(Stock Electric Propeller Vehicle Showcase): Bringing power to the people!

[Spacepigu]

it started out with three, and I increased it to four and then down to 2, but with little to no effect...

I tried to increase the wingspan after seeing the goliath sized wings that propeller planes seem to need in ksp, but it still won't take off...

and I did increase the pitch a little, but i don't really know where it should be :/

I appreciate the help though

(also working on a new propeller plane, going to be a large scale cargo craft)

[Spacepigu]

SO CLOSE

[The Optimist]

4 hours ago, Spacepigu said:

SO CLOSE

That engine seems a bit familiar...

[Spacepigu]

it's probably a lot more rudimentary than the one that i've seen elsewhere, also it was made from scratch, so a little less well tuned

Edited November 24, 2016 by Spacepigu

[The Optimist]

9 minutes ago, Spacepigu said:

it's probably a lot more rudimentary than the one that i've seen elsewhere, also it was made from scratch, so a little less well tuned

I`d like a copy to examine for copyright purposes.

Just kidding! If it`s inspired by mine, I`d be honored. Feel free to use my designs

.

[Spacepigu]

ha 

but yeah, it uses only 2 stayputniks, one on each side, with some generators in the middle.

i think it needs remodeling though...

[Heckspress]

17 hours ago, WesleyWestland said:

I honestly have no clue how fast mine goes. I could try taking the propeller blades off to see how fast I can get it, although I also don't know how to measure it.

 

On 11/23/2016 at 6:44 PM, RuFLaSH said:

how do you measure the rad/sec?

use V.O.I.D, basically k.e.r. but with a rad/sec feature

[WesleyWestland]

Okay, I'll look into it. I haven't use a lot of mods recently, I didn't feel like reinstalling everything after every update. I think my current version only has Chatterer installed.

Edited November 25, 2016 by WesleyWestland

[silks]

On 11/24/2016 at 3:40 PM, Spacepigu said:

it has a sad top speed of 20 m/s

Did you manage to get it off the ground? Because I couldn't. Anyway, I switched the bearing and rotor, gave it a bigger tail fin and pulled down the wings (they should be even lower, to align with the center of mass). This engine is still quite unstable and under-powered but at least I could get off the ground and fly for a few minutes.

[craft file]

[_Rade]

I've finally managed to get past 150m/s.

Last week I've made electric propfan which had a rotor with 40 elevons 4 as the rotor blades and it was powered by 16 large reaction wheels,  but I couldn't get it to fly faster than 115m/s.

Today I simplified and remade the entire rotor, and as a result of that I've managed to increase the max speed at low level to +138m/s, and at 5000m to 150m/s.

Rotor uses 20 elevons 1 as the rotor blades and it is powered by 12 large reaction wheels, which are in turn powered by 5 fuel cells. Entire rotor with the exception of the blades is inside the cargo bay, in order to help to reduce the drag as much as possible.

Thanks to the improved bearing the rotor can safely spin at speeds up to 38.5 rad/s. I didn't have time to try it out but I think the bearing could be easily adapted to fit inside 2 structural fuselages, in order to be used on smaller airplanes. It uses the I-beam with the stayputnik probe attached on each end, the I-beam is then radially attached in 4x symmetry  to the other I-beam, which serves as the main shaft of the rotor. The I-beam with the stayputniks is then slightly offset from the center in order to reduce the gaps between the stayputniks and the structural fuselage.

Here is the link to the imgur album

Spoiler

http://imgur.com/a/TjiZu

and to the craft file

Spoiler

https://kerbalx.com/Rade/Electric-Propfan

 

Edited November 26, 2016 by _Rade

[Spacepigu]

5 hours ago, silks said:

Did you manage to get it off the ground? Because I couldn't. Anyway, I switched the bearing and rotor, gave it a bigger tail fin and pulled down the wings (they should be even lower, to align with the center of mass). This engine is still quite unstable and under-powered but at least I could get off the ground and fly for a few minutes.

[craft file]

Thanks for the suggestions and the modifications!

I think that the main problem was my custom engine, because it was made on the spot so it probably wasn't tuned, like at all.

[Spacepigu]

also....

 

My next big thing is the biggest thing yet... 

[Spacepigu]

if you'll excuse my profanity...

HELL YEA BRO

I DID IT

It's far from perfect

BUT IT WORKS

 

and yet..

I still forget to bring a ladder. 

Edited November 26, 2016 by Spacepigu

[klond]

10 minutes ago, Spacepigu said:

I DID IT

It's far from perfect

BUT IT WORKS

 

and yet..

I still forget to bring a ladder. 

'better fly over a ladder truck inside a cargo plane.  Send pics if you do.  We're proud of you, sir - a true engineer.

Edited November 26, 2016 by klond

[Spacepigu]

[Spacepigu]

Here we go, lets give this a shot

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh.

Oh My.

So that's what happens when physics tries to load it after unloading it... 

Edited November 26, 2016 by Spacepigu

[Spacepigu]

Has science gone too far?

 

 

 

IT CERTAINLY HAS

Edited November 26, 2016 by Spacepigu

[Firemetal]

On ‎11‎/‎24‎/‎2016 at 8:40 AM, Spacepigu said:

Hey guys!

So I saw a few videos a while ago about electric propellers, and have been trying to make one ever since, but to no avail. Here is my current prototype.

