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DualDesertEagle

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Everything posted by DualDesertEagle

  1. And most likely make it hard to find out the actual take-off speed as u can't control that thing. Also, I think my actual contest entry with its take-off speed of 8.1 m/s is already hard to beat. And if my second one isn't rejected, which I still think is gonna happen, then I sure as hell have issued a pretty tough challenge to every other contestant. I'll try the sepratron thing tho, maybe u should have instead of telling me about it. EDIT: Tried it and it's really not worth it. No difference.
  2. KILLED IT! 5.8 m/s take off speed! I think I've really pushed the limit tho, and this might aswell be disqualified since I'm taking off with well over 50% throttle and at an angle of 30 degrees. But should this still count, ur gonna have a hard time beating it! I've really started splitting hair to make it this far! I've taken off really EVERYTHING that wasn't ABSOLUTELY VITAL to make the plane take off, I've switched to an engine that was a whopping 10 grams lighter than the old one, I've joined the wings together in the middle and swapped the retractable gears to non-retracts of the same weight but with streamline housings to improve the aerodynamics, I've increased the dyhedral to have the plane sit on the ground at a higher angle, I've made absolutely sure that the wheels are mouted straight to minimize friction and I've taken half of the fuel out of the tank! This thing probably has the best lift to weight ratio that can be achieved and it's really just designed to take off, then run out of fuel soon after and fall back to the ground. U can't control anything but the throttle and the in this case absolutely useless thrust vectoring.
  3. Defying the arguments against my entry I completely overlooked ur post. I think now that u know how I did my 8.1 meters per second the 10m/s mark shouldn't be that much of a problem for u. And that's why I'm gonna get back to it and try to even beat my current 5.9m/s record.
  4. 1.1 Look at the screenshot I put in, 1 of the contestants said And this was the thread starter's answer Same goes for me I guess. 1.2 Let's be honest, the engine I used has a maximum thrust of 16.2 (whatever unit is used in the game) and is tiny compared to the wings. Plus, take-off happens at 40% throttle (thus putting out a thrust of only 6.48 which is basically nothing for such a big craft) and an angle of attack of (let's round it up to my disadvantage) 19 degrees. Since I didn't have the right formula at hand I just made a (literal) vector graphic: And I think that amount of downwards thrust is negligible, at least when u look at the size of the plane compared to the engine. 2.1 To me, "level flight" means going forward with no change of altitude, no matter which angle of attack is applied. So yes, by reducing the speed just a hair I could do a level flight and even achieve a slower speed than on take-off, but it's the take-off speed that was asked for. 2.2 With an engine being mounted in a fixed orientation there is no such thing as "having zero vertical thrust" as the engine will always be tilting together with the aircraft. And to get a plane off the ground u'll either need a pretty high speed or at least a slight angle of attack.
  5. It's all a matter of center of gravity and center of lift. I also build RC planes so I know a bit about aerodynamics and stuff. One problem with KSP is that the control surfaces on a regular plane's tail add to its lift and thus u have to have the center of gravity further back in order to have it fly or add some control surfaces in front of the CG to move the center of lift where it's supposed to be. But the most basic rules are the same: The center of gravity and the center of lift need to be close together, with the CG never being too far behind the CL, ideally being in front of it instead. The positions of CG and CL relative to each other is what makes a plane well-trimmed, tail-heavy or nose-heavy. The angle of attack is what makes a plane climb or descent. A neutral angle of attack ideally makes the plane fly straight without descending or climbing, as u can see on my entry. A negative angle of attack (nose down) makes it descend. A positive one makes it climb. With a stationary engine there's of course another source of lift or negative lift, which is the engine itself pushing up or down depending on its angle. The percentage of that extra lift depends on the angle of attack. At a neutral angle of attack the engine will obviously create 100% thrust and 0% lift, provided it's parallel to the longitudinal axis. If the engine is powerful enough to actually lift the craft on its own then there's a certain angle at which u get more lift from the engine than from the wings. I personally would consider that a vertical take-off. That's why I kept the angle of attack on take-off below 45 degrees to make absolutely sure I'm not more or less taking off vertically. the weight to lift ratio of a plane determines how fast it needs to go to make the lift surpass the weight of the plane. My entry is a very good example for that. I chose the biggest available wings and the lightest available pod, tank, engine, wheels and canards to make my plane as slow as possible. I could take some parts off it but then I wouldn't be able to control it anymore. But putting the rest of the parts together correctly I already achieved take-off speeds as little as 5.9 meters per second. And yesterday I even had an idea how I could still reduce the plane's weight without losing much thrust. Do u want a slower, more maneuverable plane, then the CG must be further back. Do u want a fast but less maneuverable plane, the CG must be a little further in the front. The reason being that the faster a plane goes with the same center of gravity, the more it wants to pitch up on its own. In KSP we can have the SAS handle that, but only to the point where the controls are maxed out. And extremely nose-heavy plane will never even take off coz it just won't pitch up to increase the angle of attack. And extremely tail-heavy plane on the other hand will TRY to take off but can't, as the angle of attack gets too steep very quickly. The plane stalls and falls back to the ground. Having big lifting surfaces or control surfaces far in front of the CG makes the plane susceptible to "tipping over" as soon as the slightest pitch is applied. The bigger surface the acts like a tail fin that was pointed forwards. The smaller control surfaces in the back can't keep the plane lined up anymore as they're the weaker ones compared to the wings in the front, that's why regular planes are hard to build after real specs. Especially my Naboo Starfighter with the wings being at the very front of the craft had massive trouble with this. It was really hard to get it to fly well and that wasn't possible without adding control surfaces to the tail. But at least they don't have to be stickin' out all the way and ruin the look completely (And be honest, I did a MUCH better job on it than jacksepticeye, didn't I?):
  6. Since my plane is the slowest to have taken off until now I'll tackle that and try if I can still get it to take off. EDIT: Accelerating along the runway, 2.8 m/s already, with a single ion engine EDIT 2: Won't get any faster than that with a single engine tho. Final edit: I've tried it with 6 ion engines which required 3 gigantor panels in order to keep the batteries charged. Still not fast enough to take off. The fastest speed I could achieve was 6.3 meters per second and with all the weight of those ion engines and solar panels that's nowhere near enough.
