Kerbal Express Airlines - Regional Jet Challenge (Reboot)

[CrazyJebGuy]

34 minutes ago, NightshineRecorralis said:

Why half fuel? Is there something I don't get behind the reasoning for this? My way is, as far as I know, the most accurate way without delving into nerd sniping territory.

It is an average, of flight, assuming it's linear with fuel burnining, it averages and the lower performance from higher fuel use cancels out on the better performance as the fuel is burnt.

Or we can use full fuel load, since that is what was traditional done (thus more fair) and even though it's less, we can just say that the extra range is fuel for emergencies only.

[Blasty McBlastblast]

4 hours ago, CrazyJebGuy said:

I downloaded the BS-168, it has some part that is not AP+ or Tweakscale. I thik it's the tail part, size two tail or something. I sympathize, most of my planes accidentally had a KAX part in them.

All parts are Airplane Plus or stock, so I'm not sure why your install is struggling to load parts?

But perhaps it is a fortuitous event, as actually I would prefer someone (anyone) else to review my craft! Many of your reviews and posts seem overly negative, combative, disparaging of peoples efforts, and biased towards promoting your own entries. Thoroughly un-kerbal in my opinion. 

 

[neistridlar]

7 hours ago, CrazyJebGuy said:

I downloaded the BS-168, it has some part that is not AP+ or Tweakscale. I thik it's the tail part, size two tail or something. I sympathize, most of my planes accidentally had a KAX part in them.

I have no problems opening that plane,  and I am fairly sure AP+ is the only parts mod that I have installed.

[CrazyJebGuy]

4 hours ago, Blasty McBlastblast said:

All parts are Airplane Plus or stock, so I'm not sure why your install is struggling to load parts?

But perhaps it is a fortuitous event, as actually I would prefer someone (anyone) else to review my craft! Many of your reviews and posts seem overly negative, combative, disparaging of peoples efforts, and biased towards promoting your own entries. Thoroughly un-kerbal in my opinion. 

 

I don't know either, I treid it on two computers, with both tweakscale and AP+, no idea why, even updated AP+.

Of course my reviews seem to promote my own entries, but that's not intentional. My entries are designed to do well in a review, I won't review my own planes for obvious reasons, but when I design them, I consider what I would say if I was a reviewer, and I will freely admit: if I reviewed them, I would heavily criticize a lot of my own planes, because some of them, are bad. Skots Speedmaster, it's bad. Overpriced, high maintenance, and bad comfort. It does though, fly well, but in a review I still wouldn't have bought any.

I do not see my reviews as overly negative, some planes I praise quite a lot, like the WCT island hopper a few pages back, the Kerbus K-350 and K-210. Some planes, yes I am quite negative about them, because I find them to be bad for whatever reasons. When I am reviewing, I get the plane, and I test it. At the beginning, I hope (not always expect however) that it is a good plane. If you think I am review bombing, no. The Zo-168 I just reviewed, was, from the stats advertized, a big threat to my Jumbos, and I reviewed it, expecting such.

 I genuinely didn't go into that review with the intention of bombing it, I did it to see if it was actually really good, and I did my best to judge it fairly. I did indeed give it credit where credit was due, the passenger comfort was an example, it was noisy due to engines there and low speed, but it had no vibrations, and I said as such. Another example of the plane's good points was the price, I gave it praise because it was praiseworthy.

If some-one wants me to give a plane a good review, here is what I test and how I do a review:

1. I'll get the plane, maybe fill in how much fuel and the cost before I take it on a flight.

2. I will (usually - I might add something about the plane's construction first) then note the take off speed, and I will then take it up to the recommended cruise altitude, take measuremtns of fuel burn rate, speed, etc. Then I will give it a very hard to turn to see if it falls apart, and how fast it turns.

3. I will then just manuever for a bit, seeing how it flies, and then I will go and land, to see how quickly can it stop, does it tailstrike on landing, anything else noteworthy.

4. I will takeoff again, and get a picture, and also ditch into the sea to see if it can do that and survive. (Although this test is a bit moot, every plane I've tested so far can)

5. Go back into the SPH, note that part count.

At some point too, I will not the passenger comfort. Also note: When I consider how noisy it will be, I also consider the speed, a fast plane will move fast enough that noise doesn't go so far forward before quietening.

