small circular intake/radial air intake?

[Perotis]

All of the Youtube videos I've seen of 'build your first space plane' show the person using a radial air intake.  But I only have access to the small circular intake and don't know how you are supposed to use it with the Juno basic jet engine, because you cant really attach the circular intake to the main fuselage.

 

[Snark]

A few things to bear in mind:

- Many YouTube videos are outdated, and reflect the state of affairs several patches ago.  So take them with a grain of salt.  Especially, any video before May 2015 is going to be worthless for anything involving aerodynamics, because that's when 1.0 came out and totally changed how things work.

- The Juno is fine for building planes, but not spaceplanes.  You're not going to go to space with a Juno unless you really, really stretch it (read: more trouble than it's worth). You should wait until you have at least the Panther, more preferably the Whiplash, to build a spaceplane.

- The more advanced engines are farther down the tech tree.  By the time you have those, you will also have a choice of other intakes as well.

 

Edited December 26, 2015 by Snark

[FungusForge]

Gonna add on to Snark's reply, most of those "Your first blahblah" videos are generally done in sandbox mode where everything is available. If you're looking to them for an idea of how to build things, its good to keep in mind that some components they talk about and use flat out won't be available in an early career.

[GoSlash27]

1 hour ago, FungusForge said:

Gonna add on to Snark's reply, most of those "Your first blahblah" videos are generally done in sandbox mode where everything is available. If you're looking to them for an idea of how to build things, its good to keep in mind that some components they talk about and use flat out won't be available in an early career.

All of the above.

 If the only intake you have access to is the small circular intake, then you haven't unlocked enough tech to make a practical SSTO spaceplane.

 Wait until tech level 6 at the very least and tech level 8 if you haven't built and flown an SSTO spaceplane before. They are expensive and difficult to get right and will tank your entire career if you don't have experience with them.

Best,

-Slashy

[SpacedCowboy]

First, all the above answers are spot on. Secondly, If you've got Junos, you've got the small fuel tanks that correspond perfectly. You can make some wonderful low-atmo planes. But no, as mentioned above you will not go into space,,, yet!

[Perotis]

I figured out quite quickly that the YouTube videos were probably a few versions behind the game.

My choice of words was probably a bit off.  I guess "space" plan is not what I meant

I'm just trying to figure out how to make a flyable plane with the small intake/engine so I can do some 'observation' missions.

[Snark]

57 minutes ago, Perotis said:

I'm just trying to figure out how to make a flyable plane with the small intake/engine so I can do some 'observation' missions.

Junos are great for that.  They're super efficient, you can cruise a long long way on a small amount of fuel.

They also work very nicely in combination with a Terrier.  Take a Mk1 cockpit, put a 2-ton LFO tank behind it with a Terrier, put a couple of Junos (one on either side), add appropriate wings and control surfaces.  It's great for those "go to <place> and <do thing> at <20ish km altitude>" contracts, and it requires only a very low tech level.  The Junos fly you where you need to go, then the Terrier hops you up to where you do the measurement, then the Junos fly you home again.

It's not a SSTO, just a SSTUA. 

People think of the Terrier as being a vacuum engine.  They're right, but "vacuum" doesn't mean "space."  Even at 10 km (which Junos can easily do), you're most of the way to a vacuum and the Terrier works just great.

Edited December 27, 2015 by Snark

[Machinosaure]

I think what OP had in mind is... where should you plug the small circular intake?

I get it, it fits perfectly on the engine... and then, where do you plug the whole thing? I've been fiddling with the editor for the last 20 minutes before resorting to Google and ending up here. I've even tried to use the Swivel liquid fuel engine to propel my first plane (wasn't pretty, at least I called it the Bad Idea Mk1)

Still trying to figure out how to plug the intake, the engine and the fuel line all together with just the tech from the Aviation tech node.

Edit: I asked the same question on Reddit

Edited December 27, 2015 by Machinosaure

[GoSlash27]

Machinosaure,

 The Mk.0 fuel tank attaches radially pretty much anywhere. If you attach a couple tanks with mirror symmetry, you can put intakes on the front and engines on the back.

Best,

-Slashy

[Wanderfound]

To demonstrate a few ways to mount Junos:

 

That's a FAR build, but the same basic concepts will work in stock aero.

4 hours ago, Machinosaure said:

Still trying to figure out how to plug the intake, the engine and the fuel line all together with just the tech from the Aviation tech node

Jet engines don't require fuel lines, BTW; they draw evenly from all LF tanks on the ship, regardless of where they're mounted.

[cantab]

Yup, simplest way is to attach the small jet fuel tank to your aircraft somewhere, then small intake on the front and juno on the back.

[nixeagle]

• Interesting that ETT has Alcubierre Drive at the experimental science node which requires 95 science to research. I'd think this would be deeper in the tech tree given what it does.
• Is it possible to build a plane with just the stuff in Aviation? I tried and was unable due to not being able to get air flow to the engine. The small circular intake has nowhere to mount and I was not able to radially mount it anywhere. If anyone knows how to get a working plane with these parts, I'd be very interested :).

Really cool tree though, I love it.

---

Edit: aha, someone asked the plane question just before my post! I tried to rush planes with my first science points only to end up having to restart because I was unable to get anything to work!

Again, seriously cool mod. I'm loving it as it lets me change up how the start of a career mode "feels".

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Edit2: I don't think I meant to post under this topic... If a moderator wants to delete this... they are more then welcome to do so.

Edited December 24, 2016 by nixeagle

[pincushionman]

On 12/27/2015 at 2:05 AM, Machinosaure said:

I think what OP had in mind is... where should you plug the small circular intake?

I get it, it fits perfectly on the engine... and then, where do you plug the whole thing? I've been fiddling with the editor for the last 20 minutes before resorting to Google and ending up here. I've even tried to use the Swivel liquid fuel engine to propel my first plane (wasn't pretty, at least I called it the Bad Idea Mk1)

Still trying to figure out how to plug the intake, the engine and the fuel line all together with just the tech from the Aviation tech node.

Edit: I asked the same question on Reddit

The simplest thing to do is to use two Junos, one on each side of the fuselage. Just like on a real-world business jet.

[foamyesque]

Yeah, twin Juno designs are pretty easy to make with the Mk 0 fuel tank. It's also possible to build single-engine Juno designs, but you need clipping, the NCS, or the 0.625m nosecones to make it clean.

Edited December 25, 2016 by foamyesque