China Air Force: Chengdu J-10 Dragon Multirole Fighter

[Goddess Bhavani]

Chengdu Aircraft Corporation

J-10 Dragon / F-10 Vanguard

Background:

The J-10 is a present-day People's Republic of China multirole fighter aircraft that resembles the Israeli Lavi technology demonstrator. It is capable of Mach 2.2 at altitude with a maximum payload of 6,000kg on a surprising number of hardpoints - 11 weapon stations. It is currently flown by both the PRC and Pakistan, with Argentina and Iran as possible future operators.

This Kerbal replica of the J-10 "Vigorous Dragon" is presented significantly lighter than the actual aircraft; thanks to progressive design simplication during wing design, a similar wing shape was achieved with just 3 parts apiece and no struts required.

It is also significantly faster in supersonic cruise thanks to the turboramjet we know and love. I have not attempted to reach Mach 4+ with this craft but there shouldn't be any issues with doing so save for aerodynamic instability; in order to match the actual aircraft's relaxed stability setup, the aircraft is configured to be quite twitchy and rather similar in feel to the flight model of Falcon 4.0 BMS. That said you can easily dial in positive stability by making small adjustments to the canards and control surfaces using the Rotate Part function in SPH.

Download .craft file in KerbalX!

Edited September 12, 2015 by pandoras kitten

[CommanderSpock]

That sure does have more than a passing resemblance to an f-16

[RocketBlam]

That's nice work. I'm always envious of people that can design a plane that looks like a real plane. I can't.

Just curious though, it looks like you're using TweakScale (for the solids on the wings), which is fine, but I would think you would use it also for the ones that are made up of the 0.625m parts... you know, shrink down some of the bigger white tanks.

Anyway, it looks nice.

[Goddess Bhavani]

Yeah good point re: tweakscale. I do like releasing the basic airframe as stock, by unmounting the tweakscale missiles just before release. For this craft I thought leaving the drop tanks in looked cool and they work well to simulate a more realistic fuel load distribution too. Although all 3 fuselage sections are tanks, for realism I left the front and back ones empty and just retain them to manage center of mass.

ps, I understand your experience with plane appearance too, 6 months ago all I could make was passing resemblances to 1960s jet fighters. Designs like MiG-15/17/19/21, F-86 Sabre, F-80 Shooting Star and Mirage series are good places to start because their wing planform nearly exactly matches that provided by simple plane parts and swept wings.

They will teach you how to offset the wings and tail surfaces for realistic positioning, dial in anhedral or dihedral as required, and these are fundamental skills for all your future advanced aircraft projects

Edited September 12, 2015 by pandoras kitten