If you want me to give your plane a good review, here is what I will judge it on:

-Price (Using Mk 3 cabins is not recommended if you want a low price)

-Range and Performance (Including manueverability)

-Passenger count and comfort

-Maintenance

-Takeoff/landing ability (Based mainly on the distance it needs to takeoff/land)

-Safety

And I'll include any other stuff, things that I don't actively test for, but which I will notice. Like tailstrikes, I don't test for them. There is a lot of ways to make a plane bad, which I can't even think of. Maybe landing causes a cabin to blow up, or something. (Andetch Seaplane did that)

If your plane can take off and land, fly well, is comfortable, I will say it is a good plane. I will buy more if it is cheaper, and/or has a lower maintenance. And not like, if it's half the price I'll buy twice as many, if it is even ahead slightly, over a typical plane, I will buy in bulk, (like the K-350) because it is better than the competition.

 

Your planes are usually a bit above average at most of these things, the jack of all trades, master of none sort of deal, although pitch is usually a bit weak. Please, if you fix the problems I mention in a review, I will buy more. (Again, Kerbus gets a mention, his K-210 was good but for a couple large issues, he fixed them and then I bought a boat load.)

 I do see though, now you mention, that I tend not to mention good things, unless they are really excellent, for very long, so I will try to spend a bit more time on saying what I like in a plane.

[HamnavoePer]

17 hours ago, CrazyJebGuy said:

No, it is being reviewed by panzerknoef. He's been taking his time, I don't know why. (There is a "Being reviwed by" tab on the spreadsheet, his name is next to the Zoomer

Ok, thx

[neistridlar]

Test Pilot Review: @Blasty McBlastblast's - BS - 72 medium

Figures as Tested:

BS - 72 medium:

• Price: 60,457,000
• Fuel: 2,650 Kallons
• Cruising Speed: 265m/s
• Cruising Altitude: 5,500m
• Fuel Burn Rate: 0.31 Kallons/sec
• Range: 2260km

Review:

Having grown accustomed to the belly on the other BS aircraft, we were not entirely sure we had received the right plane at first. Though on closer inspection it was found that there was indeed a fuel tank bellow the fuselage, maybe this one has spent too much time in the gym. It certainly feels like it on take off. Although the take off speed is a little high at 64m/s both with and without flaps, the take off run is rather short thanks to the 3 powerful engines. Climbing performance is also rather good, and the plane reaches it's cruising altitude very quickly. Like the BS Turbo planes this one also carries a significant nose up attitude, We think there could be significant increase in fuel efficiency if this was fixed. Now unlike the BS Turbo planes, this one seems to have come from the factory trimmed almost perfectly for cruising, and does not have the autopilot issues that the smaller planes had. The cruising speed of 265m/s is quite good, coupled with a fuel burn rate of 0.31 Kallons/sec and a range of 2260km, this aircraft has a reasonable fuel economy, tough it is not best in class. Maneuverability and handling is very similar to the BS Turbo planes, adequate and comfortable for the passengers.

We were a little bit disappointed by the landing performance. The landing speed is high at 60m/s, the landing gear is not as sturdy as the smaller planes form BS, and despite the strong wheel breaks, the plane takes a long distance to stop without the thrust reversers. Water ditching is fine however, and the plane is almost capable of taking of from water as well, reaching more than 65m/s, though we suspect this is not good for the wing mounted engines, as they get rather wet. We were pleasantly surprised that the plane can even fly with any one of the engines alone, and even take of with only the center engine, or with any combination of two engines. Had the landing gear been a little sturdier we would have given this top marks for safety.

It's quite a pleasant ride for the passengers though. The under wing engines don't get to transmit a lot of noise to the cabins, though running at full throttle the entire time, they are still noticeable. In the back of the plane the center engine ads a little bit to the noise as well, but it is not too bad. The good entertainment system goes a long way to make you forget about the noise though. We also tried out the BL - stair cart with this plane. No propeller in the face this time, though some of the passengers complained that they had to climb to get from the plane onto the stair cart, not desirable for the elderly part of the population.

Now for the economics, there are some good news and some bad news. The bad news is the purchase price, 60mill. is double that of some of the competitors, on the other hand the part count of only 35 is quite good. With three engines and wet wings there will still be some maintenance to do. 

