[Stock Helicopters & Turboprops] Non DLC Will Always Be More Fun!

[selfish_meme]

I did it! an actually useful 4 Juno plane! Top speed 60.5ms, I have reached in excess of 70ms while diving, yes this plane can manoeuvre! and land! In fact it's not a bad plane to take for jaunt out to the island it handles quite well with only the very rare explosion (well if you have collision FX, otherwise you won't notice). The fighter version is going to need some more engines, this thing is efficiency squared.

I'll post up a build later, got to go out for a while.

Edited August 30, 2017 by selfish_meme

[NoobTool]

I've updated the Retriever Variant of the Wyvern and uploaded a new passenger variant. I'm hoping a few of you more seasoned helicopter engineers might be willing to put them through their paces and make an assessment. Any advice for improving performance would be very much appreciated.

https://kerbalx.com/NoobTool/Wyvern-Retriever-+-Dirk (You can lose the boat. The craft may need re-balancing without it though.)

https://kerbalx.com/NoobTool/Drake

[selfish_meme]

On 26/08/2017 at 9:53 AM, klond said:

 Hello dudes.  Gotta show you some stuff.

 If you use vanes on your turbos and want them balanced you need symmetry, right.  So 2 vanes, or 3, or 4,6,8, or 12 (6x2) for stock.  I guess there's a mod for more that I should probably get.

 K, well on a small scale 2, 3, and 4 vanes don't grab 100% of the airflow; there are gaps.  This means you can power 2 things (or more) if you only use a few vanes on the first turbine in the airstream!  Very exciting!

 The other 3 things you could energize with the remainder of the air would be

 

a second rotor

 

 

or a tail rotor

 

 

or put Azimech's boost flap on there and let 'er rip.

 

or a combination I 'spose.

 

 Amazingly it works better than expected.  If anyone else tries or has tried it, shoot me a pic.  I would think this would scale up.

I gave it a go, but I could not get it to work well enough, I did think of another purpose for the boost flap, to block the forward facing engine, meaning the Heli was being pushed forward by the unblocked thrust from the rear facing engine.

I really wanted it to work and tried for ages

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

1 hour ago, selfish_meme said:

I gave it a go, but I could not get it to work well enough.

<Snip> I really wanted it to work and tried for ages

While I also doubt that it will work due to the thrust die-off with distance from the blower, I bet you might get a better working tail rotor using lighter blades (perhaps those tiny triangular "basic find") placed at shallower angles. It might take a long while to spool up, but it would probably spin fast enough to look cool, and perhaps generate slightly more thrust than the one already in place. 

When I get the chance I'll test it out myself, but right now I'm quite busy with class and work.

 

[selfish_meme]

6 hours ago, EpicSpaceTroll139 said:

While I also doubt that it will work due to the thrust die-off with distance from the blower, I bet you might get a better working tail rotor using lighter blades (perhaps those tiny triangular "basic find") placed at shallower angles. It might take a long while to spool up, but it would probably spin fast enough to look cool, and perhaps generate slightly more thrust than the one already in place. 

When I get the chance I'll test it out myself, but right now I'm quite busy with class and work.

 

It seemed extremely variable, I tried quite a few variations. It works just maybe not enough to be practical on bigger helicopters.

[klond]

8 hours ago, selfish_meme said:

I really wanted it to work and tried for ages

 Nice of you give it a go.  Four vanes doesn't let much thru.  Did you get a chance to try 3?

 

[selfish_meme]

29 minutes ago, klond said:

 Nice of you give it a go.  Four vanes doesn't let much thru.  Did you get a chance to try 3?

 

I loved the idea, I didn't try three vanes, I still have a enough power in the main rotor so I might give it a go again, I have a lighter rear bearing ready as well

[selfish_meme]

@Azimech @klond @EpicSpaceTroll139 I think I just stood on the shoulders of giants and invented the future, this is the smoothest turning bearing I have ever seen. It sits at 50 rads and does not bat an eye

what about load? I hear you say, some bearings like the RCS balls are ultrasmooth till you add some blades and then they get flaky when too much load is applied, well behold, 3 junos, 3 big blades, 20 rads, still ultrasmooth.