  7. Yup. Can't update for some reason. Doesn't accept my e-mail anymore.
  8. Do attempts in other atmospheres even count? There's nothing sayin' the opposite after all. And I think that's definitely worth an experiment.
  9. I suggest u just go with the given rules. I'll do so aswell. EDIT: My entry has been recorded and is being uploaded!
  10. I just noticed what the problem is, I'm still on 1.0.2 and that's why it's not workin' for me. But I STILL can't update either, for some reason my correctly entered (!) E-mail and password aren't accepted. I'll have to step out of this for now.
  11. The save file I downloaded seems to be corrupted, my game says it's incompatible / invalid. Does it work for anyone else?
  12. So the docking ports are excluded from the 5 parts? Great! Gonna build a new module while recording then. Aight then, I'm starting right now and I hope I'll get it done within the next 3 hours. One more thing: I'd like to put a custom flag on my module. Would that cause problems for the following players?
  13. I've readied a module consisting of 2 Hitch Hikers, 2 Jr. Docking Ports and a Gigantor Solar Arry to keep it online. Wanna dock on the long beam reaching out into space. Any missions still in progress or someone waiting for permission to dock his own module before me? If not, someone pls supply the latest download link so I can plan my flight.
  14. If there was a legit way to kick conspiracy theorists' asses in a manner that no one could even IMAGINE to be faked while doing further research on the moon with modern tech I'd say DO IT
  15. Too much effort to fix a bug for which u described a much simpler fix. I'll stick with that one for now. I'm not doing serious "science" in there anyway, all I do right now is building stuff like the Naboo Starfighter (without textures of course as I'm still playing the stock game) or trying to find out how much fuel I need to get to that and that location.
  16. It's been a while since the last reply, but as a HUGE fan of Avatar I just have to ask u, m2x512, if ur still on it or if it's finished. I'd love to see some pics of the finished craft. Also, I'd like to mention that I'm currently trying to build a crude model of it myself, but in kerbal-scale FULL SIZE. Since I haven't installed any mods yet it's only gonna be a pretty sketchy replica without any fitting textures, probably consisting of thousands of parts. The rear-end mirror (consisting of different types of wing parts) is about a 100 meters wide. I've decided to divide the whole ship into 3 sections that I'm gonna send to orbit separately and dock them in space. But instead of such a sketchy piece of junk I'd love to have a kerbal-life-sized, absolutely accurate model so I MUST ask u to finish it (Coz I honestly SUCK at 3D-modeling). And it would be great to have it as a single solid part that doesn't wobble around a lot as that would of course reduce the necessary PC specs alot. To get it into space I'd just do the same as on the pieces of my own model, turn off gravity and drag, get them up into space and then turn gravity and drag back on to get them to orbit kerbin. The major problem with that is that as soon as gravity is turned off to launch the next piece the previous ones would leave their orbit and drift off into space, forcing me to re-orbit them afterwards so I can dock them. Once the whole thing is in space the rest should be possible without cheating as the Valkyries would be able to transport anything to the ISV and back.
  17. That was really it, thanks alot. This thread can be closed then I guess. Unless someone knows how to use a joystick without that crap happening. I made some vessels that are much more comfortable to fly with a joystick. I'd like to keep doing so and still not have to re-config everything on launch.
  18. Every time I launch the game my settings are set to default again and I've got that window on the main menu screen saying: KSP Stats tracking KSP would like to send some data gathered from your system to the KSP servers to be used for statistical purposes. The game will send the following data: Game ID: Does that matter for this problem? Game Version: 1.0.2 Maybe not the latest version? Game Platform: Windows IP Adress * Don't send my IP * Send anonymous game progress data And a button saying "continue" It's really annoying to be forced to reconfigure everything to my preferences everytime I want to play, so how can I get rid of this?
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