If someone could try and mess around with it a little I would appreciate it a lot

it uses a combination stayputnik and thermometer hinge for the propeller, with a custom housing that i put together

it has a sad top speed of 20 m/s, and no matter what i do i can't get it to go any faster!

please help!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/3qt82nzrkooes5p/ahdunno more propellers.craft?dl=0

btw it also has a cargo bay and a bomb just because i wanted it to

(press 1 for the cargo bay, 2 for the bomb)

My guess is that all those structural parts on board making it look nice, struts for instance are causing too much drag. Plus the number of "blades" might not be enough to compensate for the high amount of drag. Don't go for looks, just make it simple.

Yeah can anyone recommend a good turboprop tutorial? Kinda stuck. I went with Nuclearturkey's design with separating the plane and the engine. However, either if I constrict the engine, the kraken makes it go crazy and if I give it room, it just falls down and won't sit still when I hit alt+e. Is there another way to do this without adding jets? (I want to make one to go to Eve with  )

Thanks

Fire

(ignore this. My answer to Spacepigu is outdated. Sorry! )

Edited November 27, 2016 by Firemetal

[Spacepigu]

hmmm....

check this out:

 

[_Rade]

@Spacepigu I basically used the same idea from the video for the airplane I posted earlier. Only difference is that I used 4 radially attached I-beams with the stayputnik attached on each end. I think this works better than using the RTGs, because it seems that I-beams have stronger joints than RTGs, also it ensures that all of the stayputniks you use will be equally spaced inside the structural fuselage.

Yesterday I've made the 1.25 version of this engine which can spin close to 44 rad/s without the engine falling appart, thats even better than the big engine I made which starts having problems if it is spinning faster that 39 rad/s.

[vitekc45c]

I refined the engine a bit more: removed stack separator and cubic octagonal strut (from the rotor) and replaced them with docking port jr. instead. So its now posible to redock them to the aircraft, preventing phys-load explosions.

Also, I´ve build new aircraft, C-27j, 26 tons and max speed of 50m/s

https://www.dropbox.com/s/20hxgw9mwwezhi1/C-27 J Mk1.craft?dl=0

Edited November 27, 2016 by vitekc45c

[_Rade]

I've managed to scale down the engine I've used for the Electric Propfan, so that it can be used on the smaller airplanes. Best thing about the new engine is that rotor can spin really fast without the whole falling apart. While testing few different configurations I was able to get it to spin at 49.5 rad/s, alto the engine begins to shake and vibrate if is spinning faster than 45-46 rad/s. Another nice feature is that engine is really compact and everything is located inside the fearing which should help to significantly reduce the drag.

Only downside is that it can be little bit tricky to setup the aircraft where you have 2 or more engines on the wings placed in mirror symmetry, because the engine might sometimes get stuck and not spin due to the buggy fearings. Only way I've found to fix this is to rebuild the fearing on the engine that isn't working, which can be really annoying.

 

Here is one of the airplanes built using this engine the Ko 335, modeled after the Dornier Do 335, max speed is 101m/s.

Link to the craft file and instructions on how to fly it

Spoiler

https://kerbalx.com/Rade/Ko-335

 

Edited November 30, 2016 by _Rade

[mrmcp1]

My first design using the  Stayputnik bearing

Can reach 60 m/s in level flight, any idea how to make it go faster?

Also it managed 20 minutes of flight without a single explosion 

[_Rade]

mrmcp1

Probably the most important thing is to try to minimize the drag, that will immensely help you to increase the speed. Just one example my aircraft from the last post could only reach 100 m/s. Today I made some changes and replaced the draggy parts with the ones that are more aerodynamic and because of that max speed increased from 100 m/s to 162 m/s.

Link to the craft file

Spoiler

https://kerbalx.com/Rade/Ko-335A

 

Also I've made airplane powered by the contra-rotating propellers similar to the Kuznetsov NK-12 turboprop. Thanks to the low mass and drag the plane can reach 165 m/s in level flight at low altitude.

Link to the craft file

Spoiler

https://kerbalx.com/Rade/T-4-Soko

 

Edited December 3, 2016 by _Rade

[_Rade]

I've made a breakthrough when it comes to the stock electric propellers.

Yesterday I tried using the 1.25m fearing as the engine housing, instead of the structural fuselage everyone have been using to build the propellers. It turns out the fearing works so much better that you'll never again want to use the structural fuselages to make engines. Best part is that it seems that the fearing perfectly matches the stayputnik collider and you only need to use 2 stayputniks on each end. Because of this the rotor can spin very fast, while testing I saw it spin up to 52 rad/s. Thanks to this, and the fact that almost entire engine is inside the fearing and occluded from drag you can build very fast airplanes, that behave almost as good as the jet powered airplanes.

Also because you don't need to use as much reaction wheels and other parts therefore the partcount on the engines is greatly reduced. On my aircraft I've only used engines with 21 small reaction wheels, and with those I've been able to reach speeds of up to 200 m/s at low altitude.

Here is what the engine looks like

 

Here is a few example aircraft, which you can use as an example to figure out how to build your own electric props.

First two are just the airplanes from previous post which have been upgraded with this new engine.

this one set a speed record of 200 m/s, craft file https://kerbalx.com/Rade/T-4A-Soko

this one is only little bit slower with max speed of 197 m/s, craft file https://kerbalx.com/Rade/Ko-335B-Arrow

simple single engine plane with max speed of 182 m/s, craft file https://kerbalx.com/Rade/S-49C-Ikarus

twin engine plane with max speed of 179 m/s, craft file https://kerbalx.com/Rade/Twin-Boomer

 

Edited December 4, 2016 by _Rade