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

[Majorjim!]

43 minutes ago, _Rade said:

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

 

Great work and the craft are so clean and sleek looking!! 

[mrmcp1]

Following @_Rade's advice I have now managed to surpass 100m/s !

Thanks

[PhylumCnidaria]

Can someone make a little tutorial on these engines? I have an idea for a design, but I have absolutely no idea how to build the electric engine.

[mrmcp1]

3 hours ago, PhylumCnidaria said:

Can someone make a little tutorial on these engines? I have an idea for a design, but I have absolutely no idea how to build the electric engine.

Try downloading someone's and pulling it apart to see how it works

http://imgur.com/a/jUat4

Small tutorial added

Edited December 4, 2016 by mrmcp1
Added a tutorial

[klond]

 I wanted to see if I could get Jeb's fat head off the ground with only 1 small reaction wheel.  You can, just barely.  If he's not riding along its actually an ok plane.

 I floated RCSs balls inside 4 snapped thermometers like on the motorcar.

 You could double the motor output on this plane with another reaction wheel since 1 generator will power 2 of the small SAS units -if we wanted to make this more usable.  'Could also probably lighten the load by dumping the spotlight and/or converting to battery power by removing the generators.

 I discovered some weirdness in the meantime I wanted to share.  I was unable to get enough power on my motor until I turned off Rigid Attachment.  So odd.  If I unchecked rigid attachment on all the items that rotated (props, cone, generator, etc) then my RPMs and power went way up.  I didn't test every single part individually - maybe you guys can help me test this problem on your own rigs.  This had me scratching my head for a while wondering why different versions of this same plane had different power levels.

KerbalX

12 hours ago, _Rade said:

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

 I think you did!  Those are some speedy planes.

Edited December 5, 2016 by klond

[262215593]

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Edited September 21, 2022 by 262215593

[Heckspress]

_rade's tutorial

[mrmcp1]

13 hours ago, IridiumRobin said:

Does anyone have any recommendations for making smoother prop engines?

Post some pictures of yours, I will take a look if you want

[Reusables]

Thanks to _Rade's technic, I got my quadprop passenger plane to lift off.

This certainly needs many improvements, but I'm already satisfied with its flight.

[Majorjim!]

On 05/12/2016 at 1:13 AM, klond said:

 I wanted to see if I could get Jeb's fat head off the ground with only 1 small reaction wheel.

Hey man, I have just made a working 1 reaction wheel electric plane using a totally different bearing design. How fast did you get that up to with a kerbal?

[Majorjim!]

OK here's some pics of my take on a micro elec plane. The bearing is made from cubic struts with an antenna that spins inside them. Quite smooth, I would say it 'hums', my way of saying its not 100 per cent smooth.

 Oh and no decoupler here! The spinning parts are attached to a docking port.

 These things a nice fun distraction from my other builds.

 

 

 

I tried yours @klond and the RCS block with thermometers was definitely smoother.

 

Edited December 10, 2016 by Majorjim!

[The Optimist]

It seems the age of the trashcan engines has come to an end.

[The Optimist]

Never mind. For me, every time I decouple the Stayputniks inside a fairing, the entire thing fails and explodes. Any idea why?

[The Optimist]

On 12/2/2016 at 4:44 PM, _Rade said:

 

 

Do you know why every time I try to make a stayputnik bearing the whole thing blows up?

[_Rade]

@mrmcp1 glad that I could help, just remember that stuff inside the structural fuselage is not shielded from the drag, even if the structural fuselage is closed on both ends.

@Abastro thats interesting looking plane, for higher speeds I would recommend to replace the docking port with the nose cone, because shielded docking port adds allot of drag, you could also get rid of the solar panels on the top.

@The Optimist thats probably because of the bugged fairings. Every time you add something inside the fairing or if you use Ctrl+Z to undo something, you should rebuild the fairing. Otherwise it will either explode or the rotor will get stuck once you decouple it.

Also this sort of engine doesn't like to be placed in symmetry, so if you have more than one engine under the wings you should place each engine separately and rebuild the fairing on each engine after that, just to make sure everything will work.

