Azimech

Not the first piston engine with valves, it might be the first with a camshaft driven by gears. Power is provided by 6 Juno’s per cylinder. With fuel cheat enabled it will run for 4.5 hours or more, at 50% throttle. Current engine speed limit: 7.5 rad/s. At 100% throttle it will overheat the valves. This engine use the magical properties of sphere colliders (RCS balls), making most older bearing types obsolete. They’re also great for gears, liners, followers etc. The crankshaft & camshaft are built out of LY-10’s, the cams are radial RCS tanks. Piston rods are small radial decouplers. The pistons are small xenon tanks. The FPS is pretty good because I tried to avoid mesh colliders. I could try and tune this engine for many hours or just start over from scratch with different specs. Download link.

Yeah they are a total game changer. That's it, landing gear bearings are officially "out". Now comes the long road of converting all of my old aircraft and helicopter engines to the new type. They can still fail but seem stronger than antenna & solar panels. And here's an animation of my piston engine.

My stock piston engine, animated. Link: https://kerbalx.com/Azimech/77I--Piston-Engine-Prototype-2L6

Yes, I had it running (reaction wheel powered and at a modest speed, valve timing was still a mess) for 4.5 hours during the night, no problems at all, not a single slip. Recently I discovered the fantastic properties of sphere colliders. Mesh colliders are messy and need too many calculations. Plus the properties of box colliders as well are nothing to write home about. Sphere colliders ... man I wish I discovered them ages ago. Super slick and strong bearings, valve guides, piston guides, gears etc. You could say my new engine has a lot of balls XD. I'm now busy with improving clearances, balancing the crankshaft, maybe tune the valve timing and cam height a little bit more to see if I can get more speed out of it (it already went up from 4 to 7 rad/s at 50% throttle). Also the cam followers need some more work. I've increased the amount of Juno's to 6 per cylinder and this seems to be max without a cooling system, otherwise the valves go poof. But a cooling system is heavy which would increase the load on the cams, camshaft and ultimately rob the engine of power and decrease max RPM.

Depends on a number of factors. It takes a long time to mature an engine design. During 0.90 I built a thrust measuring device, AFAIK the only measuring equipment in KSP. It's obsolete and non-functional now. The best ways to improve the breed: Mount the engine on a stand and measure the lift produced on the propeller/rotor blades. Great for measuring static thrust and to improve efficiency/power of your engine. Install a single engine on an airplane and improve it until you can't beat your own speed record anymore. Great for improving propeller designs. I believe @EpicSpaceTroll139 made measurements which prove a stock helicopter has more lifting power than the sum of the blowers would suggest.

You do remember my work from last year, right? ;-)

First run of my first stock piston engine with camshaft & valves. Reliable but slow. Power: 2 Juno's per cylinder. Current speed tops out at around 4 rad/s but the construction can handle much more, at least 12 rad/s. There's a lot that can be improved but at least I've proven myself I can do it.

Finally! First run of my first stock piston engine with camshaft and valves.

In the past I just built aircraft with a claw pointing down so I could park them anywhere on or inside the carrier. They produce lots of drag though.

I think it's pretty accurate :-) I use the same method when adjusting suspension/drivetrain. The thing what is not known by most is that the automatic friction/traction control is the source of a huge amount of problems. The system tries to predict what the player wants, the player in return expects a certain behaviour and tries to compensate when the craft handles differently. This is fed back into the system ... etc. None of my 90 ground vehicles on KerbalX use automatic anything (except maybe the ancient ones I haven't updated). I'm glad it didn't happen. I wouldn't be able to give my cars these distinct characteristics, "one size fits all" cannot apply when comparing a 1968 Ford Mustang Fastback with a modern Lamborghini. I use this comparison because I used the chassis of my Mustang to build the Lambo ... yet they are completely different in every way. Correct :-)

And we need even more options for tweaking. Right now the dampers have only one setting while in real life you have the much needed options bump (compress) and rebound (the opposite). Rebound is especially useful because it limits the bouncing of airplanes while landing and improves wheel-ground contact with rovers. Also missing: anti-roll bars (also called sway bars).

