Kerbal Charter Challenge!

[Van Disaster]

2 hours ago, Adelaar said:

Wel yes, Aero in 1.2 is not only calculated by the parts that 'hang in the wind' but also on the shape of the aircraft, meaning that aerodynamica designs have gotten more aerodynamical, andere vice versa. The VTOL I used in this challenge has had it's drag cut by a factor 1,5* compared to 1.1.3!

*Corrected, my memory didn't serve me well.

Is this in patch notes or a dev blog?

[Adelaar]

@Van Disaster, pre-release notes the differences are not as dramatic as with FAR, but for most aircraft I've week a factor 1,5 to 2 decrease in drag, and a corresponding increase in lift to drag ratio

Edited September 24, 2016 by Adelaar

[Van Disaster]

Well that's good, providing they rebalance engines ( what on earth has that done to rockets! )... the major issue I have with stock air though is that changing direction is like ramming into a wall, plus it just feels too thick in general. Somewhat like.. soup still this is a good sign.

My craft for the latest challenge came out rather more comical than I wanted...

At least the front view got something of what I was after.

Spoiler

 

 

Edited September 24, 2016 by Van Disaster

[Adelaar]

It's better now, I have at least noticed a difference in behaviour: turning isn't as abrupt as it used to be, G forces are comparatively lower, the air is noticably less dense (so turning at High altitude and low speeds take ages), so it's more natural now

[HazelPine]

I'm off to the mountains! Thanks @Van Disaster for helping me out with FAR troubles, now I can too take advantage of efficiency!

 

I based the plane off of a glider and U-2 landing gear!

 

EDIT:

Turns out it doesn't have enough power to get up the last 100 meter up.. gliding home now.

Spoiler

 

It ran out of fuel, so I ditched the engine pod... let's hope I make it back.

Spoiler

 

Made it back! Time for round 2!

Spoiler

 

Edited September 24, 2016 by Pine

[max_creative]

18 minutes ago, Pine said:

Turns out it doesn't have enough power to get up the last 100 meter up.. gliding home now.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Longer wings? Slower, but MOAR lift! 

Also, the mk3 cargo bay didn't work. I'm thinking of dropping them out the back using a mk3 cargo ramp, but because I'm playing 1.1 the gear doesn't want to work. Plus flying a plane with a mk1 inline attached to a mk2 bicoupler attached to sideways to a mk2 to 2.5 adapter doesn't fly very well... Actually, compared to other planes that are that size that I've made, it's not too bad, and it's pretty fast... Hmm... If I used it in the upper atmosphere, I wonder if I could make a circumnavigation with no stops and a jet plane. Except the "asparagus" fuel system still isn't working...

[HazelPine]

I think I may have beaten @Van Disaster's score on this one! This was definitely harder than I thought! I imagined the designing of the plane would be the hard part, but it was just landing a plane this wide and floaty on such a small space that got me.

 

May I present, the P-01:

Carrying way to much fuel (20 units), with a 34m wingspan and weighting in at 7 tons exactly, this is a great plane to fly!

 

Here's the attempt album:  http://imgur.com/a/NMy6M

 

SCORE: 0.292

 

Fuel spent: 20 - 19.27 = 0.73 units

Cost of fuel: 0,73 * 0,8 = 0.584 funds

Score: 0,584/2 = 0.292 funds per kerbal

 

Now I think I'll take a stab at the round-the-world route...

 

[Bomaye]

Ehmmmm, so was just about to make a turn for landing, with 1000t payload stock craft.

[HazelPine]

@Bomaye, just, how?

 

Look at the size of that debris cloud inside the atmosphere.

 

Something may have happened. Good luck!

[Eidahlil]

Here's my entry for the round the world trip, starring Bill.

He flew a single seat fast all stock airplane powered by one RAPIER engine with no cargo, not even lunch, because Bill was going for speeed.

