that you can set a heading and either an altitude or a rate of climb ( and now it has a speed hold ), and that's about it. It takes a lot of the irritation out of keyboard control of aircraft without removing most of the interest. You do have to tune it a little, though.

[Khazar]

Thanks I'll try both

[cantab]

Speaking of airbrakes, in FAR with the stock parts if you make a spoiler and set its deflection to the maximum, I found that makes an effective airbrake.

For vertically aligned airbrakes that flip out sideways it helps to give them a definite up and down. A tiny rotation will do the job. Then a mirrored pair will deploy mirrrored instead of both flipping the same way.

I'm not sure how well you can do a deceleron or a Shuttle-style split rudder this way. The braking aspect will work well but I'm not sure if the control will also be effective having essentially two control surfaces stacked.

[Crzyrndm]

In stock KSP, closing an intake lowers its drag (not to zero, AFAIK). FAR, quite properly, adjudges that nuts and leaves it the same. That's probably about correct--an intake is a pretty draggy thing, but "closing" it is going to put at best a low-fineness-ratio cone in the way.

Well, depends on what they look like: a typical 2D supersonic intake (like one from Concorde) would push the ramp fully down to close, and I'd be surprised if that wouldn't be any less draggy than windmilling the engine.

Ofcourse, if you can change the shape of the front of the intake instead of only thinking of the internals... *doh*

I generally recommend Pilot Assistant to replace SAS for aircraft, it's WW2-ish autopilot levels in that you can set a heading and either an altitude or a rate of climb ( and now it has a speed hold ), and that's about it. It takes a lot of the irritation out of keyboard control of aircraft without removing most of the interest. You do have to tune it a little, though.

And if you don't want to mess around with Pilot Assistant's tuning, there's my other control mod which lets you use the mouse to smoothly direct your planes (you still want to use trim for that though)

[Greystripe3]

How do I get FAR v 0.14.3.1 to work with KSP 0.90.0?

[bdito]

How do I get FAR v 0.14.3.1 to work with KSP 0.90.0?

Same as every other mod. Just put the FerramAerospaceResearch folder inside your GameData folder along with ModuleManager. Just make sure you remove any old versions of it before you put in the new one.

EDIT: I just noticed you're trying to use an older version of FAR. Not sure how that one will work with .90. I don't think it's compatible but someone else can clarify that.

Edited February 25, 2015 by bdito

[Greystripe3]

Same as every other mod. Just put the FerramAerospaceResearch folder inside your GameData folder along with ModuleManager. Just make sure you remove any old versions of it before you put in the new one.

EDIT: I just noticed you're trying to use an older version of FAR. Not sure how that one will work with .90. I don't think it's compatible but someone else can clarify that.

Ok, I want the older version because the latest version broke all of my jetliner like the one in my profile pic and I am eager to see them take to the skies again.:(

Edited February 25, 2015 by Greystripe3