I'm pretty novice at building SSTO's in the recent versions, I've only built two small ones. Also, never built me an SSTA nor a vehicle that can launch to orbit from Eve or Tylo. If we're talking about modded KSP, I'm not very good with robots. But I don't really care anyway.

Gave my stock Heinkel 219 rotating propellers today. And some nice exhaust effects. Download link

Apparently the RCS balls have a sphere collider instead of a box collider. They seem a lot smoother. Stability under warp? I've never seen any stock bearing being stable under warp. Loading ... haven't tried yet. I get good results with wheeled bearings though, as long as the shaft isn't rotating when saving. Right now I'm developing it for use with my Apache helicopter. It should work but I've found some weird bug in KSP I need to solve first: the turbine wheel and rotor blades explode, the log says they hit the baseplate, which is ludicrous.

It's ready guys!

Thanks, EvenFlow. I've also updated the OP so the album shows again.

Updated to version 2.0! Changelog version 2.0: Replaced the static propellers with spinning ones. They don’t deliver thrust. I didn’t want elevons because they’d distort the dimensions of the plane. With gratitude to KerbalX user quitessa for his most excellent RCS ball bearing, the best non-wheeled bearing in existence! Replaced the 4 Juno engines with 4 Wheesley’s. Now the top speed is very close to the original (616 km/h). Made the airframe stiffer. Gave the exhaust stacks a nice smoke effect. Tuning these took a lot of time. I hope you like the result. Best result: 10 - 15% thrust for some nice intermittent smoke somewhat resembling a real engine. Changed wheel grip values, changed the authority of the control surfaces. Instructions for flight: Engine start: Trim with ALT+Q all the way. No SAS! Set throttle to 10 - 15%. Start the left engine, action group 1. Start the right engine, action group 2. Set trim to neutral, ALT-x! Enable main engines, action group 3. Take off. Regular flight: To prevent warping of the propeller above 80m/s, you can do the following: Switch focus to the left engine, press 6 and then activate SAS. This will slow down the propeller just enough. Repeat for the right engine but press 7. Landing: To prevent the propellers from stopping when going slower than 80m/s, do the following (assuming you used the instructions for regular flight). Change focus to the left engine, press 6 to disable the extra reaction wheel, then switch off SAS. Repeat for the right engine, press 7. Extra info: Toggle flaps with action group 4. You probably won’t need them. Engine cowlings can be toggled with action groups 9 & 10. Built in the SPH in KSP version 1.3.0.

Actually ... I don't have a clue. Twitch?

Finalizing the upgrade of my Heinkel 219 "Uhu". For the first time with spinning propellers and a nice smoke effect from the "engines". I also improved aerodynamics and replaced the four Juno's with four Wheesley's, giving it a top speed almost matching the original (616 km/h). Oh and I made the airframe stiffer. Update: the engine wobble you see in the animation is now gone.

Try this one. Your choice if you want to electrify it or not. https://kerbalx.com/Azimech/77I-UAV1

I'm the only one to use a turboprop to fly around Kerbin, but had to land twice to refuel. Since anything rotating cannot use time acceleration, this is a very tedious thing to do.

Something I built a while ago. One seat, one Juno, spinning prop, 106 parts. Download link.

Well ... my 1910 truck does have a jet engine but I gave it the performance of that day & age. Made it hard to drive as well.

" Here we have an entirely historical photo of a Po-2 carrying a RDS-37 thermonuclear bomb since, as we all know, the Po-2 was the backbone of Soviet strategic bomber force during the Cold War. " Hilarious! And good model btw. I really enjoyed flying the U2 in the IL2 series.

Solar panels in the 1920's? Even a jet engine would be more realistic :-P