JumpJet Island Race

[ralanboyle]

Who doesn't love a good old fashioned Jump-Jet?! 

To my knowledge there has not yet been a race between a F35B and a Hawker Harrier, correct me if I am mistaken... I digress!

The Challenge:

Make a fast VTOL Airplane that is also capable of HTOL.  

The Course:

1. Take off from the runway at KSC.

2. Fly over to the Island Runway- Land and Stop. 

3. Return to the KSC Runway- Land and Stop. 

There are 2 Take Offs and 2 Landings. One of each must be VTOL and the others must be HTOL. Do them in whatever order you want.  

The Rules:

No Parts/Physics mods (DLC is fine)

Judging each TO and Landing as either HTOL vs VTOL might get tricky (some of you will blur the line.) I am open to ideas but for now I'll let it be open to community judgment.

There will be two leaderboards. One Jet Class, the other Unlimited Class.  The Unlimited Class is available for those with a very loose definition of "Airplane," or "Jump-Jet," or "Gravity." Jet Class will only use jets as propulsion. 

I understand that not everyone can make videos... but you better provide sufficient photos... I'm gonna need a bunch of photos...  

I've provided a slow and steady run to start us out. 

 

Jet Class: 

@camacju  3:50

RAlanBoyle 5:38 

xxx

Unlimited Class:

xxx

xxx

xxx

 

 

 

Edited November 22, 2020 by ralanboyle

[Klapaucius]

This is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I can build a VTOL that also takes off horizontally no problem. But getting it to slow down and stay balanced while I land has proved the challenge. I

m tying not to do this with a bunch of reaction wheels.  I just wanted you to know that I have been trying :-)

[ralanboyle]

1 hour ago, Klapaucius said:

This is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I can build a VTOL that also takes off horizontally no problem. But getting it to slow down and stay balanced while I land has proved the challenge. I

m tying not to do this with a bunch of reaction wheels.  I just wanted you to know that I have been trying :-)

I assume you know to perfectly line up your lift, weight and thrust while in vertical mode. After that its all about finesse! I tried to make a couple more aggressive designs that ultimately proved uncontrollable.  

[camacju]

@ralanboyle Does a tailsitter count?

The general strategy in this is to go as fast as possible toward the target airfield and then dump all the velocity using airbrakes, and then land. This means that I have a lot of room for optimization here. A better pilot could probably knock off another minute using this same craft.

Horizontal takeoff at KSC -> vertical landing at island airfield -> vertical takeoff at island airfield -> horizontal landing at KSC

Horizontal takeoff at KSC

I reach 1600 m/s before deploying the airbrakes

This thing decelerates at 80 G

When airbrakes are deployed this plane is stable in a tailsitter position, and it also has enough TWR to take off like this. I took a full minute to hover down when it should have been more like 20 seconds though

Full throttle back to KSC

Dumping speed and prepared for landing

Landed after 3:50

[ralanboyle]

2 hours ago, camacju said:

Does a tailsitter count?

Absolutely, I assumed this is where the challenge would go but I didn't want to give away the goose. Good run. Now I'll have to do a tailsitter. How did you overcome the instability in the tail slide to landing? Did you reverse the control surfaces, or disable them, or just descend really really slowly?  

[camacju]

The airbrakes are in the front of the plane, so when they're deployed, they shift the center of drag forward. Then the craft is stable in the reverse orientation