[1.4.x-1.8.x] Airplane Plus - R26.4 (Fixed issues/Github is up to date) (Dec 21, 2019)

[agrock]

I understand the basics of aeronautics, flaps increase lift (for landing with less airspeed/groundspeed) at some cost of increased drag (fuel efficiency). But I dont understand how KSP handles all physics. There are many examples where KSP physics is significantly different from reality. For one, stock engine (not FAR) computes drag from just mass, speed, and air density. Therefore any kind of fairings only added drag. Adding pointy nosecones, also only added mass and thus drag. Therefore...

What do Trailing Edge Two Slot Flaps do exactly with FAR addon installed? Increase lift? Increase drag?

Should I use them both for takeoff and landing?

 

[kcs123]

2 hours ago, agrock said:

What do Trailing Edge Two Slot Flaps do exactl

I did not understand this part exactly, but in flaps in general have certainly usage. It increase preassure under wings just near placement of flaps and due to increased preassure it increase lift. By the same time, flaps also increase drag. But, since drag force is also heavy influenced with craft velocity, you need to pay attention to lift/drag ratio.

At low velocity, you have most benefits from flaps due to increased lift and overall drag force is reasonably low. So, L/D ratio is high. But, as velocity increase, efficiency or L/D of flaps drops because drag force increases. You can benefit from flaps on both, take off and landing. Increased drag on landing is actualy desireable, to slow down more quickly and since you have also increased lift, craft would not fall from the sky like rock imediately.

However, it require some skills in craft designs to place flaps properly and have most lift where you need it, but not messing up with pitch controls too much. Most benefits you will have if you place flaps near COM, just slightly behind, where it would have low influence on pitching and giving most of lifting force where you need the most.

[kcs123]

It depends on craft designs. I only need spoilers if craft is too fast to stop it on regular way with wheel brakes. If you need them, it is good to put spoilers behind COM, it will make aircraft more yaw/sideslip stable when you start to break. Sometimes even help to put it near tail if yaw stabilization is issue. Shuttle use split spoiler on vertical tail surface, for example. That is most generic answer that would be good for all kind of aircrafts, but you will need to experimet with your own designs, where you will get most benefits of it.

[agrock]

1 hour ago, kcs123 said:

It depends on craft designs. I only need spoilers if craft is too fast to stop it on regular way with wheel brakes. If you need them, it is good to put spoilers behind COM, it will make aircraft more yaw/sideslip stable when you start to break. Sometimes even help to put it near tail if yaw stabilization is issue. Shuttle use split spoiler on vertical tail surface, for example. That is most generic answer that would be good for all kind of aircrafts, but you will need to experimet with your own designs, where you will get most benefits of it.

With ONLY gear breaks? I am using 2 large parachutes to stop the plane on runway. After all, its <300 tons of mass (thats takeoff mass, landing mass unknown), ~120 m/sec airspeed. 

It carries 4 large parachutes, in case it needs to land horizontally.

[kcs123]

16 hours ago, agrock said:

With ONLY gear breaks? I am using 2 large parachutes to stop the plane on runway. After all, its <300 tons of mass (thats takeoff mass, landing mass unknown), ~120 m/sec airspeed. 

It carries 4 large parachutes, in case it needs to land horizontally.

Like I said, it depends on craft design. I don't recall if I used spoilers on craft on picture, I think that flaps were sufficient and with combination of large wing surface area it allowed reasonably low landing velocity. I almost never used drag parachutes at all on planes. There is craft designs when I have used spoilers. Usually middle control surface on wings I used as spoilers, inner control surface for flaps and most outwards just for roll control.

IIRC, weight on runway was around 300-350t and I always test landing with full loads before going to space.

[commanderbunbun]

Is there a possibility to make a thermonuclear reaction turbine engine out of the cheetah turbofan?

 

[Kennosuke.ken]

Finally! Now I could built all sort of propeller driven aircrafts! From the Fokker Dr.I to the Messerschmits! Thank you for your mod.

[Daniel Prates]

On 19/11/2017 at 7:19 AM, kcs123 said:

Like I said, it depends on craft design. I don't recall if I used spoilers on craft on picture, I think that flaps were sufficient and with combination of large wing surface area it allowed reasonably low landing velocity. I almost never used drag parachutes at all on planes. There is craft designs when I have used spoilers. Usually middle control surface on wings I used as spoilers, inner control surface for flaps and most outwards just for roll control.

Same here. In my experience, any craft with a stall speed being so high (or weight being so high) that you absolutely need chutes, could do with some more design tweaking. The trick is not to break like hell, but rather to touchdown slowly in such a manner that the KSC's runway (which is gigantic, imho) simply has to be enough. In all my designs, whenever I sense that the runway is too short or I am having a hard time touching down and slowing down, I come to the conclusion that my design is flawed: it has to be better thought-out. Is it carrying necessary weight? Do I have enough lifting surface? Can the wing loading be reduced somehow? 

If you bird is made in such a way that, whichever size it is, you can land it at 100m/s or less, it is a good design. I have made some awesome designs that would only take-off at over 150m/s or 200m/s, but getting into the air is much easier than carefully landing, and whats the point of a design where you can't land safely? 

My life improved a lot since I started using the navigational aid mod (for the ILS it contains) and atmospheric autopilot (to put it in auto-trim and release some of the workload). The keyboard being awkward as it is to pilot a plane, those two are a must. I am mentioning this because, in my experience, landing is that much easier when you have better fine control of your craft. You can come in a steeper angle, you can touch more lightly, you align better. You can come at near-stall speeds and still hold it together, which is also a bonus for landing craft slowly. 

Edited November 21, 2017 by Daniel Prates

[AccidentalDisassembly]

On 11/18/2017 at 4:09 AM, agrock said:

What do Trailing Edge Two Slot Flaps do exactly with FAR addon installed? Increase lift? Increase drag?

 

The short answer is: nothing.

[agrock]

2 hours ago, AccidentalDisassembly said:

The short answer is: nothing.

I tested it empirically, and it seemed to have increased lift but by only so little... I could not tell the difference so... yeah I concur.

[Lan_Morehell]

Hello folks! I have a strange problem with prop engines. Please help me to sort out the root of the problem. Any prop attached to the plane gives me an increasing thrust up to somewhat 20m/s speed. Then thrust starts to decrease dramatically to almost Zero by about 57mps. It is absolutely impossible to accelerate aircraft above these speeds as thrust zeroes. I have tried to add some intakes and open/close intakes in egine options with absolutely no effect at all.  What could this be? where to look to find the root of this phenomena? Thank you!

 

Of course I've read the FAQ, but 57 mps for Hurricane engine?

Edited November 24, 2017 by Lan_Morehell

[qromodynmc]

2 hours ago, Lan_Morehell said:

Hello folks! I have a strange problem with prop engines. Please help me to sort out the root of the problem. Any prop attached to the plane gives me an increasing thrust up to somewhat 20m/s speed. Then thrust starts to decrease dramatically to almost Zero by about 57mps. It is absolutely impossible to accelerate aircraft above these speeds as thrust zeroes. I have tried to add some intakes and open/close intakes in egine options with absolutely no effect at all.  What could this be? where to look to find the root of this phenomena? Thank you!

 

Of course I've read the FAQ, but 57 mps for Hurricane engine?

any engine? are you sure? I've planes who can go up to 200ms (around 700kph) with ap+ props, though i use FAR. Still it shouldnt be that slow even on stock aero.

Can you post pic or something.

[Kennosuke.ken]

6 hours ago, qromodynmc said:

any engine? are you sure? I've planes who can go up to 200ms (around 700kph) with ap+ props, though i use FAR. Still it shouldnt be that slow even on stock aero.

Can you post pic or something.

 

8 hours ago, Lan_Morehell said:

Hello folks! I have a strange problem with prop engines. Please help me to sort out the root of the problem. Any prop attached to the plane gives me an increasing thrust up to somewhat 20m/s speed. Then thrust starts to decrease dramatically to almost Zero by about 57mps. It is absolutely impossible to accelerate aircraft above these speeds as thrust zeroes. I have tried to add some intakes and open/close intakes in egine options with absolutely no effect at all.  What could this be? where to look to find the root of this phenomena? Thank you!

 

Of course I've read the FAQ, but 57 mps for Hurricane engine? 

8 hours ago, Lan_Morehell said:

Hello folks! I have a strange problem with prop engines. Please help me to sort out the root of the problem. Any prop attached to the plane gives me an increasing thrust up to somewhat 20m/s speed. Then thrust starts to decrease dramatically to almost Zero by about 57mps. It is absolutely impossible to accelerate aircraft above these speeds as thrust zeroes. I have tried to add some intakes and open/close intakes in egine options with absolutely no effect at all.  What could this be? where to look to find the root of this phenomena? Thank you!

 

Of course I've read the FAQ, but 57 mps for Hurricane engine?

I have this happening too. But I don't think this is a problem. The Kontraprop engine has the top speed at about 200m/s and the engine will stop giving thrust and make the plane maintaining the same speed

[DiscoveryPlanet]

Sir can you make cockpit for Sukhoi PAK FA?

[memeconnoiseur]

This thread seems pretty dead right now, anyone else feeling it too?

Hopefully @blackheart612 is  working on airplanes plus R19 with some good stuff

Edited November 27, 2017 by memeconnoiseur

[blackheart612]

@memeconnoiseur Well, I did set off for a month, and despite passing the exam for license, still got more things to do before actually getting it and came out of town and back. Missed out on a few games so I play other games as well.

Though, I don't have any reason to abandon this, I really like making stuff. In fact, I've been working on silently so as to not get everybody's hopes up. I used to work faster so I update occasionally, now, as I am doing other things simultaneously, I'm going at a relatively slow pace. Another issue is the parts all aren't complete for teasing.

But if you want updates, I hope it's fine that I have the window title on the screenshots as I forgot to fullscreen when I took the shots.

Here's what's mostly done, I have to polish the mesh, fix and test IVA, further refinement of configs, should be done soon.

 

Least done is another cockpit, no IVAs but the mesh for it is done and I'm planning on working on it next.

And the engines on that - K-3350 "Tempest" Radial Engine. Based on the the Duplex-Cyclone itself. Complete two row radial from front to back as well as some experimental cowling. The cowling is actually throttle based instead of the heat. I have yet to figure out a proper way of implementing a heat system for these engines. They tend to cool down when they are really high up. Might require some modification of a lot of performance related stuff in the config.

Sound's done and all, but as I said, configs and performance are far from done. But since it looks like I owe people an update, there it goes (sorry again for the windowed mode screenshot). I'm not too active, but I'd like you to know that I put input in when I have the time so don't worry about it. 

 

[qromodynmc]

I kinda thought you stopped developing mod Great to see you didnt

New parts look awesome, especially b-29 will look fabulous after i make windowsshine config for it ))) And, i have another cockpit suggestion for future updates.

Me and my friends were having hard time to find a cockpit with this huge windows, cute look so i thought maybe i should suggest it. It seems bit tricky to model this as mk1, but i know you can do it;

My idea is like this.

I checked most common mods before suggesting this, maybe i missed some, if anyone seen this cockpit or very similar one, can enlighten me.

If not, you're my last hope

[MightyDarkStar]

Working a treat with tweakscale

Spoiler

 

Spitfire F. 21

 

[memeconnoiseur]

Edited November 28, 2017 by memeconnoiseur

[Guest]

@blackheart612

You finally made that B-29 engine I always wanted

[blackheart612]

@qromodynmc Well, it was a pretty long time.  I'm not sure if I understand it the way you want to say it, but is it a sharp angled bubble canopy? If that's the case, I could make one on one condition, it's going to be a 1.25-0.625 bubble canopy just to add variety.

Anyway, more testing.

The scale of the kerbals compared to real life aircraft is starting to become an issue. Size 2 is a little bit too big for comfort, resulting in major adjustments just to be able to see from the IVA. So it takes a much longer time to finish IVAs of Size 2 and another reason why I'm hesitant to make Mk3 cockpits. Another thing is I tend to duplicate the real life setup in the game.

[qromodynmc]

53 minutes ago, blackheart612 said:

@qromodynmc Well, it was a pretty long time.  I'm not sure if I understand it the way you want to say it, but is it a sharp angled bubble canopy? If that's the case, I could make one on one condition, it's going to be a 1.25-0.625 bubble canopy just to add variety.

 

Ah, dont make the sharpness confuse you, that's matter if only you make exact m-346 cockpit, you can do it without sharpness. We just want a cockpit that looks like m-346.

Edited November 28, 2017 by qromodynmc

[Guest]

@blackheart612 Maybe make some 1.875 m parts? Although i think this may be a little more work for you, it would be at a "Realistic" scale in a kerbals view.

Edited November 29, 2017 by Murican_Jeb

[qzgy]

Mind If I ask for an electric engine? You know, for fun. And also since there are plans for electrically driven craft in the near future.

[blackheart612]

@qromodynmc Certainly possible for a 1.25-0.625 cockpit,

@Murican_Jeb As said before, I'm going to stick to stock part sizes for now.

@qzgy I have no popular electric engine to base on both for dimensions of the part and for performance configuration. But yes, I was planning to. Perhaps when I get enough data but so far, I can't.