The verdict:
The initial purchase price is a bit steep, but we think the high cruising speed, good comfort and safety will make this plane ideal for high paying transoceanic business routes. We will be ordering 3 of these, with options for 2 more if the the landing gear is improved, as well as improved fuel efficiency.

[CrazyJebGuy]

I find the cheapness of the Jumbos an interesting competition! I've got one at 33mill, but I'm having problems with it rolling for no reason and very odd pitch behavior.

[Kernel Kraken]

23 hours ago, TheFlyingKerman said:

More ultra efficient jumbo jets

You sir have perverted the spirit of Kerbal jumbo jets. Not to mention this is an oxymoron.

[neistridlar]

10 hours ago, CrazyJebGuy said:

I find the cheapness of the Jumbos an interesting competition! I've got one at 33mill, but I'm having problems with it rolling for no reason and very odd pitch behavior.

And I thought I was doing well at 34mill. Well, I did some more optimizations of my design, now I am just bellow 29mill. I'm intersted to hear about your odd pitch behavior.

I've been using the readouts from the Aero debug menu to help optimize the efficiency, that is I've been playing with the surface and angle of incidence of the wing to get the AoA as close to 0 as possible at cruising altitude. Somewhere between 2 and 3 degrees angle of incidence seems to be optimal for cruising at 7km altitude and 200m/s. 

[CrazyJebGuy]

1 hour ago, neistridlar said:

And I thought I was doing well at 34mill. Well, I did some more optimizations of my design, now I am just bellow 29mill. I'm intersted to hear about your odd pitch behavior.

I've been using the readouts from the Aero debug menu to help optimize the efficiency, that is I've been playing with the surface and angle of incidence of the wing to get the AoA as close to 0 as possible at cruising altitude. Somewhere between 2 and 3 degrees angle of incidence seems to be optimal for cruising at 7km altitude and 200m/s. 

You set a high bar....

Mien also looks more or less like that, except I opted for a shorter doubled decked design, and had two engines, so it could go supersonic. What type of engine are you using?

Edit: quick reminder that regulations mean any aircraft with a passenger capacity greater than or equal to 72 needs two or more pilots. You gotta make sure of that.

Edited February 27, 2018 by CrazyJebGuy

[neistridlar]

Just now, CrazyJebGuy said:

You set a high bar....

Mien also looks more or less like that, except I opted for a shorter doubled decked design, and had two engines, so it could go supersonic. What type of engine are you using?

Are you trying to say that my landing gear is to high?  

There is a single lotus underneath the fuselage right between the wings. The lotus engines really does not want to go any much faster than 200m/s. I think they flame out at 240 or something like that. Going super sonic is probably a viable alternative as well, at least if you go up to 20+km.

[CrazyJebGuy]

3 minutes ago, neistridlar said:

Are you trying to say that my landing gear is to high?  

There is a single lotus underneath the fuselage right between the wings. The lotus engines really does not want to go any much faster than 200m/s. I think they flame out at 240 or something like that. Going super sonic is probably a viable alternative as well, at least if you go up to 20+km.

No, I dedn't say anything about the landing gear, when I said you set a high bar, I meant you had a hard act to follow, I was impressed.

[DunnoAnyThing]

A simple entry.

Company Name: SimpJet-O

Model Name:SimpleJet SRJ1(small regional jet, actually up to 64 if using 8 kerbals per crew cabin.)(alias: Manta 1-1)

Price:43,548,000

cruise speed&height: 220~240(throttle to about 35~45%) m/s@4500~5000m

craft file:https://kerbalx.com/KreativeKrashKorLinux/Manta-1-1

has about 1350 kallons, uses 0.26kallon/s when at right speed&height

Yup. not very optimized, but F.A.N.C.Y.U(FAirly Navigable, Controllable and Yet-Usable)

Edited February 27, 2018 by DunnoAnyThing

[Kebab Kerman]

7 hours ago, neistridlar said:

And I thought I was doing well at 34mill. Well, I did some more optimizations of my design, now I am just bellow 29mill. I'm intersted to hear about your odd pitch behavior.

