1:1 Bristol Brabazon replica

[kapteenipirk]

 

Bristol Brabazon

 

Launched in 1949, the Brabazon is a huge British luxury airliner designed by the Bristol Aeroplane Company.

Named after the Brabazon committee and it's chairman Lord Brabazon of Tara who came up with the specification for the airliner.

At 54m in length and with a 70m wingspan, it is the largest land-based aircraft built in Britain, and one of the largest aircraft of it's time.

Passengers would be given ample luxuries in the form of, a, cocktail-bar, dining saloon, sleeping arrangement's and even a cinema.

 

The engineering on the aircraft was pretty impressive as-well. Such as, tailoring every skin panel to be just the right thickness to save tons of weight in aluminium.

Then there is the rather unusual arrangement of engines, 8 engines, each powering one of the 8 paired contra-rotating propellers..

 

Unfortunately, due to all those luxuries, the aircraft could only carry 100 passengers, as opposed to the 300 or so that was possible, witch drove away potential customers.

In the end, no potential buyers for the aircraft could be found, and after just 1.5 prototypes (there was also the turbo-prop powered MKII, witch never got completed), the project was cancelled.

 

It wasn't all for nothing tough, as all the infrastructure needed to construct and test the Brabazon would come in handy in the future (the infrastructure alone was about half the cost).

For example: there was the new assembly-hall designed to allow final assembly to be done on 8 Brabazon's at a time, witch was the largest hangar in the world at the time, witch would then be used to build the Bristol Britannia.

Also, a lot of the construction/design techniques would be useful in the design of new aircrafts of all types.

And then there was the extended and widened runway at Filton.

 

Here's some picks that will show you the interior and the engines.

Spoiler

 

 

This will hopefully give you a better idea of how the engines connect to the propellers.

 

And so you can compare

 

KSP version

It was finally time for me to enter the realm of fairing based aircraft replicas.

 

 

Designed to be not only well detailed, but also usable as a passenger aircraft.

The Brabazon comes with:

passenger-cabins inside the fuselage and doors in the nose that allow for unloading and loading of passengers. You will need to build some air-stairs to reach them tough.

This was one of the first things i wanted to include in mine, as it's always such a shame seeing all these magnificent replicas not have the ability to carry anything.

 

BG-powered landing-flaps that also act as sort of boost-flaps.

With the help of the unintentional boost-flap capability, you can take-off from some pretty short distances.

Basically the flaps, when lowered interrupt the thrust of the engines, allowing you to spool up the engines to 100% without moving an inch.

Be careful tough as the thrust from the engines will brake the flaps at some point, so best to raise them as soon as the engines are at 100% thrust.

Space needed to land the plane ain't that big either, tough you need to be careful as when the nose starts to dip, it takes quite a while to recover.

When speed is maintained, the aircraft is very nice and smooth to fly, albeit a bit slow in the maneuverability sector, tough i think it's pretty fitting for an aircraft of this size.

I haven't really done long-range flying that much so i can't speak for the range, but here's a couple shot's showing how far i got in my test flight.

Spoiler

 

Timer in the upper corner shows the flight lasted 55m

 

Id say that was a decent sized ocean-crossing (the flag on the right is KSC).

 

 

Technical specs:

Top speed: 160m/s

Stall speed: 65m/s

Length: 57m

Wingspan: 77.5m

Height: 15.1m

Mass: 226.8 tons

Parts: 624

 

You can operate the landing-flaps from the Translate up and down axis group.

 

Download link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/w8gt7odsbifjo7h/Bristol Brabazon.craft?dl=0

 

And there it is for you, a replica of one of history's great white-elephants. I hope you enjoy it .

PS: fun fact...or maby not, i was actually supposed to upload this months ago (bout few days after the move), i was about 90% done when my computer reset and i lost all progress, only now did i have the time and motivation to do this again.