[klond]

12 hours ago, Majorjim! said:

Hey man, I have just made a working 1 reaction wheel electric plane using a totally different bearing design. How fast did you get that up to with a kerbal?

'Just tried it quick.  Fast to 30m/s (stall) if i hold straight, but barely 35m/s in level flight.  He's just so heavy - had to put him right on the center of mass for balance.

[Majorjim!]

Just now, klond said:

'Just tried it quick.  Fast to 30m/s (stall) if i hold straight, but barely 35m/s in level flight.  He's just so heavy - had to put him right on the center of mass for balance.

Yeah I am seeing similar speeds and you know what? I like it! Feels just about right for something like this, floaty and fun! After work today I have a few more ideas I want to try.

[_Rade]

On 5.12.2016. at 2:13 AM, klond said:

 I discovered some weirdness in the meantime I wanted to share.  I was unable to get enough power on my motor until I turned off Rigid Attachment.  So odd.  If I unchecked rigid attachment on all the items that rotated (props, cone, generator, etc) then my RPMs and power went way up.  I didn't test every single part individually - maybe you guys can help me test this problem on your own rigs.  This had me scratching my head for a while wondering why different versions of this same plane had different power levels.

One thing I've noticed is that if the rigid attachment is turned on for the propeller blades the whole rotor will spin considerably slower. For the engines above they can easily spin about 48-49 rad/s, but with the rigid attachment turned on for the rotor blades they can barely reach 44-45 rad/s.

Alto now that I think of it this actually might be a good thing, because these fairing engines usually fall apart above 6k. Being able to reduce the rotation speed might help to prevent that. To bad the rigid attachment can't be toggled in flight.

[klond]

13 hours ago, Majorjim! said:

Yeah I am seeing similar speeds and you know what? I like it!

 'Gonna try the same setup rotated 90 degrees to see if I can do a 1 reaction wheel mini-copter.

12 hours ago, _Rade said:

One thing I've noticed is that if the rigid attachment is turned on for the propeller blades the whole rotor will spin considerably slower.

Glad it wasn't just me.  Took forever to figure out what was going on.

[Majorjim!]

28 minutes ago, klond said:

 'Gonna try the same setup rotated 90 degrees to see if I can do a 1 reaction wheel mini-copter.

 

I have one in testing now. Controlling it is hard to say the least..

I'm also trying to make a electric thermo/antenna prop bearing. It's was outside it's intended use but I ma having some success so far.

[The Optimist]

25 minutes ago, Majorjim! said:

I have one in testing now. Controlling it is hard to say the least..

I'm also trying to make a electric thermo/antenna prop bearing. It's was outside it's intended use but I ma having some success so far.

 

I've found that the cubic struts offer more success in most cases.

[klond]

47 minutes ago, Majorjim! said:

I have one in testing now. Controlling it is hard to say the least..

 Ok, I had to keep the probe upright so the controls weren't messed up.  I'm not up on helicopter physics, but when I pitch forward it rolls to one side and backwards vice-versa, so much that control is bad.  No successful landings yet (sorry, Jeb).  Coaxial might fix it.

[Majorjim!]

21 minutes ago, klond said:

 Ok, I had to keep the probe upright so the controls weren't messed up.  I'm not up on helicopter physics, but when I pitch forward it rolls to one side and backwards vice-versa, so much that control is bad.  No successful landings yet (sorry, Jeb).  Coaxial might fix it.

Lol, yeah looks similar to mine, very cute! It goes up very well, all other directions not so much..

[Majorjim!]

1 hour ago, The Optimist said:

I've found that the cubic struts offer more success in most cases.

True, I have found this also. Having said that in my aircraft using a thermo/antenna hinge without a kerbal and not at full speed rotation it is very stable. At full rotation trim it flies apart. What I do is set the reaction force to zero, trim it all the way then up the reaction force incrementally to find the sweet spot. 

Edited December 11, 2016 by Majorjim!

[Dr Farnsworth]

Well I doubt KSP needs this, but in real life, helicopter rotor control inputs are 90 deg. out of phase.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swashplate_(aeronautics)