I wish I could play with this right now but I have to go out for a few hours, damn!

Edit: 3 Panthers, 6 blades and completely stable

Edited September 1, 2017 by selfish_meme

[Castille7]

 

I've been working off and on with a few Turbo ideas for about a year now but never put much time on them as I would like. High RPM's and Smooth Running are very challenging. Here are some ideas I've been playing with but no debut with an Aircraft yet 

This was about a year ago, large and bulky, I prefer smaller stuff with lots of torque but.....hum not there yet!

 

Here is my recent discovery, an Air Brake Kraken Engine. I was trying some new ideas for Bearings and Casings, all of this is still a WIP

 

Other Ideas Here

 

Spoiler

 

I am really liking these Radiator Panels, they are nice for getting Juno Engines up close and giving a smaller circumference.
The RCS Balls are riding on the popular Thermometers

 

Edited September 1, 2017 by Castille7

[Majorjim!]

3 hours ago, selfish_meme said:

what about load? I hear you say, some bearings like the RCS balls are ultrasmooth till you add some blades and then they get flaky when too much load is applied, well behold, 3 junos, 3 big blades, 20 rads, still ultrasmooth.

 

It's quite large though isn't it. Maybe impractically so. I have seen and made RCS bearings that do not fail under the stresses the craft was desinged to take. You just have to engineer them very precicely.

[selfish_meme]

1 hour ago, Majorjim! said:

It's quite large though isn't it. Maybe impractically so. I have seen and made RCS bearings that do not fail under the stresses the craft was desinged to take. You just have to engineer them very precicely.

It is quite large, but a lot of these guys are using 3.75m fairing bases on their heli's. Over the last few weeks I have made a lot of RCS bearings and they will work with large loads, but they won't do it without occasional skips and catches. Eventually when you get the rads up high enough they will self destruct. So far in testing this has never caught or skipped once, it's so smooth it's hard to figure out it is turning, and it just sits at exactly 50rads, never skipping jumping or exploding. It needs a lot more testing, it's only  6 or so hours old, but I swear it is like a machined part.

Edit: OK I can strain it

Edited September 1, 2017 by selfish_meme

[selfish_meme]

Inaugural first flight 39t, 12 hairdrier, cargo plane, she tops out around 60ms

You can download it here to check it out

https://kerbalx.com/SelfishMeme/Kae-Stock-Turboprop-Cargo-Plane---new-bearing

Edited September 1, 2017 by selfish_meme

[Azimech]

6 hours ago, Majorjim! said:

It's quite large though isn't it. Maybe impractically so. I have seen and made RCS bearings that do not fail under the stresses the craft was desinged to take. You just have to engineer them very precicely.

It's actually not about the precise engineering, using snap and the collider visualization tool you can have the most precise adjustment possible.

All is fine until a load is applied in any direction. It's just KSP physics being wonky. If the load increases, the sphere colliders start to phase through but are slammed back due to a rubber bouncing ball effect. At some times this can create a physics feedback loop (let's call it harmonic resonance) and eventually the force overpowers the collider integrity.

The solution is to snap multiple balls inside of each other, both for the shaft and the bearing surrounding it. I've seen remarkable improvements with this. Yes, the shaft becomes heavier but it also increases inertia. More than a year ago I discovered my large turboshaft engines running more reliably using the MK1 crew cabin parts for the shaft instead of the hollow structural fuselage parts, being 10 times less heavy. With the hollow parts the engines lost much more power due to high frequency vibrations. Come to think of it, it may also have contributed to phantom forces as demonstrated with the "Epstein drives" which have become popular in recent weeks. I've seen the effect years ago with shaft based engines, continuing to run even with blowers shut down. It can work both ways, robbing the engine of power since this phenomenon has the tendency to rotate the shaft at its harmonic resonance frequency.

