Powered by KAX - Rockwell North American OV-10 Bronco Counter-Insurgency Aircraft

[Goddess Bhavani]

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KAX

North American Rockwell OV-10 Bronco Counter-Insurgency Aircraft

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Small, deadly, and highly versatile, the OV-10 Bronco is the premier light attack and observation aircraft of the Cold War era. With a ridiculous number of external hardpoints and a easily reconfigurable science/cargo section, I intend to deploy this aircraft in a variety of early/mid career missions including scientific survey, surveillance and security functions.

Speaking of 'security' functions, reading about the OV-10's impressive combat record on an automotive blog turned combat aircraft discussion site made me put on a full loadout of demonstrator ordnance just for the fun of it!

The Kerbal replica of the OV-10 is noticeably larger and more powerful, with a greater wingspan. This was due to reasons of practicality (roll rate would be really slow with one set of ailerons) and to preserve a fully stock airframe. It is maneuverable and STOL capable. With a bit of tweaking you could even make a VTOL or STOVL out of this craft.

The craft files can be downloaded from KerbalX:

Light Strike variant - KAX and TweakScale

Unarmed survey variant - needs KAX mod only

[pTrevTrevs]

Hey, I think that my local aviation museum might have one of these! I thought this had BD Armory at first, and then I saw that those were stock missiles, and I was completely blown away. Shut up and take my rep!

[Kagame]

That is awesome.

[B-STRK]

Simply beautiful.

BTW, I know this question might be better off in the Tutorial thread, but I hope you can humor me here, I've been curious: in twin-tailboom designs like this, how do you get the single tailplane at the end? As in, since the tailplanes I would assume are built off the symmetried tailbooms, how do you get that center wing section to connect to both sides? (I guess I would assume struts clipped into the wing structure or something? As I haven't installed KAX yet (and I'm worried about pushing my limits with installed mods), I haven't been able to DL and check the aircraft to see its construction secrets. Thanks!

[Goddess Bhavani]

Thanks for your kind reply

The twin boom design is something of a small challenge for the reasons you mentioned; a workaround also needed to be found for the following issues compounded:

1) You are currently not allowed to surface attach parts onto the Delta Deluxe Winglets, a stock issue/oversight I highlighted here to the agreement of other forumers: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/125442-Stock-Part-Config-Surface-Attachment-Allow-for-Stock-Delta-Deluxe-Winglets

2) If you surface attach onto the tail booms, the horizontal stabilizers cannot be offset more than half the height of the Delta Deluxe Winglets!

3) Because the "Basic Tail Fin" has been changed from a simple generic fin to the F-15 Eagle's all-flying elevator, it can no longer be used as a base for a high offset tail setup, as the resulting structure has many unsightly holes impossible to fill without TweakScaled parts. As I mentioned in the above feedback thread, the Basic Tail Fin is still flagged to allow surface attachments to it but looks unsightly as such.

The Solution:

I first tried using a square airfoil piece as the vertical stabilizer, in order to prove the aerodynamic performance of the Bronco's planform. This worked but was very ugly.

I was about to leave it as it is and scrap the design as a sharable craft, but I chanced on the following discovery - you can over-ride / work-around the offset distance limitation by placing the stabilizer parts vertically on the tail booms, and then rotating them 90 degrees. The game "forgets" the horizontal part is way out of its allowed offset limits, so long as you do not move it.

If you take a look at either of the OV-10 replica craft files in SPH, notice you can rip out the vertical stabilizers and the center section remains floating? They're actually attached structurally to the twin booms and not the Delta Deluxe parts! The angle of incidence of the horizontal tail sections are pre-set before rotating them 90 degrees, then the vertical stabilizers are aligned to them after the center of lift is confirmed within the 'tolerable stability' zone.

Filling up the center part of the horizontal stabilizer was easy compared to the above workaround - just take a similar airfoil section and place it in between, then connect the "loose" end with a strut internally, meaning, zoom in the camera until it clips inside the part, and attach a strut to both endplates of the airfoils you want to connect, with the strut hidden inside the part itself. The width of the twin booms are simply set via offsetting the engine nacelles, until the tail parts line up perfectly.

[B-STRK]

Thanks for your kind reply

The twin boom design is something of a small challenge for the reasons you mentioned; a workaround also needed to be found for the following issues compounded:

1) You are currently not allowed to surface attach parts onto the Delta Deluxe Winglets, a stock issue/oversight I highlighted here to the agreement of other forumers: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/125442-Stock-Part-Config-Surface-Attachment-Allow-for-Stock-Delta-Deluxe-Winglets

2) If you surface attach onto the tail booms, the horizontal stabilizers cannot be offset more than half the height of the Delta Deluxe Winglets!

3) Because the "Basic Tail Fin" has been changed from a simple generic fin to the F-15 Eagle's all-flying elevator, it can no longer be used as a base for a high offset tail setup, as the resulting structure has many unsightly holes impossible to fill without TweakScaled parts. As I mentioned in the above feedback thread, the Basic Tail Fin is still flagged to allow surface attachments to it but looks unsightly as such.

The Solution:

I first tried using a square airfoil piece as the vertical stabilizer, in order to prove the aerodynamic performance of the Bronco's planform. This worked but was very ugly.

http://i.imgur.com/8IUS5rJ.jpg

I was about to leave it as it is and scrap the design as a sharable craft, but I chanced on the following discovery - you can over-ride / work-around the offset distance limitation by placing the stabilizer parts vertically on the tail booms, and then rotating them 90 degrees. The game "forgets" the horizontal part is way out of its allowed offset limits, so long as you do not move it.

If you take a look at either of the OV-10 replica craft files in SPH, notice you can rip out the vertical stabilizers and the center section remains floating? They're actually attached structurally to the twin booms and not the Delta Deluxe parts! The angle of incidence of the horizontal tail sections are pre-set before rotating them 90 degrees, then the vertical stabilizers are aligned to them after the center of lift is confirmed within the 'tolerable stability' zone.

Filling up the center part of the horizontal stabilizer was easy compared to the above workaround - just take a similar airfoil section and place it in between, then connect the "loose" end with a strut internally, meaning, zoom in the camera until it clips inside the part, and attach a strut to both endplates of the airfoils you want to connect, with the strut hidden inside the part itself. The width of the twin booms are simply set via offsetting the engine nacelles, until the tail parts line up perfectly.

I will have to remember these lessons. I often tried to have at least some connect between an offset part and the collider (or at least texture) of the parent part, I was afraid that the physics would get wonky with floating parts the way they sometimes do with (badly) clipped parts.

Thanks again for the info! Gah, I really have to have another install dedicated to atmo craft--though I do have to plan on some sort of electric Duna flyer... and the OV-10 has all that extra lifting surface. (Now it's just a matter of making foldable main wings or making the front fuselage a lifting body to make it all fit in a fairing...)