[1.3.1] Ferram Aerospace Research: v0.15.9.1 "Liepmann" 4/2/18

[localSol]

I managed to make an aeroplane that was quite easy to fly. It's still hard to land, but that's mainly because of lack of air brakes. I did managed to land it on the ground, although not the runway ones. My speed was too high though, the engines fell off, but the rest made it. Then it wouldn't stop, I tried to apply down force, but that resulted in a crash. Gonna try adding a parachute.

I guess this plane probably has a large amount of Thrust to weight ratio, meaning that even small amount of throttle would send your plane zooming in whatever direction it's pointed. Because of the drag at low altitudes, it can be hard to notice just how powerful the engines are until you get a lot higher. Some kind of brake dampening would be extra nice sometimes, but I wonder if adding more wheels helps the braking force, like I would expect it to. Someone mentioned that using airbrakes on real planes can be difficult. I kind of like that FAR does this too. Something I really like about Taverio's smaller engines and nacelles that you might find useful is that they can make this kind of plane easier to land and fly, because the nacelles or small structural fuselage are easier to put under wings, or over them or anywhere because they are physically smaller, and are much less massive. So the smaller parts are less likely to hit the ground on landings for a plane like this. That reduces weight shift instability too, especially if the plane has normal gyro torque and no extra struts. It adjusts mass of other common aerodynamic parts too to make them more useful especially for planes.

Edit hmm..I feel like I've been quizzed and I learned something. I rebuilt your plane mostly, but with probably less mass, I don't think it helped the landings though. I think what helped the most was just staying close to an 85 m/s landing speed or less, since my plane would takeoff around 60 m/s. Hopefully this will help you too. I also experimented with flaps, which I have never done before and didn't really understand. On this particular plane they helped with takeoff a lot. I just read , quoting wiki : "Flaps are devices used to improve the lift characteristics of a wing and are mounted on the trailing edges of the wings of a fixed-wing aircraft to reduce the speed at which the aircraft can be safely flown and to increase the angle of descent for landing. They shorten takeoff and landing distances. Flaps do this by lowering the stall speed and increasing the drag."

Great writing is concise.

But pictures of flapventure : http://imgur.com/a/WBk8T

Edited December 16, 2013 by localSol

[ÄlveKatt]

I don't think you can make flaps in KSP yet. Flaps are sections on the wing that extends, making the flight surface bigger, Basically trading off drag for lift. It's a moving part.

[DYJ]

FAR lets you make the simple types of flaps (plain flaps and split flaps) by using normal controlsurfaces and using FARs flap setting in the editor GUI, the same menu also allows you to use them as airbrakes.

Example of FAR airbrakes using WIP pWing controlsurfaces, you can use normal vanilla ones the same way:

[Goozeman]

I don't think you can make flaps in KSP yet. Flaps are sections on the wing that extends, making the flight surface bigger, Basically trading off drag for lift. It's a moving part.

You're talking about fowler flaps and slotted flaps. You can't do those in KSP yet, but you can use plain flaps and split flaps. While not quite as effective as those that increase wing area, they do still work.

[SnappingTurtle]

Would it be possible to allow control surfaces to also be flaps so we can have things like flaperons?

[Guest]

Ferram is working on it, IIRC. "Speedbrake configuration" airbrakes should also be possible then.

[mrskwid]

so i tried for about 4 hours to get a plane to fly on duna i think my plane is pretty good flys fine on kerbin

specs: stock lift is 7 engion gets about 2Kn of thrust on duna at lower altitudes

the wing are fire spitter. any tips thanks.

[Motokid600]

So far Im enjoying this mod. Im using it for the first time after a year of playing this game. I'm having trouble with something though that I know is related to FAR. Im sending up a larger rocket with four radial boosters. Nothing excessive.. its a nice serial stages rocket. Everything goes great until booster sep. The radial boosters collide into the center of my craft and hug the thing until it explodes and takes out the entire first stage. I have four powerful separation boosters on each one and I've even tried deploying parachutes. Nothing.. Any tips?

[ferram4]

That sounds very odd... are your separation motors near the top of your boosters, so that the nose of the booster is pushed further away from the rocket than the engine? Would you mind posting pictures of the rocket during that separation event?

[Motokid600]

That sounds very odd... are your separation motors near the top of your boosters, so that the nose of the booster is pushed further away from the rocket than the engine? Would you mind posting pictures of the rocket during that separation event?

