Brikoleur's Simple Plane Race [closed]

[QF9E]

1 hour ago, OHara said:

This works with the chair as well

I tried yesterday, but I was unable to get my chair copter to fly - even spinning up the blades threatened to lose control. Although I did not use the bigger battery, maybe that provides a more stable landing platform?

[Guest]

Since no new entries were submitted in one week, I am closing the contest. Congratulations to the winners and thanks to all the participants. Those were some really cool and innovative designs – the hang-glider was something I hadn’t even thought of, and the eventual winner that made use of one-blade rotors I didn’t think was possible to make work. 

I did some “shadowing” of the race on my own,  and while I wouldn’t have done too shabbily I would not have won this challenge. I made two craft that were pretty successful however, and slightly different from the ones submitted here.

One is an 8-part mini-helicopter. It ran on a traditional coaxial main rotor (6 parts) with command chair and the  0.625 m battery as the last two parts. The trick with that one was that I had rotated and offset the 0.625 m battery so that it also served as the tail. It’s not a physicsless part which made this possible and gave it enough stability to make it fairly easy to handle. It had enough juice to do the round trip in a leisurely half hour or so, give or take. It would have lost to the winning entry in parts, mass, and cost, although I think it would have pushed it down a notch in performance as it really is easier to fly.

The other is a ridiculously fun to fly, mega-fast jet. The fuselage is a Mk 1 command capsule + engine nacelle + Panther, with a pair of FAT-455 tail fins for wings, and a FAT-455 elevon at the nose for trim and attitude. With a structural panel for a skid plate it would also be really simple at only seven parts. I didn’t manage a competitive time with that due to my insufficient piloting skills, but I got 2:55 in a “practice” variant with conventional tricycle gear and airbrakes. The dash from engine-on to approach on the Island Airfield is about 30 seconds, so a truly hotshot pilot could manage some pretty bonkers times with something like that.

Once again, thanks everyone for participating. I may re-run this challenge at some point with rules changed a bit to shake things up and lower the barrier of entry, and perhaps two or three separate categories.

Edit: fixed description of fast jet, I remembered it wrong

Edited May 4, 2021 by Guest

[QF9E]

Thanks for running the challenge! It re-kindled my love for sim-flying in a way I hadn't thought possible. It's such a good combination of two rather disparate things: going as fast as possible in a straight line while also being able to land somewhat reliably. And all that while flying a contraption that is barely airworthy as it lacks certain parts normally seen as necessary, such as landing gear, a symmetrical wing and / or tail surfaces.

Could you upload your Panther craft somewhere? I'd like to give it a go if that's ok with you.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, QF9E said:

Could you upload your Panther craft somewhere? I'd like to give it a go if that's ok with you.

It’ll have to wait until Thursday as I’m away from my gaming box until then. Will be happy to upload it then!

[Guest]

All right @QF9E, meet the BAK Chapman -- "simplify, then add lightness." 

BTW I flew with normal difficulty settings, i.e. kerbal G-forces disabled. It is ridiculously easy to pull a sustained 15+ g with this.

-- I've bound the trim on the forward elevator to the Up/Down axis. Use that to control the turn radius/climb/descent rate and she's pretty easy to handle, for certain values of "easy" anyway.

https://kerbalx.com/Brikoleur/Chapman

Edited May 6, 2021 by Guest

[Klapaucius]

I manage 1:50 to a full stop. I did swap out the structural plate for an I-Beam.  I just could not get the thing to land without exploding otherwise. I also toggled off the gimbal via an action as soon as I took off.

The challenge is slowing down.  Half my time was spent bleeding off speed. There is probably a sweet spot for cutting the engines that is much further offshore.  My earlier attempts I came in hot all the way to the end and wasted a heap of time trying to lose speed, and crashing anyway.

 

 

 

 

[Guest]

Nice! My best attempts with this had me blasting away until I'm a good deal closer, then pulling mad S-curves to kill speed fast. That only works with kerbal G-limits off though, and I think I managed something like 1:40 that way -- but it left me feeling that a better pilot could do it a quite a bit faster. 

[Klapaucius]

PS.  This could be made lighter and cheaper by swapping out all the lifting surfaces for the Elevon 1.  Having said that, I tried and had a lot of trouble not nose diving on takeoff. If you can get it off the ground, you are fine.

[Guest]

Just now, Klapaucius said:

PS.  This could be made lighter and cheaper by swapping out all the lifting surfaces for the Elevon 1.  Having said that, I tried and had a lot of trouble not nose diving on takeoff. If you can get it off the ground, you are fine.

Yep, I tried that too, with similar results. It flies but it's a lot tougher to handle. Landings aren't easy either. This one on the other hand is kind of fun IMO.

[Klapaucius]

3 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

Nice! My best attempts with this had me blasting away until I'm a good deal closer, then pulling mad S-curves to kill speed fast. That only works with kerbal G-limits off though, and I think I managed something like 1:40 that way -- but it left me feeling that a better pilot could do it a quite a bit faster. 

I wonder if the extra cost and weight of an airbrake would be offset by the improved time in the scoring.

Edited May 6, 2021 by Klapaucius

[Guest]

Just now, Klapaucius said:

I wonder if the extra cost and weight of an airbrake would be offset by the improved time in the scoring.

Heh, not with these rules.

If I re-run this race though, I'm thinking of changing the rules so that instead of the four different categories, there's only one -- time -- but you get "penalty seconds" for parts, mass, and cost. Something like 5 sec/part, 1 sec/100 Funds, and 1 sec/100 kg. So if you think adding a part will save you 10 seconds, it might well be worth it...

[QF9E]

@Brikoleur Your plane is a lot of fun to fly, and it flies quite well! I also like the way it looks, with those big aircraft fins and the nifty colour scheme.

I got it to the Island in 1:46, and back to the KSC runway again in about 3:40. I increased the authority limit of all control surfaces in order to be able to pull even more g's and brake even faster, but I could not get a much faster time. The plane has quite large wing surfaces for its weight, so its landing speed is quite low. It seems to float above the runway for a very long time before it wants to settle down, and this takes a lot of time. Also, you have to be very careful when landing, as it has a tendency to crab a lot at slow speeds, as is to be expected without a vertical stabilizer.

It is by far the fastest craft I've flown that has improvised landing gear - I found that with my designs, the skid usually generates a lot of drag, which this design manages to avoid. It's wonderful to see that its performance is comparable to my earlier 3:36 run while being a much simpler design.

Edited May 7, 2021 by QF9E

[Guest]

That's way better than anything I managed in that configuration. With tricycle gear and an airbrake I got it down to 2:55, but without them my best ... indeed, I think my only time was well over 4 minutes. It's hard to land in one piece that way, whenever I tried to do it faster I ended up in a ball of fire, at one end or another. I think I managed one run where I landed at the island airfield at around 1:30 when everything went absolutely perfectly, but I made a hole in the ground when returning.