totm june 2018 Work-in-Progress [WIP] Design Thread

[Jon144]

So happy people are into propeller planes again. Still working on perfecting my biplane. Have a 50 SAS torque motor powering this guy to 80 m/s at sea level. 

[Phantomic]

@Thor Wotansen

7 minutes ago, Jon144 said:

So happy people are into propeller planes again. Still working on perfecting my biplane. Have a 50 SAS torque motor powering this guy to 80 m/s at sea level. 

Nice! what bearing are you using? looks like those round tanks with solar panels

you should check out my kerbalX, phantomaerospace, it's the best place really to showcase a few of my planes

 

Sorry thor, i did this in a funky order so your name is up there and my comment for you is down here,

 

three on the original engine, i had to add an additional bearing because of the speeds involved so four, making 8 in total with is my new record for absurdity

[Jon144]

1 hour ago, Phantomic said:

@Thor Wotansen

Nice! what bearing are you using? looks like those round tanks with solar panels

you should check out my kerbalX, phantomaerospace, it's the best place really to showcase a few of my planes

 

Sorry thor, i did this in a funky order so your name is up there and my comment for you is down here,

 

three on the original engine, i had to add an additional bearing because of the speeds involved so four, making 8 in total with is my new record for absurdity

Yep, Just 2 round tanks to form the actual bearing supported by solar panels. A new twist on the old stayputnik bearings that used to be popular. There is a download link here: 

 

[Phantomic]

here's a sneak peek for what's coming soon (christmas, specifically), the symmetry is soo screwy on this one. 500 parts even, bone stock.really fried right now so i asked someone to replace the blades, they dont make enough thrust to lift this 19 ton monster but the tail does lift at 18 m/s

[klond]

10 hours ago, Phantomic said:

here's a sneak peek for what's coming soon (christmas, specifically), the symmetry is soo screwy on this one. 500 parts even, bone stock.really fried right now so i asked someone to replace the blades, they dont make enough thrust to lift this 19 ton monster but the tail does lift at 18 m/s

 Welcome to the forums.  This is looking really nice, specially the engine cowls.

 I like that you set a time goal measured in weeks.  That's dedication.  Keep us posted.

[Phantomic]

38 minutes ago, klond said:

 Welcome to the forums.  This is looking really nice, specially the engine cowls.

 I like that you set a time goal measured in weeks.  That's dedication.  Keep us posted.

Thank you, and Will do, I built that in 3:28 minutes but I have one or two other things to release before then. I'm thinking of making better turrets later but definitely not rotating turrets.

[Servo]

Progress on the Tornado is slow, but progress is progress. I finally have a reliable wing sweep mechanism (theoretically - I haven't done a full-up test wit the wings and everything, but the hinges work and redock properly). This is encroaching my (still WIP) F8U for most work trying to get hinges working, but I have faith in this setup.

Fortunately, once the wings are on, the rest should be pretty trivial to get right. I just need to discipline myself so that I ensure that the wings work before I sink many more hours into it.

[Jon144]

23 hours ago, Phantomic said:

here's a sneak peek for what's coming soon (christmas, specifically), the symmetry is soo screwy on this one. 500 parts even, bone stock.really fried right now so i asked someone to replace the blades, they dont make enough thrust to lift this 19 ton monster but the tail does lift at 18 m/s

Looks like you might have the blades pitched too far forward. Try decreasing their angle of attack. Higher pitches mean faster top speeds with mediocre low speed thrust. The opposite is true; high thrust at low speed. 

[Phantomic]

8 hours ago, Jon144 said:

Looks like you might have the blades pitched too far forward. Try decreasing their angle of attack. Higher pitches mean faster top speeds with mediocre low speed thrust. The opposite is true; high thrust at low speed. 

I do appreciate the Advice, these engines are susceptible to "over revving" at low pitches with speed, I think the problem more lies in my chice of blade rather than pitch, as i use this pitch on most of my 4 bladed props

[Jon144]

5 hours ago, Phantomic said:

I do appreciate the Advice, these engines are susceptible to "over revving" at low pitches with speed, I think the problem more lies in my chice of blade rather than pitch, as i use this pitch on most of my 4 bladed props

I find that each plane needs its own propeller pitch for maximum thrust efficiency, and this changes during flight. I like to have a hotkey that deploys the control surfaces so I can have a low speed and high speed setting to work with. So for takeoff I can have low speed high thrust and then switch the engines over to high gear for higher top speeds. Also depending on how much SAS torque your motors use, more propeller surface area might be necessary. For instance, with my last biplane that used a 50 SAS torque motor, I needed 8 of the small control surfaces to get optimal thrust efficiency (4 clipped inside of 4 for aesthetics). 

I might be interested in getting my hands on the craft file and replacing the motors with mine.

[Phantomic]

1 hour ago, Jon144 said:

I find that each plane needs its own propeller pitch for maximum thrust efficiency, and this changes during flight. I like to have a hotkey that deploys the control surfaces so I can have a low speed and high speed setting to work with. So for takeoff I can have low speed high thrust and then switch the engines over to high gear for higher top speeds. Also depending on how much SAS torque your motors use, more propeller surface area might be necessary. For instance, with my last biplane that used a 50 SAS torque motor, I needed 8 of the small control surfaces to get optimal thrust efficiency (4 clipped inside of 4 for aesthetics). 

I might be interested in getting my hands on the craft file and replacing the motors with mine.

unfortunatelly i dont have a way to share files, i'll upload it on KX probably on christmas eve

[EvenFlow]

On 11/27/2018 at 6:55 AM, Servo said:

I wonder what craft it could be...

So glad somebody finally is taking on the Tornado!!!

I've tried to build it twice in the past but they both turned out pretty meh. This is looking absolutely beautiful!



Meanwhile, I'm getting ready to release the 5.0 version of my Tomcat which features changes to the nosecone which increase the overall smoothness of the frame and a nice VF-31 Tomcatters paintjob to go with it. Still playable in bone stock!

It was modelled after this airframe:

 

F/A-18 will receive some updates too. C:

Edited December 3, 2018 by EvenFlow

[HB Stratos]

@Phantomic
send your craft file to someone  on Discord and shre the link that is embeded in the download

[Shadow dream]

On 12/2/2018 at 6:01 AM, Jon144 said:

Looks like you might have the blades pitched too far forward. Try decreasing their angle of attack. Higher pitches mean faster top speeds with mediocre low speed thrust. The opposite is true; high thrust at low speed. 

I haven't used this technique of propulsion often. I think the best I could do was download a working motor and try to copy it. What I did was experimenting with the deploy function hotkey, but my tests didn't go well. Do you have experience with such engines and would you reccomend using that technique to optimize thrust on low-speed and high-speed?

I'm just thinking because you said it's important to lower pitch here.

[Jon144]

6 minutes ago, Shadow dream said:

I haven't used this technique of propulsion often. I think the best I could do was download a working motor and try to copy it. What I did was experimenting with the deploy function hotkey, but my tests didn't go well. Do you have experience with such engines and would you reccomend using that technique to optimize thrust on low-speed and high-speed?

I'm just thinking because you said it's important to lower pitch here.

You should look up how propeller pitch works in real life, just like changing gears in a car. Lower gears like lower pitches in KSP create more thrust but also create a lot of drag. Higher pitches like higher gears will allow higher top speeds for the aircraft it's attached to but will take longer to accelerate. So what I and others do is use variable pitch propellers. 

Maybe you can experiment with these.

Edited December 3, 2018 by Jon144

[Phantomic]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/406707365577097219/519267933629972481/B-17E.craft

@Jon144 still wanna screw around with it?

only thing is, don't put it on Kerbal X, if you upload it anywhere else, credit me please

[Jon144]

1 minute ago, Phantomic said:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/406707365577097219/519267933629972481/B-17E.craft

@Jon144 still wanna screw around with it?

only thing is, don't put it on Kerbal X, if you upload it anywhere else, credit me please

I might only get time to later this weekend. Of course I wouldn't plagiarize your work, i'm just curious to see how it works. 

I have plenty of my designs that are on Kerbal X that i've never uploaded outside the forums lol. 

