Long Distance Naval Challenge/Contest

[seanth]

I'm really looking forward to your trip report, plus all the new nav points you'll make and name

[gilflo]

Hello here is the beginning of my challenge

 

[life_on_venus]

Is the waypoint manager file broken? I was going to go and plant a flag

Edit: I think I found it

Edited May 9, 2017 by life_on_venus

[gilflo]

We flagged 3 New waypoints during the trip. Range steady... See here

I have a question: I took on  board a tourist, not knowing tourists were not allowed to disembark. So he won't be able to plant a flag. As i have 10 people on board, can I still plant 10 flags on the trip?

Edited May 16, 2017 by gilflo

[seanth]

1 hour ago, gilflo said:

I have a question: I took on  board a tourist, not knowing tourists were not allowed to disembark. So he won't be able to plant a flag. As i have 12 people on board, can I still plant 12 flags on the trip?

Tourists on board are not a problem. I think it would be silly to say you couldn't count tourists. Besides, I think tourists would be encouraged by the organizations organizing the contest.

But you'd said before you had 10 kerbals on board, and your craft looks like it hold a max of 10.

Quote

The contest: The goal is to discover and name 10 places and come back to Kerbin, as fast as possible and without refueling. there's 2 pilot and 8 passengers on board. Estimating the range of the boat, I identified, on Kerbin Google map, 10 places with their coordinates and waypoints between them to calculate the exact distance of the challenge.

 

[gilflo]

Yes I mistook, it's 10 people on board not 12

[seanth]

On 4/26/2017 at 1:24 PM, gilflo said:

By the way, is it forbidden to add some small gears just to land on the beach to plant a flag and then go back to sea ?

And about the scoring: it's a matter of average speed and not a matter of range: suppose i got a high speed boat , average speed 100m/s, : I plant  1 flag with 1 crew and come back, whatever is the distance, 10, 100 or 200 kms if i come back, i score 100!

...

There's no matter of engine and boat efficiency.......

Calculation is (m/s)*(Flag/crew) . Maybe be it could be interesting to add a matter of range or maximum distance done.....

I've been thinking about this.

You are absolutely correct that you could double the distance and double the time and get the exact same score.

Really the point is 

1. Go far
2. Plant flags on the way
3. Come back

Maybe the time aspect just isn't needed.

The only ship I have in the same scoring class as @gilflo's Gliding Dolphin is The Kitty Wine. The Gliding Dolphin is easily an order of magnitude better than my hydrofoils in how it performs, so it's score should reflect it. I just did the calculation for it's current score. The old (dist*time)*(flags/crew) scores are:

• Gliding Dolphin: 89
• Kitty Wine: 6.53 (lol)

Even if I had placed a flag for every crew member, my max score for the Kitty Wine would have been 36. This illustrates the problem. The Gliding Dolphin will have gone 10x further than the Kitty Wine did, but it's score wouldn't reflect that if I had placed all flags and got a score of 36. 

That's not fair and is missing the point

If we just do (dist)*(flags/crew) we get

• Gliding Dolphin: 2562
• Kitty Wine: 48 ( possible max score: 267)

Put another way: if you place all possible flags, your score is the distance you traveled.

Thoughts?

[gilflo]

I would suggest to take in account:

-the boat efficiency via the average specific range:

      ASR= Total distance done (kms)/ total fuel used (L) that means the more fuel you use, the less is ASR. Specific range is the number of kms you do using 1L of fuel and it is used in aeronautic  to reflect the efficiency of a jet engine.

     FL= fuel left: (100+%Fuel left)/100     for example, if fuel left is 15% FL=1.15   that means, the more the % fuel left the more the bonus coefficient knowing that if you take to much fuel, you will have to carry it, consume fuel to carry it and get lower speed.....Including Fuel left coefficient could be an option, i am not sure we must use it or maybe we could use it as a penalty, meaning it's not a good preparation not being able to take the right fuel for the trip, with àa 5% margin. in this case, all fuel left above 5% could be a X% penalty: for instance 15% fuel left give a -10% penalty on all points....

-The total distance done in kms: TD

-The average speed of mission AS = TD (m)/Mission time (s) AS = TD/MT     the highest is the average speed, the highest is this coefficient

-Crew and Flag :Flag/Crew = F/C

So the formula should be: (SR x TD) x (AS/100) x FL X F/C     

So for the Gliding dolphin estimation could be:

ASR = 3000/9000 =1/3    

Fuel left is 20% which is 2160L and estimated range is 2500km. We must run 438 kms more to the end so that means around 400L. At the end fuel left should be 1760L which is around 18%. So FL should be 1.18

TD 3000  

AS for the time being is 89m/s, should be around 85, so AS=85

F/C=10/10=1

That gives:( 3000/3 ) x 1.18 x 0.85 x 1 = 1003 with fuel left as bonus

                  (3000/3) X 0.85 X 1= 850 with no fuel left bonus or penalty

                 (3000/3) X 0.85 X 1 = 850 - 13% with fuel penalty over 5% = 739

Edited May 17, 2017 by gilflo

[gilflo]