Trip time - 49 minutes and 34 seconds, using 650 liters of fuel (520 credits). Maximum speed reached is 1703 m/s according to mission summary, but 1701 is the highest I actually saw (and took a screen of).

The aircraft entered an uncontrollable spin on ascent once, but Bill managed to regain control once most of it's speed bled off. No other accidents worth mentioning.

Great challenge!

http://imgur.com/a/Ks9ur

[Van Disaster]

@PineNice! I got fed up trying to land newer craft on that mountaintop & just started on the other challenges instead - gonna have a hard time beating that though I think. I guess the economy is mostly from getting up there quickly in this case, I've been meaning to sit down & work out actual economy for a while.

[HazelPine]

@Van Disaster, I think the economy really came from flying in a straight angle all the way to the mountains, and when I got there, I was above the peak, so I went down in circles instead of fighting in an upwards spiral of energy losses. I think it can be even more efficient though. If I leave a single unit of fuel, it might be lighter enough to fly better!

 

I think I'm going to make a plane based on this one for the VIP tourist's polar flight...

[Van Disaster]

Nah, I built a plane around the smallest prop engine which goes up there in a straight line - still burns more fuel because it's slow. ISP figures aren't everything. The most economical commercial passenger aircraft per trip was Concorde despite higher SFC than subsonic turbofan airliners, because the trip times were so low.

[GDJ]

Been playing around a bit in 1.2, and I must say I like the Aero models alot better.

A small 6 passenger lear-jet style plane can go supersonic with 3 well placed Juno engines.

Much better!

[Bomaye]

9 hours ago, Pine said:

@Bomaye, just, how?

Look at the size of that debris cloud inside the atmosphere.

Something may have happened. Good luck!

Uhmmm, it was an anomaly that occurred during the landing turn on descent from ca 20 000m altitude for landing line up. Jeb said it might be that Bill took a too tight turn and overstressed the aircraft. 

[Van Disaster]

@Pinehow the hell did you climb to 5.5km using less than 1 unit?? I have a 2t aircraft with one of those engines & it's used 1.5 before it's even halfway... Assuming it's the little SXT jet and not something from AJE?

Anyway did a run with my prop ultralight ( 1.7t now ): could have taken less fuel but at this point gains are rather minimal.

 

Spoiler

 

Going up:

 

Landing was dead easy this time for some reason, other than the plane being really yaw-happy at very low speed.

 

Spoiler

 

Crew change

Off we go ( fairly literally )

Engines off:

 

Gliding home - the light in this shot is much better than usual I just noticed.

 

Spoiler

 

Get on the ground dammit! did *not* want to stop flying. Look at the airspeed...

 

And down.

Fuel used: 5.2 - 4.02 * 0.8 = 0.944
Final score: 0.472

So, yeah, with the parts I have that's about as good as I can do I think.
 

Edited September 25, 2016 by Van Disaster

[HazelPine]

@Van Disaster, I'm pretty sure I used the SXT mini engines. I've never played with AJE engines before, but from what I gather it makes them more realistic, right?

 

As for how I got to 5,5 Km, I just pointed towards the area above the peak, set engines to 100% and 4x phys-warp for a little while! If you want the .craft to test it out, just ask!

 

Updating leaderboards!

 

EDIT: Updated! Also, great job to @Eidahlil for his trip round-the-world, and his first post!

Edited September 25, 2016 by Pine

[HazelPine]

My half-done giant plane based off of the 747-8 is looking good! It has the almost the same wingspan and length, so I imagine it'll fly. I have to figure out what powerplant to use now. I'll most likely stick half a dozen props on it and hope for the best!

 

Edited September 25, 2016 by Pine

[zolotiyeruki]

On 9/24/2016 at 8:39 AM, Van Disaster said:

My craft for the latest challenge came out rather more comical than I wanted...

  Hide contents

 

 

That radome needs to be painted red.