I've been using the readouts from the Aero debug menu to help optimize the efficiency, that is I've been playing with the surface and angle of incidence of the wing to get the AoA as close to 0 as possible at cruising altitude. Somewhere between 2 and 3 degrees angle of incidence seems to be optimal for cruising at 7km altitude and 200m/s. 

Why so narrow? I'm not saying it's bad, buuut... It's just strange.

[neistridlar]

10 minutes ago, Kebab Kerman said:

Why so narrow? I'm not saying it's bad, buuut... It's just strange.

Aerodynamics! It is a bit of a pain to have such a long craft, as it is rather bendy (the bracing on top and bottom is absolutely necessary). With just a single thin fuselage the drag from the fuselage becomes much smaller, which means I need less engines and less fuel, which makes the craft lighter, so I need less lift, which also cuts down on the drag, and all this also cuts down on the cost. To put things into perspective, this thing uses less fuel for it's 4000km range then many medium regional jets use for just half of that range. And yes it's not exactly pretty, but I'm not optimizing for pretty, so that's ok.

[neistridlar]

Test Pilot Review: @NightshineRecorralis's - Colossus

Figures as Tested:

• Price: 667,222,000
• Fuel: 30,056.5 Kallons
• Cruising Speed: 233m/s
• Cruising Altitude: 5,000m
• Fuel Burn Rate: 1.86 Kallons/sec
• Range: 3700km

Review:

Why did they put so many Lotus engines on that thing, couldn't they just have used the Goliath engines? Oh, wait, those are Goliath engines. This thing is absurdly big. We don't quite know what it is about these big airplanes, but somehow they remind us of ships. This one feels like a cruise ship. The aircraft leaps into the air almost like a turboprop. Once the plane gets airborne the cruise ship feeling just gets even stronger. It moves almost like it was on rails, with just a slow gentle sway to it. The controls do have just enough authority to fly this great plane, though because of it's massive size and weight it takes a long time to respond to inputs. We think it will take some getting used to for most pilots, as they will have to plan their maneuvers much longer in advance than they are used to. Other than this though the plane handles quite nicely. The cruise speed of 233m/s is quite good for a jumbo, but the range is a little short of the requirements. I'ts almost enough to circumnavigate Kerbin though, so it is not that big off a deal.

Now determining the take off speed was a bit of a challenge with this one, as there are so many wheels coming in and out of contact during take off, however the main gear seems to lift off at 55m/s. With a take off and landing speed of 55m/s this plane should be able to service most airports, as long as they can support the weight. The brakes are not very impressive though, thrust reversers are a must. Also the engines are mounted so low to the ground that it is easy to scrape them on the runway on landing if the ground is not level, or you need to make last minute course corrections. The landing gear is quite good though, and we like the tail gear, as we don't have to worry about tail strikes. We were pleased to find that the airplane can fly and even take off with half of the engines out, as long as there is not more than one Goliath difference between the two sides. This should be quite a safe plane to fly.

So how is the passenger comfort? Well the big Goliath's are mounted far out and beneath the wings, so they don't bother the passengers much. There is however a pair of engines right outside the windows on the middle deck, and no we never thought we would talk about the middle deck on an airplane,  so there certainly will be some noise here. How is the view then? the forward middle cabins certainly have an excellent view with their slightly forward facing windows. The view from the rear middle and upper deck is also quite nice. The rest of the airplane though, there is practically no view at all. Now for the lower deck, it's cramped, really cramped. It seems someone thought that the space where your legs normally go was a perfectly fine place to fit additional seat rows. We are not entirely sure how people are supposed to get to their seats down there, as it's practically just a massive block of seats. We'l, have to consult with Habu Industries and see if they have a solution for this.

Is it worth the money though? It cost twice as much as most of the competition! Well the considering that it has a capacity of 1152, about 6 times that of most of the competition this is actually quite reasonable per seat, the same goes for fuel economy and maintenance. It's a lot of bucks, but it is also a lot of bang. We will probably be able to charge a fair bit for the front cabins and the top deck, but the bottom deck will need to be reserved for ultra economy tickets.

The verdict:
This aircraft truly lives up to its name. We really want to buy one off these, just so we can say mine is bigger than yours. And that is what we will do. Now we just have to spend the money we will hopefully save from consolidating all of our routes, into convincing everybody that they need to travel to the same place at the same time.