My final figures: 16.3% fuel left , 8035L used for 2998kms. Total time 9H50mn29s gives an average speed of 84.62m/s

Using mymy formula my score is 

(2998/8035) X 2998 X 1.163 X 0.8462 X1 = 1100 with fuel left bonus

(2998/8035) X 2998 X 0.8462 X1 = 946 no fuel left bonus or penalty

(2998/8035) X 2998 X 0.8462 X1 = 1054 - 11.3% = 839 with fuel left penalty

With your initial scoring it gives 2998000/31800 = 84.62

Edited May 17, 2017 by gilflo

[gilflo]

Here are the custom waypoints (.cfg file) for waypoint manager and the .kmz file of my trip for google Earth

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/paq537ecsdywfkl/AABiDQKlSYWFbPSipUIqZY19a?dl=0

[seanth]

On 5/16/2017 at 6:23 AM, gilflo said:

 

 

Really excellent job by @gilflo!

Here's the score breakdown:

• Engine type: J-33 "Wheesley" Turbofan Engine, so it's a "level 2" entry
• Distance: 2998000 meters
• Time : 1 day 3 hrs 50 min 29sec = 35429 seconds
• Total crew: 10
• Flags placed: 10
• (Distance/Time)*(flag placed/crew) = (2998000m/35429sec)*(10flags/10crew)= 84.62

Which is the current highest score regardless of entry level. Well done!

On a related note, I like the idea of using specific range. Let me play with some numbers and see if there's enough info from previous scores to recalculate them.

Edit: I'll incorporate your waypoints and kml points into the file available on github soon. Any chance of getting the craft file for inclusion on github for other people to improve on?

 

Edited May 17, 2017 by seanth

[gilflo]

Ok, I'll put the craft file too, as soon as possible, with some explanations to use it as it's quite difficult to stay on water under a certain weight.

[gilflo]

Hy Seanth

May i use your video tutorial about how to use Google Earth with Kerbal map?

I have an idea for a great challenge and using google map would be great.

[seanth]

1 hour ago, gilflo said:

Hy Seanth

May i use your video tutorial about how to use Google Earth with Kerbal map?

I have an idea for a great challenge and using google map would be great.

Absolutely.

[seanth]

Finally updated the waypoint, mechjeb, and google earth files to include @gilflo points. Congrats again! Amazing run. I need to find some time and try to update a craft to incorporate the "wing-deck" idea.

On 5/9/2017 at 0:38 PM, life_on_venus said:

Is the waypoint manager file broken? I was going to go and plant a flag

Edit: I think I found it

@life_on_venus: did you ever end up trying this out?

[gilflo]

Hi Seanth

i tried to improve my wing deck boat. I thought that it would be better if the COG and COL could be physically at the geometrical center of the both hulls so that the boat would sit horizontally on the water. This one is sitting on its back the hulls being higher on water at the front and lower at the back. 

It looks like there's no improvment to have the rear and the front of both hulls at the same height over water. I did not manage to get better speed and better range with this setting. On the contrary, it's worse....

So it's purely chance if  my first design gave such a good range with these amasing speeds. It's better to have COG and COL behind geometrical center of hulls, with the boat sitting on its back. Maybe also performance depends on the wing deck angle with horizontal plan. I also tried more power with 4 engines, thinking having hulls early out of water would give better range, but i did not get better range....

I'll soon leave my boat on dropbox so that you can try it.

[seanth]

6 hours ago, gilflo said:

i tried to improve my wing deck boat. I thought that it would be better if the COG and COL could be physically at the geometrical center of the both hulls so that the boat would sit horizontally on the water. This one is sitting on its back the hulls being higher on water at the front and lower at the back. 

It looks like there's no improvment to have the rear and the front of both hulls at the same height over water. I did not manage to get better speed and better range with this setting. On the contrary, it's worse....

That makes sense to me. My understanding is that boats with aircraft jets on them tend to run bow down. This is something I've seen a lot in my hydroplane designs.

https://books.google.com/books?id=8NsDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA70&lpg=PA70&dq=aircraft+jet+boat+nose&source=bl&ots=wNAszTls7P&sig=vTnP825-t13QcyPEk186rTrx9nY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjO48PNi5rUAhWE2YMKHbV4CsYQ6AEIPzAH#v=onepage&q=aircraft jet boat nose&f=false

It seems like your design compensated for this tendency with the mass toward the back.

[gilflo]

Hey Seanth

Here is my Gliding Dolphin, you can download it from my dropbox.

Gliding Dolphin OR.craft

I let you discover it so that you can make your own test, but Pilot Assistant is mandatory if you want to pilot Vertical speed to get the best speed, even when hulls are deep in the water...

If you find a mod allowing to set Thrust accurately from 1% to 1% i am interested