It figures in this flight the stage survived, but was clipped and sent the craft out of control. Now in this one I moved the separation boosters down tyring to balance out the force, but no matter where they are the result is the same. Ive tried all the way up to the top.. nothing. Idk... when i said "nothing too excessive" i meant sticking out radially.. lol. Its a very large rocket.. could it simply be a size issue? A 6.5m SaturnV with four 5m Energia boosters.

Edited December 17, 2013 by Motokid600

[Camacha]

Ferram, the Simulation tab in the VAB/SPH reads Simultation, with an extra t. I assume this is a typo, as it is called Simulation on the button to run it.

[ferram4]

@Motokid600: Twofold problem here:

The separation motors are too low. Shift the lower ones up a bit to help get rid of the boosters.

The separation motor exhaust is hitting the other boosters, torquing them around. Angle them away from each other more.

You can see in the first picture that the bottom of each booster is being pushed away more than the top of each booster. This would cause a lifting force that would push the booster into the main rocket; you want to put all of the separation motors at the top so that it pushes the top of the booster away from the rocket, while lift should do most of the rest. You may want to consider a single separation motor on top of each booster, pointing towards the core; for most boosters that's all you really need to get them away from the rocket.

@Camacha: That would be correct; I shall fix it.

[Motokid600]

Ty ferram I will try that. I always assumed you wanted to angle the exhaust away from the core.

EDIT: The core blew up.. lol. It may be the part itself. I went and changed its maxtemp in the .cfg to 999999 fro 2800.. think that'll work?

Edited December 17, 2013 by Motokid600

[lipatden]

Hi Ferram

Adding FAR 0.11 to stock KSP 0.23 (no other mods) causes the craft title to disappear from the VAB as soon as a command part is added. Clicking where it should be brings down what I think is the description box, but no typing is displayed and the craft title remains the default "Untitle Space Craft", so no typing is registering.

Can anyone else confirm?

Edited December 17, 2013 by lipatden
Forgot to add KSP version

[silverdragon41]

Hi Ferram

Adding FAR 0.11 to stock KSP 0.23 (no other mods) causes the craft title to disappear from the VAB as soon as a command part is added. Clicking where it should be brings down what I think is the description box, but no typing is displayed and the craft title remains the default "Untitle Space Craft", so no typing is registering.

Can anyone else confirm?

I get that too. Most likely have to wait till Ferram updates the mod for .23.

[stoddard14]

Hi Ferram

Adding FAR 0.11 to stock KSP 0.23 (no other mods) causes the craft title to disappear from the VAB as soon as a command part is added. Clicking where it should be brings down what I think is the description box, but no typing is displayed and the craft title remains the default "Untitle Space Craft", so no typing is registering.

Can anyone else confirm?

I had this happen as well. Went through all my mods and pinned it to FAR. Hopefully a quick fix will be out soon.

[ferram4]

Yeah, you're trying to put a square peg in a round hole, just like any other time you try to install a mod compiled for one version of KSP with another version. This is to be expected.

Get rid of FAR for now, wait until the internet cooperates with me enough that I can rebuild everything using the new dlls and make some quick fixes.

[taniwha]

ferram4: the changes are pretty simple: Propellant is now a global class, Editor.Lock and Unlock take an extra param (for the input lock stack: I susggest something like "FAR_noclick" (ie, something meaningful) as it will be visible in the debug menu), and EditorLogic.editorLocked is non-functional (always false, just remove the references).

[ferram4]

Alright, version 0.12 is out, including KSP 0.23 compatibility, new atmospheres for not-Kerbin planets, Toolbar integration, other stuff visible in the config file.

[DasBananenbrot]

Alright, version 0.12 is out, including KSP 0.23 compatibility, new atmospheres for not-Kerbin planets, Toolbar integration, other stuff visible in the config file.

Nice the update is here

[pasty2k2]

Awesome! Thanks Ferram!

[blizzy78]

Alright, version 0.12 is out, including KSP 0.23 compatibility, new atmospheres for not-Kerbin planets, Toolbar integration, other stuff visible in the config file.

Nice, does it include Toolbar 1.1.0 or 1.2.0? I've just released 1.2.0 about half an hour ago

[ferram4]

1.2.0. I saw that just as I was finishing updating and went back through everything to make sure I included the most recent version.

[blizzy78]

1.2.0. I saw that just as I was finishing updating and went back through everything to make sure I included the most recent version.

Right, I just checked your download. Very neat

[Amazingteknique]

Excellent! The only mod that I actually feel is a must have updates immediately. Thank you sir