THE GREAT AIRPLANE EXCHANGE!!!

[Triop]

A little fun flyer:

NoseJeb

Craftfile:https://www.dropbox.com/s/s2gs0aqiwu9vly9/NoseJeb.craft?dl=0

 

Edited March 20, 2016 by Triop

[Speed_Kerman]

A little experimentation and an upgrade later, The Xander Star Mk. 4 is ready to roll out!! This unit carries 500 more units of liquid fuel than the Mk. 3, and has 2 extra Juno engines to maintain power to fly it. It still carries only four passengers, and flies quite a bit heavier than the Mk. 3, but this one will take you pretty much anywhere on Kerbin you want to go, and maybe even back again (untested, don't quote me.). The Mk. 4 model still maintains the classic lines and the look of the Mk. 3 chassis with only a few minor adjustments to compensate for the COM and COL shift. She's still a beauty to fly, and can quite possibly top out at over 300 m/s (again, untested, don't quote me.).

I'll add a download link later on tonight sometime if interest warrants.

 

Xander Star Mk. 4 - Designed for Royalty (or extremely well of business men), built for you.

[Guz]

my single stage to minimus mining shuttle :

craftfile: http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=09620957301674332547

[Dobelong]

Behold, the Polaris, 4-engined Learjet.

 

Also, the Mountain Lion, the Twin-panther Fighter-Learjet.

 

 

[Triop]

Let me be so kind and give this a bump

F-16 Falcon

More pics:

Spoiler

Not 100% accurate, but flies like a dream.

Craftfile:https://www.dropbox.com/s/ppfjhmzy7e9wp95/F-16%20Falcon.craft?dl=0

Edited March 21, 2016 by Triop

[PilotsofRiots]

 

On 3/20/2016 at 4:11 PM, Guz said:

my single stage to minimus mining shuttle :

craftfile: http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=09620957301674332547

Wow that is awesome! Just keeps accelerating. Good Job! THAT IS WHAT I CALL, AN INTERPLANETARY BEAST!

Edited March 22, 2016 by PilotsofRiots

[Wjolcz]

Stock wings are boring. FAR + B9 Pwings is more fun.

 

[He_162]

6 hours ago, Veeltch said:

Stock wings are boring. FAR + B9 Pwings is more fun.

 

Good looking stock wings are much more fun than easy to make Pwings, and much more worth the effort. You can make any shape wing with stock wings, if it isn't small enough, up your scale.

 

Just saying, modded craft require more detail, and effort to be as good as a hard worked on stock craft.

[NQMT]

 

13,000km range.

Turboprop variant turned out to be massively overpowered, so I've downgraded (but rather upgraded) to the Aerosport engine.

That has a range of 12,000km, and can climb while accelerating on a single engine.

 

I *may* post a download link, however this does use a few mods.

 

[superstrijder15]

On 20-3-2016 at 11:11 PM, Guz said:

my single stage to minimus mining shuttle :

Loléd so hard at the end 

[Jett_Quasar]

I'm on a Star Wars kick right now so I developed a Naboo Fighter - this one is air only and it flies great.  Oh and it comes with it's own astromech droid too.

Download the Naboo Air Fighter - HERE

Download the IO-U1 astromech Droid - HERE

JR

Edited March 23, 2016 by Jolly_Roger

[max_creative]

Hey @Triop, love the f-16!

Although... You forgot the airbrake. 

[Kryten 2X4B 523P]

This one is loosely based on the de Havilland DH100 Vampire.

Quite pleased as its the first plane Ive managed to build that hasnt required SAS to fly. Tends to nose up under full power and nose down when unpowered, but both are really easy to control, and at 1/3 throttle its nice and stable.

Heres the Vampire

[evader]

Swivel Jet (cause I'm so uncreative at naming)

Stock VTOL to horizontal flight and back again using the same engines.  My 1st attempt at implementing these mysterious "bearings" I see posted once in a while in these forums.

Download link: classified

Edited March 27, 2016 by evader
Download link

[Triop]

On 22-3-2016 at 5:32 PM, max_creative said:

Hey @Triop, love the f-16!

Although... You forgot the airbrake. 

My F-16 brakes for no one...

[Matuchkin]

On 3/20/2016 at 2:13 PM, GDJ said:

Pretty sure everybody north of the 49th knows what I was going for here.

Avro Lancaster. One reason why I'm proud of my country.

Avro's the best plane manufacturer ever! Other than Mikoyan Gurevich, Sukhoi, Lockeed Martin, Boeing, Fairchild, etc, etc. So nevermind that.

Edited March 27, 2016 by Matuchkin

[justmeman117]

On 3/20/2016 at 4:11 PM, Guz said:

my single stage to minimus mining shuttle :

craftfile: http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=09620957301674332547

You know, if you used fairings instead of heat shields, this would be a lot better craft for a number of reasons.

For one thing, fairings tend to be a lot lighter than heat shields. They are also the second most heat resistant parts in the game TO heat shields and engines, making them good nose cones during re-entries. And because they're a lot more streamlined, you'll incur a lot less drag on take-off and ascent.

I suspect you used heat shields there due to an explode-y issue on reentry, and I think I know why. You are re-entering unbelievably steep, and unbelievably fast, at a scary shallow angle of attack. I'm frankly shocked it didn't explode in spite of your use of heat shields. If you managed re-entry heat better, you could build a more traditional looking, and more efficient SSTO without ever even having to touch a heat shield. Here, here's the steps I recommend when re-entering:

 

Step 1.) De-Orbit to a very high periapsis. I recommend a periapsis of around 40 to 45 km for Keo re-entries, and 50-60 km for inter munar, or interplanetary re-entries. Heat only becomes a major issue deep in the atmosphere where the air is thicker, so you want to bleed off as much speed in the upper atmosphere as possible.

Step 2.) Upon entering the atmosphere, ANGLE. During the high altitude portion, angle to about 45-90 degrees away from your pro-grade vector. This will cause as much drag through the upper atmosphere as possible.

Step 3.) Lower your angle down to around 30 degrees as you get deeper into the atmosphere, when there is no risk of bouncing back into space. At this point, you want to continue bleeding speed in the upper atmosphere, so a 30 degree angle will not only cause drag, it'll also cause just enough lift for you to hang there at a higher altitude for a while.

Step 4.) Maintain this profile until you get deeper into the atmosphere, at which point you need to angle based upon where your parts are most heating up. For example, if the nose cone is near overheating, try increasing the angle.

Step 5.) once you've dropped well down below around 700 m/s, then fly around normally and go land.

 

There's a number of reasons you want to do all this. It's not just to drag either. By not angling high up, you'll not cause much drag, and so lawn dart into the lower atmosphere at 1,500 to 2,000 m/s, at which point you'll explode. Additionally, by not angling, you are focusing ALL your thermal energy on just the one or two parts at the front of the spacecraft. This is why you are using heat shields for those parts. But you don't NEED to use heat shields. If you instead angle to at least 30 degrees or more during the re-entry, that thermal energy will be spread out amongst dozens of parts, and so no single part will overheat enough to explode. Oh, by the way, you don't even need to burn to slow down from an inter-planetary re-entry. You can just use this method, though you may have to make multiple aerobraking passes using this method first before finally re-entering. This means you can use that fuel elsewhere in your missions.

Just by revising the way you re-enter, you could save literally tons of weight, hundreds of delta V, and make it a lot easier to fly out of the atmosphere by decreasing drag with more streamlined parts. I recommend playing around with flight profiles like this, and perhaps considering revising your SSTO to accommodate it best.

 

I am very intrigued by your design though. I'm used to using rapiers for SSTOs, I've never really considered making an all rocket one. The TWR on this thing means it could have very good cross range capability inside a planetary system, such as potentially landing on Tylo or Eve. I might have to try out such a design of my own.

 

Edited March 28, 2016 by justmeman117

[Guz]

15 hours ago, justmeman117 said:

thanks to the impressive amount of time you spent to make out your thoughts about my good ol' shuttle ! aprechiated deeply !

of course fairings do make more sense. the reason i used heatshields instead was to ensure "noob-proof" reentry (which i considered to be one by myself back then XD ). i think in version 1.04 the heating due reentry was even different from 1.05 or later.

15 hours ago, justmeman117 said:

I am very intrigued by your design though. I'm used to using rapiers for SSTOs, I've never really considered making an all rocket one. The TWR on this thing means it could have very good cross range capability inside a planetary system, such as potentially landing on Tylo or Eve. I might have to try out such a design of my own.

 

i never used rapiers for ssto's - why go hard when there's an easy way

 

 

 

[justmeman117]

4 hours ago, Guz said:

 

Oh, it was 1.0.4? That would explain it then, if I remember correctly re-entry heating in 1.0.4 was broken to the end of ONLY being able to re-enter with heat shields.

 

Not that such a game mechanic would be a bad thing, but not until after the devs finally decide to make heat shielded versions of all the space plane parts.

 

And I actually have made all rocket SSTOs and high sub-orbit first stages before, but those were rocket launchers that landed under parachute rather than by flying. The problem with that method though is you only get like 67% of the funds you recovered.

Edited March 29, 2016 by justmeman117

[RixKillian]

Back at it with the WWII replicas, my latest plane is the Grumman F4F-3 Wildcat, a carrier based fighter that saw extensive action in the Pacific Theater. I'm holding off on a release for this one until 1.1, with the new medium sized landing gear.

Here's one that's already been released, I just thought this was a nice shot. Here's a Curtiss P-36 Hawk alongside the KDS Fireball. (The Fireball may be released at a later date.)

The P-36 can be found here: https://kerbalx.com/RixKillian/Curtiss-P36-Hawk

[Triop]

Long distance intercept fighter.

Craftfile: https://www.dropbox.com/s/esy1zk2vzydyetc/F-X.craft?dl=0

Edited March 29, 2016 by Triop

[Guz]

On 29.3.2016 at 6:37 AM, Triop said:

Long distance intercept fighter.

Craftfile: https://www.dropbox.com/s/esy1zk2vzydyetc/F-X.craft?dl=0

enjoyed it, thanks !