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101m4n

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Posts posted by 101m4n

  1. :o wow. This is just completely insane. Well done.

    Oh wow, I\'m not going to even bother trying to open the craft file as I\'m sure my comp will simply burst into flames, but beautiful work on the design, looks and sounds amazing.

    thank you very much!

    anyone experienced the slight pitch up issue it has yet :?

  2. Back when I started playing this game, I set myself the challenge of building an atmospheric plane capable of flying around the world, as it turns out this isn\'t too difficult, so i then set myself the challenge of doing this as fast as possible! 3 hours and 2 minutes is my current best!

    so, ladies and gentlemen, I present, the sunbird industries fft mk2!

    \'fft\' stands for \'flying fuel tank\' which in itself is an adequate description of the craft to say the least, as it carries 14025kg of fuel into the sky, here she is!

    screenshot9.png

    screenshot8.png

    screenshot6.png

    - utilises multiple wing surfaces for high stability and substantial lift, allowing high cruising altitudes

    - maximum speed of 510m/s (dependant on remaining fuel reserves)

    - 8 high performance turbojet engines

    - range of 4,000km +

    - cruising altitude of 13-16km at pitch angles of 0-5 degrees

    - good controllability, land-able even when still full of fuel

    - round world flight in 3 hours with fuel to spare!

    some flight instructions:

    - use fine controls! (caps lock)

    - pitching up violently results in catastrophic structural failure, a parachute and decoupler have been installed to help prevent loss of life in this situation!

    - plane glides a really freaking long way on landing, be prepared for a slow approach

    - refrain from throttling engines to max, overheating will ensue. The optimal thrust setting is 2 divisions below maximum thrust.

    - avoid entering banked turns of greater than 45 degrees, why? do it and find out ;)

    - manoeuvring at high speed is quite tricky, if it is too much for you then ease off the throttle a bit to do your course corrections

    Sadly you practically need a supercomputer in order to fly this plane at any reasonable framerate, for reference, my quad core i5 clocked up to 4.5ghz and my xfx 6870 manage a meagre 10-15 fps whilst flying this plane.

    disclaimer*

    (sunbird industries is not liable for any damage to computer systems or loss of life due to the operation of this product)

    .craft files have been included, one has a mech-jeb unit installed, one does not. So if you do not have the mechjeb mod installed, then you know which to choose. both are equipped with avionics packages for easy flight :)

    enjoy!

  3. Except that in the case of Kerbin most people do see Africa.

    well yes, but let\'s not be too pedantic.

    either way it makes little difference to gameplay, so i don\'t see the need to read too much into it :P

    If however, i were being pedantic I would point out that kerbin also has a blue sky (nitrogen based atmosphere?), liquid oceans, land distributed in continents, and a value for acceleration due to gravity of 9.81ms^-2, all of which are traits it shares with earth, and most of which are far more integral to gameplay than the shapes of the continents themselves. ;)

    you see my logic now :?

  4. I still like flying the Turbo around, made it to KSC2 in about 30 or 40 min and did a smooth landing next to the VAB...

    nice :P never actually been to ksc2 probably going to be my next destination :)

    my plane the globetrotter, named after the basketball team whom i know nothing about, flew all the way round kerbin and then about 2/3rds of the way to the north pole after that, some 4 and a half million meters, using only fl-t500 tanks 8) also the wing design you see in the picture seems to be quite efficient, give that a go as well, and don\'t forget to post back with any interesting developments :)

    you should find it towards the end if page 7:

    http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=8772.90

    hope that I helped ;)

  5. (Currently, stall is not simulated. At all.)

    haha stalls... the number of times that i have simply drifted the full length of the runway...

    fair enough i guess though, best alpha i have seen for a long while :) not been playing very long but it has proven to be great fun despite the few shortcomings, excellent community also ;)

    Your vertical speeds are also WAY different. Probably due to the mass though. That may cause for a variation in the actual speed readout. I don\'t feel like doing the numbers, but your average speed may actually be the same. Or at least closer than it looks at a first glance.

    so they are... hadn\'t noticed that

    ground-speed is what i was reading however, and as the two craft have the same forward component of thrust acting on them (same setting altitude and pitch) so they should still be travelling at similar forward velocities.

    but this is besides the point, if as sofweir says, the simulation algorithms are liable to change in the not too distant future, then im not at all worried by this ;)

    thanks anyway :)

  6. I have noticed something rather peculiar things whilst mucking around with various plane designs, particularly to do with the mass of a plane affecting drag forces, which is rather peculiar.

