Spruce Goose Challenge - Build a giant flying boat!

[Pds314]

Your goal in this challenge is to build a massive and impressive flying boat like the Hughes H-4 Hercules which can takeoff and land horizontally on water.

You are under no obligation to fly your plane on Kerbin or to mimic the design features or propulsion method of the actual Sproose Goose.

There will be no specific criterion for scoring each aircraft, but any entry which can reasonably claim to hold a new impressive record will recieve an honorable mention in this post.

The one reason your entry will be rejected is if the plane does not fit the spirit of this challenge. The most likely reasons for this are that it is either not a flying boat (the hull and fuselage are separate and not even connected), or is really small (please don't upload 10 tonne single seaters with a mk1 hull or whatever).

Please do NOT use procedural wings or tweakscale, and please state any physics or parts mods you use, and any cheats needed to fly your plane.

Cheating and modding to get the plane off the runway and into the water is expected and encouraged and doesn't need clarification, though if your plane is amphibious, that's worth mentioning.

Largest Payload capacity: Boost Moose by sturmhauke: ~70 tonnes.

Edited September 28, 2018 by Pds314

[Pds314]

[My first entry will be here]

[Kerbinchaser]

[Kernel Kraken]

20 hours ago, Lo Var Lachland said:

 

(My reserved post will be here)

Spoiler

(this is a joke, plz no delete)

Edit: I will enter this challenge, I love making massive craft. I have several multi hundred boats sitting in the hangar, I'm going to take flying boat way to literally.

Edited September 26, 2018 by Kernel Kraken

[sturmhauke]

I made a cargo seaplane called the Boost Moose. It's amphibious and has a cargo capacity of somewhere around 70 tons (I haven't fully tested it). The bay opens at the tail and belly, for naval operations.

Mods:

• NF Aeronautics
• Mark IV Spaceplane
• Airplane Plus
• Kerbal Aircraft Expansion

Spoiler

 

[Pds314]

I think this is probably the highest dry mass so far. ~275 tonnes (I can't open it right now without messing with my install or it will break).

Wingspan over 85 meters.

A better angle to see the wings from:

Edited September 28, 2018 by Pds314

[sturmhauke]

o.O That beast would make my computer lock up as soon as it got anywhere near the water.

[Kerbolitto]

4 hours ago, Pds314 said:

I think this is probably the highest dry mass so far. ~275 tonnes (I can't open it right now without messing with my install or it will break).

I only tried once to build a flying boat but I used tanks instead of fairings because they exploded all the time.. How did you managed to use them properly without breaking ?

[Aeroboi]

Would this be sufficient to enter? (279 parts) It's a very sturdy 1048 crew highspeed ampibious vehicle.

Does about 100m/s in water before she takes off automatically.

The native angle of the rear horizontal stabilizer lifts her behind out of the water to ignore most of the drag. This means she can maintain almost the same speed at the same throttle as if she were flying. It's basically a reversed ekranoplan but achieved differently then ground effect which of course doesn't exist in KSP.

Here's a better picture that shows it.

 

https://kerbalx.com/Aeroboi/Kilobus-A1080

 

[sturmhauke]

Instead of Snakes On A Plane, you've made Snakes As A Plane.

[Aeroboi]

2 minutes ago, sturmhauke said:

Instead of Snakes On A Plane, you've made Snakes As A Plane.

A amphibious sea snake full of green landlubbers

[Kerbolitto]

What the f* !

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Mine was inspired by the actual Spruce Goose a bit, but "Kerbalized"; I give you the White Sprite. (100% stock, has no real purpose/payload besides existing and flying. Although throwing a bunch of seats or cargo into the inside would be easy enough, it's completely hollow lol.)

Spoiler

Not absurdly big, but certainly one of the larger planes I've designed!

Taking off! (With some healthy assistance from the debug menu of course.)

Flaps deployed! Landings are powered (10-15% throttle) with flaps extended, for better control of lift and vertical speed. The front and rear are both fairings so the water landing needs to be extra gentle lol.

Success! The two angled front body pontoons keep the nose just slightly elevated, making for easy take off at around 80m/s.

Trying to land on the runway had the expected results lol, but you know what they say; any landing you can walk away from!

Thanks for the challenge! I like these open ended design ones. Always fun to see what other people come up with.

Edited September 29, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket

[Klapaucius]

On 9/30/2018 at 3:06 AM, Rocket In My Pocket said:

100% stock, has no real purpose/payload besides existing and flying.

That pretty much sums up everything I have ever built and put on KerbalX. 

Edited October 5, 2018 by Klapaucius

[Triop]

I don't want my boats to fly !? U mad ?!

[vyznev]

I see your Spruce Goose and raise you this:

Unfortunately, it's not quite finished. While it flies just fine (except for a mysterious and annoying, but fairly easily correctable, tendency to roll to the left), it floats a bit too deep in the water and can't actually take off from the surface.

Also, the head tends to come off when landing in water.

Unfortunately I probably won't have time to work on this design any more before next weekend, at the earliest, so I'll just leave this half-finished thing here for now.  

[Pds314]

On 10/7/2018 at 1:56 PM, vyznev said:

I see your Spruce Goose and raise you this:

Unfortunately, it's not quite finished. While it flies just fine (except for a mysterious and annoying, but fairly easily correctable, tendency to roll to the left), it floats a bit too deep in the water and can't actually take off from the surface.

Also, the head tends to come off when landing in water.

Unfortunately I probably won't have time to work on this design any more before next weekend, at the earliest, so I'll just leave this half-finished thing here for now.  

Regarding taking off from water, one easy way to help planes do this is to increase the wing AOA a bit. If you're worried about ruining he aero another way is to give them big takeoff flaps. Also, don't give it too much float behind the center of mass. Think of submerged volume as like a landing gear. 

On 9/28/2018 at 7:25 AM, sturmhauke said:

o.O That beast would make my computer lock up as soon as it got anywhere near the water.

Yes I try to keep part count to a minimum on this sort of thing.

Edited October 9, 2018 by Pds314

[sturmhauke]

On 10/7/2018 at 1:56 PM, vyznev said:

I see your Spruce Goose and raise you this:

Rocket Turkey approves: