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

[sprotz]

How to fly a helicopter? I can't get one off the ground even with max thrust.

 

Never mind,  it flies now, lifting purely by thrust.

Edited September 7, 2017 by sprotz

[Shiolle]

I tried to play in career mode with the setup I mentioned, and I ran into another problem. Those early engines' velocity curves are brutal. 25 m/s takeoffs just don't happen with Ferram Aerospace. I was able to get my plane off the ground without it as an experiment, but not with FAR. I tried different things that would lower stall speed, but it is hard to do with limited parts at the start of the campaign. Have you tried making airplanes with early engines with FAR? What did they look like?

[ThreePounds]

13 minutes ago, Shiolle said:

I tried to play in career mode with the setup I mentioned, and I ran into another problem. Those early engines' velocity curves are brutal. 25 m/s takeoffs just don't happen with Ferram Aerospace. I was able to get my plane off the ground without it as an experiment, but not with FAR. I tried different things that would lower stall speed, but it is hard to do with limited parts at the start of the campaign. Have you tried making airplanes with early engines with FAR? What did they look like?

Have you tried reducing the mass of the aircraft? In my limited experience with recreations I found that if I stay closely to real life dimensions and masses the aircraft usually behaves as their counterparts did when FAR is installed. Can you maybe post a screenshot of your aircraft so I can see what is going on?

[Shiolle]

29 minutes ago, Three_Pounds said:

Have you tried reducing the mass of the aircraft? In my limited experience with recreations I found that if I stay closely to real life dimensions and masses the aircraft usually behaves as their counterparts did when FAR is installed. Can you maybe post a screenshot of your aircraft so I can see what is going on?

I will post screenshots when I get home in a few hours. In the meanwhile, I tried fairly simple monoplane and biplane designs, my plane's wet mass was around 2.8 tons. If that sounds like a lot, remember that the lightest of the early engines weighs 800 kg and the starting cockpit weighs 1 ton. The plane was woefully underpowered, but at this scale a faithful reconstruction is impossible: for example, the 9J "Baron" engine weighs 2.5 times as much as the whole Fokker Dr.I triplane it was modeled after. With such weight, wing load shoots through the roof and take-off speed is over 60 m/s.

P.S. The problem wasn't the weight itself or the thrust to weight ratio. The problem was that at 60 m/s the trust from the engine falls below 2.5% of the nominal value.

Edited September 7, 2017 by Shiolle

[ThreePounds]

4 minutes ago, Shiolle said:

I will post screenshots when I get home in a few hours. In the meanwhile, I tried fairly simple monoplane and biplane designs, my plane's wet mass was around 2.8 tons.

That sounds about right. I was using the Baron engine for one of my planes recently so I'll test what FAR thinks about it when I come home. I'll keep you posted.

Edited September 7, 2017 by Three_Pounds

[ThreePounds]

So I imported my trusty count Bill into a new save with FAR and tried it out. Needless to say it was a complete mess. But after messing around with lots of things I ended up with a flyable aircraft that wasn't too unreasonably looking. If you want to check it out, it's here: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6KLmRpYz5AlWE5rS0FRWmw3YjA/view?usp=sharing

This isn't the most amazing aircraft ever. In fact, there are many things wrong with it and it handles like a stubborn child flipping out at the slightest provocation. But with a little bit of fine tuning I got it to fly a bit and even land. You can check it out here:

While I think the engine had enough oomph without FAR installed, I can definitely say that it's underpowered for this design of aircraft - but it's possible to use it this way.

[Shiolle]

5 hours ago, Three_Pounds said:

While I think the engine had enough oomph without FAR installed, I can definitely say that it's underpowered for this design of aircraft - but it's possible to use it this way.

Thank you. I was able to get a plane off the ground following your advice. In the end all I needed to do was to use the same wide wing you do on my designs. Interestingly enough, your plane has the same wing area as one of my biplanes, but it appears that two large wide wings are much better than four thinner ones.

Just for the record, the planes I was talking about:

1. Monoplane:

2. Biplane:

3. What actually flew:

[inigma]

I don't think this is what you had in mind for the Control Rotors. They are perfect size for re-creating the Wright Flyer, however they don't work as thrustable props. Is there a way you can make these thrustable so I can use these smaller propellers on lighter aircraft, ultralights, and airboats? Or just make a wooden propeller part that could serve that purpose. It needs to be almost as small (or slightly bigger) as your RR K250-S Control Rotor if you do, since that size fits perfectly at these scales.

 

I mean I can just kill all steering on the craft and throttle ...sideways to move this thing forward... a bit funny to fly. 

Edit: here's a vid of me flying. I added wing warping... er ailerons to induce roll so there's some sort of control in the air.  But throttling sideways is a bit disorientating, and there's no sound for these rotors. Fun though. 

  

If you can modify or make a part to do this with sounds and thrust, then thank you!  Building these kind of craft is just absolutely fun.

I will be happy to feature it in a video guide I'm making for my contract pack KSP GAP.

Edited September 8, 2017 by inigma

[blackheart612]

@Shiolle From what I have read, it seems like a refined CTT Patch, should I link the post to the OP? In any case, you're right, I did fiddle with the weight of the early engines to reduce weight a little, but they might just be overweight (still). In my mind, there seems to have no problem is some fat shaming to make them lose weight. I'll look into it. Though I do believe such speed is workable with FAR (despite all being made and tested with stock), they closely resemble their real life speed performances while on an aircraft.

@AshleyBB It is interesting, and certainly possible.

@Vonnmillard As a 2.5m cockpit, it would be a great supersonic cockpit alternative to the Droopnose cockpit, I'm also interested in doing it. Just the cockpit. Not the wings.  

@inigma In the configs, firespitter specifies if it's a tailrotor or not, I think if you set it to false, it should be able to propel with it, else, there's no way I can think of to make change it w/o changing configs.

--

Anyways, I still dev, but like I said way before, still working on getting a license so I don't have much time to dev, I do play other games on the spare time though. Now I got significant time off to make a part. Before I do magic to it, I'm not sure if it's longer than it should. I reduced the length of the non-commercial Mk1 cockpits and I have slight regrets about it. I might keep this as is. It is, of course, based on the MiG 1.44 @XOC2008

Also, thank you to the man who pledged to my Patreon! I wasn't sure if and how it worked but it does apparently, so thanks again!

[inigma]

I can modify configs, but the part would be just a part with no sound. Short of making some weird buzzing sound with my teeth as I fly, do you have time to create a propeller part with sounds as part of this mod? Maybe just copy the current rotor part, and give it thrust, and sound?

Edited September 8, 2017 by inigma

[blackheart612]

12 minutes ago, inigma said:

I can modify configs, but the part would be just a part with no sound. Short of making some weird buzzing sound with my teeth was I fly, do you have time to create a propeller part with sounds as part of this mod? Maybe just copy the current rotor part, and give it thrust, and sound?

It should have sounds as it is, if it doesn't have sounds, then something's wrong with your installation.

[inigma]

1 minute ago, blackheart612 said:

It should have sounds as it is, if it doesn't have sounds, then something's wrong with your installation.

my sound was off.   still. any consideration for making a wooden propeller part in the future?

[blackheart612]

10 minutes ago, inigma said:

my sound was off.   still. any consideration for making a wooden propeller part in the future?

The older engine sounds are close. The sound I made for the Cyclone (Chaika) Engine sound like the early planes with wood propellers. Very close, in fact. The Baron Rotary Engine can also be considered but I think the Cyclone is very close to what you want. You just also have to refer to them in the configs.

[adsii1970]

@blackheart612 - I just updated this mod for the first time in about a year. Man, the new parts are absolutely great! Thank you!

[qromodynmc]

I made one mig 1.44 lookalike few days ago, will you be releasing that cockpit?

[XOC2008]

3 hours ago, qromodynmc said:

I made one mig 1.44 lookalike few days ago, will you be releasing that cockpit?

I did too, which is why I made the suggestion.

[blackheart612]

@qromodynmc It will be released, yes.

Edit: Early Texture.

Edited September 9, 2017 by blackheart612

[qromodynmc]

looks great, seems like i'll be able to use this on other russian plane replicas.

[DarkOwl57]

So I'm having trouble with the helicopter rotors. Every time I put the throttle up to max, the RPM drops massively. Also, there's no thrust marker.

[Bitrefresh]

I'm wondering about if there is anyway to increase the lifting capacity of a Helicopter rotor. I'm currently developing an AH-1 replica using the Hawk rotor set, but it cant lift and even when it does get up, it can barely get up, and pitching any direction will cause a rapid loss of altitude and make me crash.

I want to know if there is a way to increase the lifting capacity of the engine, without having to use a different engine.

[KSPanier]

Where did you get a functional version of the adjustable landing gear mod from, you're using in the promo screenshots?

[Shnyrik]

23 minutes ago, KSPanier said:

Where did you get a functional version of the adjustable landing gear mod

It is a part of KerbalFoundries mod now.

 

[Bitrefresh]

26 minutes ago, Shnyrik said:

It is a part of KerbalFoundries mod now.

Thank you for this. you are my hero

[Shiolle]

On 9/8/2017 at 8:58 PM, blackheart612 said:

@Shiolle From what I have read, it seems like a refined CTT Patch, should I link the post to the OP? In any case, you're right, I did fiddle with the weight of the early engines to reduce weight a little, but they might just be overweight (still). In my mind, there seems to have no problem is some fat shaming to make them lose weight. I'll look into it. Though I do believe such speed is workable with FAR (despite all being made and tested with stock), they closely resemble their real life speed performances while on an aircraft.

This is indeed a refined CTT patch that tries to improve aircraft progression and actually give a reason to use propeller engines early in career mode. Regarding whether you should link it to the OP, that is up to you. However, I made this patch for a career I started and I have no intention of supporting it. I know very little about modding in KSP and module manager in particular, so the configs are most likely probably written in the most awful and inefficient way possible.

As for engine weight, it's not just the engines. If you tried to bring engine's weights in line with historical figures, aircraft using them would be harder to balance, because everything else weighs a ton.

Edited September 12, 2017 by Shiolle

[blackheart612]

More MiG 1.44 cockpit screenshots (Semi-final Textures)

Spoiler

It's actually bigger than usual aircraft because I decided not to shorten it.

@DarkOwl57 It's almost guaranteed that you're using an outdated version of the Airplane Plus and Firespitter. Latest version still has loss of power when the weight is more than recommended, but no more lowering of RPM.

@Bitrefresh There's no other way, other than lowering your weight. How heavy is your helicopter? The Hawk Turboshaft Engine can carry up to ~8.4t without powerloss during hover. I made one with the same engine before, though admittedly, I don't remember the right version so this may be different, but always remember that Kerbin is small and helicopters don't carry that much fuel nor travel very long distances...

@Shiolle Of course, I will. I just had to make sure if it is exactly what I think it is. Your post is linked in the OP now.