Increasing the amount of colliders may be less satisfactory with your thermometer bearing since box colliders have a built in higher friction value than sphere colliders of the RCS balls, Sputnik core or (elongated colliders of the) retracted landing gear housings.

Fine example of an Epstein drive: https://kerbalx.com/JimmyR/Jebstein-Drive-11

[klond]

14 hours ago, selfish_meme said:

this is the smoothest turning bearing I have ever seen

 I wanna upsize at least one of my projects sometime, and I'll totally give the sputnik balls a try.

 

7 hours ago, selfish_meme said:

 You forgot one, lol

[Azimech]

11 minutes ago, klond said:

 I wanna upsize at least one of my projects sometime, and I'll totally give the sputnik balls a try.

 

 You forgot one, lol

That's ... hilarious!

Now ... we need this:

How else would we cut the thing loose from the KSC.

Edited September 1, 2017 by Azimech

[selfish_meme]

A few improvements and moving to Panthers gives it great STOL performance, top speed marginally improved, would probably get better speed by adding and adjusting props, they are the same as before currently and are getting up into the 45 rad area

Edited September 2, 2017 by selfish_meme

[Gman_builder]

Here's my current design for the fighter plane challenge thing Azimech proposed.

I have yet to plop a Kerbal in it. Does it have to be a Mk1 inline or can i use a command chair?

The thing is a genuine biplane with a effective top speed of around 88m/s. I can probably push it more with more tuning of the airframe rather than the engine. The engine is remarkably reliable and revs up to 36-37 rad/s without any issue. The fact that it uses only 6 Junos and a very simple bearing is also a plus.

Because it's a biplane it turns like a mother trucker and it's low / stall-speed maneuvering ability is incredible.

 

 

[selfish_meme]

27 minutes ago, Gman_builder said:

Here's my current design for the fighter plane challenge thing Azimech proposed.

I have yet to plop a Kerbal in it. Does it have to be a Mk1 inline or can i use a command chair?

The thing is a genuine biplane with a effective top speed of around 88m/s. I can probably push it more with more tuning of the airframe rather than the engine. The engine is remarkably reliable and revs up to 36-37 rad/s without any issue. The fact that it uses only 6 Junos and a very simple bearing is also a plus.

Because it's a biplane it turns like a mother trucker and it's low / stall-speed maneuvering ability is incredible.

 

 

3

Yay! Competition, Boo! is faster than mine

[Gman_builder]

4 minutes ago, selfish_meme said:

Yay! Competition, Boo! is faster than mine

Lol! Thats with modified aero. Stock its closer to around 65 - 70 m/s. This is gonna be fun!

[Gman_builder]

Revised. Sleeker, quicker, more realistic performance, twice as much endurance (12.5 minutes)

[selfish_meme]

24 minutes ago, Gman_builder said:

Revised. Sleeker, quicker, more realistic performance, twice as much endurance (12.5 minutes)

 

 

I have no idea how you get that off the ground

[qzgy]

Yaay. Helicopter that doesn't try to self destruct. Need to modify CoM placement and fix some stuff with control.

Just now, selfish_meme said:

I have no idea how you get that off the ground

Magic? SRB's? Detachable gear?

[selfish_meme]

Just now, qzgy said:

Yaay. Helicopter that doesn't try to self destruct. Need to modify CoM placement and fix some stuff with control.

 

Magic? SRB's? Detachable gear?

4

Whatever he is using, the BD Armory autopilot needs to be able to do, so I wouldn't think anything other than wheels would work

[Gman_builder]

28 minutes ago, selfish_meme said:

I have no idea how you get that off the ground

It has a detachable sled with wheels that i use purely because wheels that attach to the plane look gross. It would fly with its own gear.

Edited September 2, 2017 by Gman_builder

[selfish_meme]

A new day and a new bearing, mixed my two bearings for 1.25m size and an easy 4 junos per engine, best level speed yet, stock aero, all landing and taking off equipent attached

Edited September 3, 2017 by selfish_meme