Dakota MK-III (RAF version of the C-47 skytrain)

kapteenipirk · November 5, 2015

Here is an aircraft witch im pretty sure you are all familiar with, The DC-3 or in this case the Dakota MK-III. The DC-3 is ofcourse one of the most famous and well known transport aircrafts from the pages of history proving to be a very reliable and well performing aicraft compared to the DC-2 from witch it was created. Dakota was the designation given by the British to the C-47 Skytrain witch was the USAF version of the DC-3. Still to this day the DC-3 continues to operate and could do so for such a long time that it would become the first airliner to operate for a century .

Enough about the history, lets get on with the Build itself. I must say that i was able to make the aircraft look suprisingly accurate given the materials at hand.

NOTE: I learned a lesson today about building aircrafts in KSP, and that is that dont use I-beams to build planes :wink: . The problem being that i beams are really heavy :huh: .

In this pick you can see the weight of the I-beams and the technical stats of the aircraft.

You can see that the aircraft is really heavy. In comparason the JU-52 replika craft that i made (Length:22 m Width:31.7 m) only weights about 25.5 tons.

Because of the I-beams that weigh about 30-50 tons total i was forced to do some unwanted engine solutions . It currently has 6 radial engines (3 engines merged together per nacelle) and 4 underwing engines.

Even despite the high amount of engines the aircraft has pretty poor flight capabilitys:

1. It takes a long time to be able to take off.

2. I flew the entire flight with S down.

3. Dont even think about landing this thing.

4. This one eats fuel real quick making the range of this one very low.

5. All of this i caused by its slow speed of about 90-100 m/s (Speed required for takeoff is 80 m/s so yea). (New required takeoff speed is 50 m/s)

6. And yes i spent about an hour trying to fix these issues but was unable.

EDIT: After some tinkering around i fixed broblems 1, 2 and 3. It still isnt perfect but it works now.

So even if its a very good looking aircraft it doesnt work very well because i concentrated too much on the looks and forgot that just how heavy those damn I-beam were .

It is still suprisingly fun to fly around if you ask me (cuz good looks).

Here are some picks of it in action.

Again im using a cockpit instead of command seats for the sakes of IVA.

So i hope you enjoy this little replika craft of mine .

As reference i used an Italer 1/72 scale model of the Dakota MK-III.

Mods used: KAX, Firespitter, B9 aerospace, Prosedural wings, Flag decals V.2.3

Download link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/48jr4vds9ud190j/Dakota%20MK-III%20%28DC-3%20RAF%29%20%28flagless%29.craft?dl=0 (aircraft supplied will be flagless)

Links to my other replika projects:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/136727-Junkers-JU-52-Iron-Annie

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/136521-KR-73-Whitebird

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/137066-Kavro-Lankaster-%28dambuster%29

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/137504-Handley-Page-0-400-replika-%28done-in-0-25%29