[CrazyJebGuy]

3 hours ago, neistridlar said:

-snip-

Now I really hope someone reviews my Sky Titanic, it would be very appropriate now, since the Colossus's only competition is the Sky Titanic.

[CrazyJebGuy]

Test Pilot Review: @Gaarst's Kerbalespace C-1K

Figures as Tested:

• Price: 209,057,000 dry
• Fuel: 3920 kallons
• Cruising speed: 221 m/s
• Cruising altitude: 5300 m
• Fuel burn rate: 0.41 kal/s
• Range: 2100 km

Review Notes:

 This is indeed, a fairly stndard liner, as said in the brochure. But not be our standards, we get some very odd things. It takes off at 70m/s, slightly on the high side but still very usable. It does accelerate and climb a bit slowly, we think the 4 wheesley engines struggle a bit, but they get the job done.

 We must be missing somethin though, because we couldn't get the plane to go quite the 240m/s claimed, just 221, which is a respectable speed for such an aeroplane, although slightly under requirement. What is at requirement is the range, a solid 2,100 km, although it has plenty of free space for more fuel, so we think that we could increase this. The free space for fuel is due to the fact that all fuel is stored in some Mk2 hulls strapped to the main hull, and embedded a bit. They house all the fuel, and the wings connect to them. We are curious why they added these instead of filling empty fuel carrying tanks, but we are sure there is a reason.

 What is above the requirement by far, is the comfort. Low slung engines with a few things to pass through before getting their vibrations to the fuselage, mean almost no vibrations or noise, the cabins are fancy and well decked out and the views are very good.

It manuevers, very slowly. The pitch axis is very weak, but roll and yaw are pretty good. The plane can only pull about 1.5g, so it's comfortable for the passengers. On landing, it bounces. But the passengers need to learn to not ignore the seat belt sign anyway.

With 82 parts, maintenance is on the high end, and so is the price, nearly 3 million per passenger.

The Verdict:

 It's a very nice plane, but with a very high price. It's too expensive to do anything other than very luxurious first class flights, which fortunately, it is very good at. We expect them to last a while, so the high initial cost is not as important, we think we'll get a good fifty years. Ordering nine for general purpose luxury flights, and marketing.

[neistridlar]

10 hours ago, CrazyJebGuy said:

Now I really hope someone reviews my Sky Titanic, it would be very appropriate now, since the Colossus's only competition is the Sky Titanic.

Looks like you have some KAXmed fuselage in that plane, I am not able to open it.

[CrazyJebGuy]

5 minutes ago, neistridlar said:

Looks like you have some KAXmed fuselage in that plane, I am not able to open it.

Will fix ASAP.

[CrazyJebGuy]

Have fixed download link.

[Kebab Kerman]

Are we allowed to use FireSpitter parts? I want to use the bomber wings to build a passenger aircraft that some old pilots will find nostalgic.

[CrazyJebGuy]

Just now, Kebab Kerman said:

Are we allowed to use FireSpitter parts? I want to use the bomber wings to build a passenger aircraft that some old pilots will find nostalgic.

Sadly no, only allowed mods are Airplane Plus, and Tweakscale. Personally, I would allow KAX, as the parts aren't OP, and have more of a stock theme, Firespitter feels too "moddy", and so I uninstall it.

[Kebab Kerman]

3 minutes ago, CrazyJebGuy said:

Sadly no, only allowed mods are Airplane Plus, and Tweakscale. Personally, I would allow KAX, as the parts aren't OP, and have more of a stock theme, Firespitter feels too "moddy", and so I uninstall it.

Oh. Darn, because it's nostalgic for older players. I know I loved and still love it. I think Lack's Stock Expansion and/or some Mk.3 Expansion packs would be nice otherwise, as they add some airliner cockpits and some larger wing parts. Helpful for planes that just don't have large enough wings.

 

[CrazyJebGuy]

31 minutes ago, Kebab Kerman said:

Oh. Darn, because it's nostalgic for older players. I know I loved and still love it. I think Lack's Stock Expansion and/or some Mk.3 Expansion packs would be nice otherwise, as they add some airliner cockpits and some larger wing parts. Helpful for planes that just don't have large enough wings.

 

Yeah, I liked the old parts two. I miss the old swept wings, new ones are crappy. Had a very nice biplane design that got broke when they changed it.