Edited December 3, 2018 by Jon144

[Servo]

The bottom half of my Tornado is almost done! Unfortunately, some slight changes I made along the way have tanked the wing reliability, so I have to do some more testing to root out the issue there. I had it in the 80% reliability range for docking, and the failed dockings didn't influence flight control at all. Now the wings slip their hinges somewhat regularly, which is dissapointing.

As for the air intakes, I kind of had to go with the stock ones. Otherwise, I couldn't get the shape I needed. They're not perfect, but they're close enough.

[HB Stratos]

guys, were nearly at 400 pages for this thread here!

[Servo]

On 12/3/2018 at 10:32 PM, Servo said:

The bottom half of my Tornado is almost done! 

So that was a lie...

I had been annoyed by the massive size of the wing glove, so in a bolt of midnight inspiration (literally), I decided to rebuild it with Tail Fins instead. That cut the height of the total assembly down to about a third of what it was before, and allowed me to tighten tolerances across the board. The two hours I got to spend working tonight went to testing this modification and ensuring that it moves smoothly (which is higher-consistency that before, but not quite up to my liking)

I also spent a little bit of time reworking the wing layout, swapping it so that it uses Elevon 4s and looks a bit cleaner than before.

Oh... and I landed it on the VAB

As it stands now, it has enough lift, thrust, and control authority to maintain straight/level flight at about 18m/s. Granted, that's at about 20 degrees angle of attack, but it's still straight and level.

[Jon144]

On 12/3/2018 at 1:46 PM, Phantomic said:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/406707365577097219/519267933629972481/B-17E.craft

@Jon144 still wanna screw around with it?

only thing is, don't put it on Kerbal X, if you upload it anywhere else, credit me please

Can get up to 60 M/s in level flight with my engines. It's under 400 parts now as well, slightly more part efficient. 

9 Is the hotkey used to disable torque on the motors so you can set the trim without having the plane roll away on you. 

Here you go if you want to work off of this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/s57ghj0cjvgsdah/B-17E-2.craft?dl=0

Edited December 6, 2018 by Jon144

[Phantomic]

15 hours ago, Jon144 said:

Can get up to 60 M/s in level flight with my engines. It's under 400 parts now as well, slightly more part efficient. 

9 Is the hotkey used to disable torque on the motors so you can set the trim without having the plane roll away on you. 

Here you go if you want to work off of this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/s57ghj0cjvgsdah/B-17E-2.craft?dl=0

Woah, how'd you cut out 100 parts? this is what i had a few days ago,

It only does about 34 and is incredibly unreliable.

I betcha got those parts out of the engines, those were 71 each and really not the best. Honestly this engine has been nothing but problems when ever i use it

Thanks a bunch i really appreciate it!

Edited December 6, 2018 by Phantomic

[Jon144]

2 hours ago, Phantomic said:

Woah, how'd you cut out 100 parts? this is what i had a few days ago,

It only does about 34 and is incredibly unreliable.

I betcha got those parts out of the engines, those were 71 each and really not the best. Honestly this engine has been nothing but problems when ever i use it

Thanks a bunch i really appreciate it!

My engines are under 50 parts each, that's probably where the difference is. Was able to do some pretty cool maneuvers too.

Edited December 6, 2018 by Jon144

[Phantomic]

So between myself and a few other people on a KSP discord we'v started building Guns, RCS ball shooters all the way to I-Beam cannons

I just made a huge advancement and i'm pretty excited to share it with you guys, now it isnt done yet which is why it's here but this is a Casemate gun which is a turret with limited mobility, generally inside an armored casing. My advancement here is it's all one ship, I used the Pivot of the ARM, so it launches vertically and the gun falls into the ARM, then you seperate it from the clamp, extend the gear and then stage again to seperate the Ammo.

You might be wondering about the Elevators that control the Traversing of the turret, you see, elevators will clip through the ship that it's a part of, in other words it doesnt work.

there's an internal "stabilizer", that's connected to a Thermo bearing behind the ARM Pictured below

I'm really psyched about this guys, huge thanks to Le Goat, he suggested the Stabilizers

[Mignear]