    So earlier today I devised a simple experiment to clear things up, my plan was to fly two different planes one with a single fl-t500 fuel tank (liquid rocket fuel) and another with a single mk1 aviation tank.

    as seen here:

    testcraft.jpg

    Now, these two craft have identical aerodynamic properties, supposedly. The only difference between them is mass, as the fl-t500 fuel tank has a mass of 2.5 whilst the mk1 has a mass of 1.2. note that the drag ratings for these parts are also identical.

    my method: (note that mech-jeb was used for accuracy)

    - set heading of 90.4 degrees (runway is aligned to 90.4 for some reason)

    - set a pitch of 15 degrees

    - throttle up to 2 divisions below maximum thrust

    - fire engines

    - record speed at 10,000 meters

    - rinse and repeat.

    Now for a little theory, if lift is proportional to the wings attack angle relative to it\'s velocity vector (which i believe to be the case currently) and the vertical and horizontal components of force in the form of thrust from the engines are also the same (which they are, as pitch and thrust setting were kept constant), then one would expect to find that the two identical aircraft climb through the same altitude at the same velocity, regardless of differences in mass. however this does not appear to be the case as seen below:

    the single mk1 craft: (average 473m/s at 10,000 metres) 5 repeats

    singlemk1.jpg

    the single fl-t500 craft: (average 407m/s at 10,000 metres) 5 repeats

    singlefl-t500.jpg

    as you can see, there is a very noticeable difference between the two crafts speeds at 10,000 meters, the surface info panel was also included as there may be something that i missed there.

    either way, this would seem to imply that the drag force on an aircraft is proportional to it\'s mass in some way, which is not terribly realistic to say the least :S, if i am missing something obvious, or there is something horribly wrong with my method (entirely possible), then please do point it out. Else i am afraid that this may be something for the developers to explain :P

  7. By far my most successful mun landing, using mech-jeb only for it\'s orbital info panel. Took several tries as well, those landing legs fall off with the slightest bit of lateral movement on landing, that\'s what you get for attaching them with blutac and sticky-tape i guess ^^

    onthemun.jpg

  8. [588] when you put your masterpiece of engineering on the runway, only to realise that you have not attached any engines.

    [589] when the craft you are attempting to build has so many parts, that hitting cntrl-z freezes up the editor.

    [590] the split second before you hit the ground.

  9. for goodness sake put them on the body of the plane as well xD

    there is no way that the weight of all that fuel can be supported by the wings, you may have to add some spacing to the gear under the wings also.

    good luck, you are going to need it to get that thing to fly xD

  10. have been flying my plane for 2 hours 20 minutes so far, still plenty of fuel, it did cruise up a few hundred or so meters over 15000 whilst I wasn\'t paying attention though :-[ should I bother posting results when it lands?

    EDIT* never mind that, posted anyway!

    I used all stock parts aside from mech-jeb for managing the long flight, so i understand that it may not be within the rules given the 10000m mod rule, just thought I would share anyway, and let you decide whether or not this is still valid :)

    At the beginning of the flight, the craft has 8500kg of fuel on board, and is actually very easy, if sluggish, to manoeuvre. but towards the end of the flight, when the tanks are drying up, it becomes rather unstable, and course corrections have to be done very carefully to prevent the craft from rolling uncontrollably from side to side. Mech-jeb almost always thoroughly screws this up, sending the plane into a spiralling descent and eventual crash, so all landing corrections had to be done manually.

    cruising towards the end, very low thrust setting on the engines, zero degrees pitch, extremely easy to overshoot on altitude ( which i did do a couple of times! :-[ )

    inflight.jpg

    despite everything, still managed to land the craft intact! had there been kerbals on board they would undoubtedly have survived.

    justlanded.jpg

    the final flight stats, not too shabby if you ask me 8)

    stats.jpg

    4,425,606 meters! All the way around kerbin, and about 2/3ds the way to the north pole after that! I did overshoot 15k altitude by some 290m as the craft was built with higher altitudes in mind, but i got that under control within a minute or so. again, i will understand completely if this is not accepted as a valid entry :)

    .craft file included, make sure you have mech-jeb installed if you want to try it out!

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