Plane manoeuvrability -- Minimum Radius and Maximum Rate Turns

[ccik]

Hello,

While testing new spaceplanes, i thought about manoeuvrability of these planes, and how you could compare these for different aircraft. Also i wanted to know what is possible, and how good my own construction is. So i came up with this challenge:

Build a spaceplane with the smallest possible turnradius and the highest turnrate.

To test your designs, do the following:

For the turnradius, just perform a Looping. Start in level flight with speed and altitude of your choice. Note that for all of the following, the velocity vector (The yellow circle on the navball representing where you are going) is the reference. So start with your velocity vetor on the horizon, then perfom a loop, taking three screenshots. One when you are starting the loop, with the yellow circle at the horizon. One when you are at the top, and one when you are level again. From these screenshots, you can read out your altitude at the bottom of the loop, then at the top, and at the bottom again. The difference from these altitudes should be double your radius, so take the smallest one, divide it by 2, and you got your turnradius.

For the turnrate, start again with your plane straight and level, and do a 360-degree turn. To get good and comparable results, it is important that you maintain altitude and speed approximatly the same (+/- 500 m; +/- 20m/s should be close enough), so that you can read out your sustainable turn rate. Again, take three screenshots, one at the start, one half way through, and one at the and. Then compare you MET's, and take the time it took for your craft to make the turn. Divide 360 by your time, and you got your turnrate in degrees per second.

Please post the two screenshots you used for your half loop in the radius-test, and the three screenshots of your rate-test, so that we all can confirm your performance

If someone can think of a better way to measure the results, feel free to post your idea of this way.

I will make a leaderboard for all of your entries in each category, and then think of a way to combine these into a ranking for both rate and radius.

Here are my own results:

Turn radius:

I started at 1132m, the top of my loop was at 1562, and stopped at 888m. My smallest diameter from the start to the top was 430m, so my radius was 215m

Turn rate

i started with a heading of 180° at 2:36 MET, finished at 180° at 2:56 MET, so that makes 20 seconds. My speed increased roughly 7m/s, my altitude increades about 200m, so both in the ballpark.

360/20 gives me a turn rate of 18°/s

So my results in short:

18°/s turn rate

215 m turn radius

[Clouds]

I offer "The Carver", which...carves through the air...

You didn't really say what scenario to test loop size in, so I did full throttle and lowest speed glide.

Full throttle radius: 218m

Best glide radius: 41m

Turn rate: 72°/s and G-meter needle buried at maximum

[ccik]

The throttle setting and speed for the loop is up to you, to figure out the best performance.

But very nice results, now i have to build something new