[Koolkei]

are we still doing this on 1.1.3? and also how do you get to build outside of the hangar?

god i'm so out of date after my hiatus

[GDJ]

50 minutes ago, Koolkei said:

are we still doing this on 1.1.3? and also how do you get to build outside of the hangar?

god i'm so out of date after my hiatus

Officially 1.1.3 since 1.2 is considered a potentially buggy prerelease.

[Van Disaster]

Yeah, can't really use 1.2 when it's liable to change between builds, and isn't actually a release.

[zolotiyeruki]

Here's my entry for the Circumnavigation bit.  I used 390.55 units of fuel, and took 1:04:41.  I wasn't in a hurry, but was focused more on minimizing maximizing (!) fuel efficiency.  The funny thing is that the vast majority of my fuel was used during the three ascents.  Flying high and fast is the way to go!  Without the extra landings and takeoffs, I'm guessing it would have been easy to go around twice, and maybe three times if I got my ascents under control.

Bill completed the mission in a plane I'll just call The Dragon Lady's Stumpy Sister.  I tried going for long wings, but there's no accounting for aspect ratio in the stock aero, and it made the plane harder to land.  So I made it a biplane.  I'm not sure of the top speed, but I don't think I cracked 1500m/s.  I kept waiting too long to coast and glide down to each checkpoint, so I could have saved some fuel.  There were several quickloads involved.  I was tempted to make a stop at the Regional Airport on the way home, but contented myself with a bit of treetop skimming on the very long final approach to KSC.

Just one passenger, no cargo, one Rapier.  Top speed probably 1487.  390.55 * 0.8 = 312 funds worth of fuel.

http://imgur.com/a/V9xYn

Edited September 27, 2016 by zolotiyeruki

[Van Disaster]

So, I did a round the world... but just going fast doesn't really interest me all that much, so I went for an economical passenger run.

Here's our mount for the day; a much modified version of the bush pax craft. And... an eclipse, seemed a good time to start. 176 pax on board.

The eclipse didn't exactly last long!

Spoiler

 

At this point I realised I should have started in the evening, because I was travelling faster than Kerbin was turning ( and I was going west ).

Spoiler

Yeah, oops. Anyway, turned the engines off at 300km out, took a nice gentle glide in the ever increasing gloom.

Spoiler

Almost there...

Spoiler

And hey, surprise.

Spoiler

Completely amphibious, decided to wait a bit with the door open to get some light back.

Engines off here:
 

Spoiler

Engines on again here:

so that's 42 mins I'm not going to count in the trip time. Onwards! and much better weather.

Spoiler

Some good terrain on the way

Engines off around here again:

Spoiler

Nearly hit one of these mountains, kinda hard to see...

Spoiler

And... I was concentrating so hard on lining up because that terrain is rather awkward, that I forgot to take some approach shots. Doh.

Last leg:

Spoiler

Final glidepoint, and it's getting dark again...

Spoiler

And down.

Some stats - unfortunately I reloaded at some point & lost all the F3 numbers, but I know the plane a little

Passengers: 176
Engines: 2x SXT "Bear" turboprops ( Kuznetzov NK-12 replicas ).
Flight time: 5hrs 8 mins ( 5h 50m total time )
Max Speed: 450kts ( about 232m/s )
Max altitude: around 11,600m

Economy score:
Fuel cost: 1190-526 * 0.8 = 531.2
Cost/head ( score ): 3.018
 

I have an idea for a slightly different approach but I'll leave that a little. I did a pax circumnavigation challenge once that had a metric for passenger/fuel/time, but I can't remember the formula. That would be a nice thing to have, that's a *wide* open competition metric.
 

Edited September 28, 2016 by Van Disaster

[Bomaye]

Flying the Dark Knight back to KSP after delivering 1230t to Polar Airport, having phantom forces on 1 side.

Parked 997m from the place as there is a ehmmm anomaly in the program that makes front wheels going underground.

Will report back result  

PS. All stock