JonzCo Enterprises Exotic Jet Engines, Intakes and Mobility Goods 0.3

[Jahulath]

I put a ramjet together today but it flamed out at 30,000m around mach 7? Is that about right? I'm using FAR and it has plenty of intakes. A turbojet to get to mach 1 then it was pretty slow going to mach 2 where the rams really took off and I could switch the TJ off.

I can just about get that on my test plane that is more intake than not but when I flame out it is with my throttle at like 1%, assuming you did that and your a pretty good pilot then I'd say ok! I don't use FAR so it may have changed the balance/effects I don't know - I would expect to have pulled well of the throttle by 23000m even then. Hope you liked them

[Ratzap]

Hehe, get FAR Jahulath, it makes everything plane related just so much better. Drag actually means something and you can tune the way your aircraft steers properly. If you're doing planes, get FAR and B9 (for the parts).

When it flamed out at 30,000 I had the throttle wide open at 100%. I'll do it again but start throttling back as I gain altitude, see how high it'll go eh?

Edit: I'm refining the aircraft just now and I got halfway round Kerbin before recalling to make some changes. Come to 20,000 and open it all the way, it gets over mach 5 and I can't hold the altitude down enough to stop it flaming out with an AP round 56,000m. When it hits 36,000 on the way back down I get it straightened up and crack it all open again at 25,000m. Ie skipping round the globe I'll post a link to the craft file when I'm happy with it.

Edited August 24, 2013 by Ratzap

[Ratzap]

Shortly after this was taken the left wing detached and we aborted the test flight. It's getting there though, nicely balanced with the CoM and CoL almost exactly on top of each other. The biggest problem is holding it at a set altitude, it's moving so fast it's only the control surfaces holding it from going orbital.

[Ratzap]

Here we go, I think I nailed the design now. Once round Kerbin at 23,000m passing KSC after 27 minutes 20 seconds. Max speed was on the night side - mach 9.6 - but it went all the way round at full throttle and held mach 9 the whole way.

The ship is here for those who wish to try it, uses B9 and Korda's RTGs (helped balance the CoM/CoL). I recommend you use the spaceplane guidance from MJ as it's rather twitchy. Action group 1 toggles the turbojet, 2 the rams. Use the jet to get above 10,000m and around mach 1 then hit 2, power up to mach 3 or so and switch the jet back off.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/71576136/KSP/Kerbcord.craft

[Jahulath]

Shortly after this was taken the left wing detached and we aborted the test flight. It's getting there though, nicely balanced with the CoM and CoL almost exactly on top of each other. The biggest problem is holding it at a set altitude, it's moving so fast it's only the control surfaces holding it from going orbital.

That looks awesome! I had some trouble with early prototypes with the wings ripping off too hehe, I did some reading and the Blackbird was meant to cruise at like mach4 at 24000 meters so if you scale that to "Kerbal Engineering standards" (moar BOOSTERS!) then there's a solid real world example of performance. Apparently they tried one on the X-15 (holds a record of 107Km altitude) too but it never came to anything because the lfo engine they made was so good, the lfo engine looks cool too, actually designed to go on the back of a plane...

[sidfu]

a download would be nice.

[Ratzap]

I knocked up a pulsejet plane and there's a couple of things.

1) the sound is wrong, pulsejets have a very unique noise. Listen to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jrIpXnMaWI or

.

2) Overheats at 60% throttle. While they do run hot that's probably a bit much. Cut the max power and move the overheat mark up would be my suggestion.

[Jahulath]

I knocked up a pulsejet plane and there's a couple of things.

1) the sound is wrong, pulsejets have a very unique noise. Listen to

or

.

2) Overheats at 60% throttle. While they do run hot that's probably a bit much. Cut the max power and move the overheat mark up would be my suggestion.

Rat, what have you done to me... I hadn't even considered looking at jets on youtube there's hundreds! I agree 100% about the pulsejet sound, they are awesome but I haven't had a look at making custom sounds yet. Now I have the perfect resource I suppose I had better!

For heat, I don't find them too bad but then I have no issue running my engines at near overheat anyways (haven't noticed a reason not to). Looking at the guy in your first link would suggest it's not far off though hehe. I take a look.

I have done a little more research on the subject, I made both engines on a whim with no reference and just the "idea" of a German V1 and the knowledge that RamJets are used on missiles and in the old Blackbird. They look ok but aren't realistic, as both RamJets and PulseJets clearly live up to their nicknames of "flying stovepipes" not just in engineering terms but also in physical appearance! It is fiercely tempting to make actual replicas (all 200 polys of a straight or slightly humped cylinder) and then have a play with the mirror finish dll that is kicking about this site (I saw one I know I did) using up the rest of the graphics overhead for an engine (they have like 2-3k polys along with all the trimmings). The thing would connect via a truss like frame rather than a hard point kind of effect for a touch more authenticity, to keep that nice industrial look and to add a little detail to an otherwise VERY boring (but oh so shiny!) model, what are your thoughts?

[Ratzap]

Sorry Jahulath, I completely forgot to get back to this thread.

Personally I'd love to see what you are suggesting for the pulsejets. I've always had a soft spot for them, so primitive yet so effective and LOUD! My god they're so loud

In the end though it's your time, if you want to invest it it's up to you but you'd have created something more than just another cookie cutter jet engine and that's a thing. Ram jets, particularly hypersonics are more real advanced science. I mean look how many tries the yanks took to get an engine to run for a few seconds at mach 6. Airflow, shape, control systems all have to be absolutely spot on or it just doesn't light up. Plus I have no idea what a ramjet sounds like except that it's unlikely to be anything like a jet whine

[Jahulath]

Well the sound thing is annoying - I don't even know what an .ogg file is but hey I'll get there. I've been messing about with a few designs and think I may have a good one to work with. The idea will be to make the one model and use it for several things via different skins, I have in mind an offworld variant that uses oxidizer and fuel but still requires the presence of intake air, just not oxygenated (because this is logical even if it wouldn't hold up for very long on Titan) and also looking at solid fuel variants, again for offworld use. I know the texture is rough but it's just a first draft.

[Ratzap]

Better than I could do (but then I'm a code monkey). An OGG is a free software compressed sound format, fairly widespread. Wavs would probably work too mind you but they're bigger and less efficient. Check out this guy's mod, it's pre-partmodule so it's not exactly working but it has a nifty sound file

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/sm-pulse-detonation-engines/

[Jahulath]

Well apparently completely rewriting the op and changing the title of the thread because of a complete rebuild is not enough and I have to go through the humiliation of bumping my own thread but I'm rather pleased with the result and keen to share sorry.

[Gristle]

Well apparently completely rewriting the op and changing the title of the thread because of a complete rebuild is not enough and I have to go through the humiliation of bumping my own thread but I'm rather pleased with the result and keen to share sorry.

Very nice looking jets.

Are the updates to monitors backwards compatible with the previous version?

[Ratzap]

Heh, well you will go about releasing things while folk are asleep

I'll try and have a play with them this weekend but fairly busy with other projects.

[Jahulath]

Hi Gristle, I have completely rewritten the configs several times since I first released them and I tend to use the same names but I have an enthusiastic little finger and sometimes things get capitol letters when they shouldN't... A brief look suggests they will be fine but it only takes one alpha numeric character to set your space program back months.

I guarantee nothing! Please, please, backup your save!!!!!

Rat, I look forward to your input

[Ratzap]

I built a quickie jet with the smaller ramjet engine (not the LFO), TWR was fine and it flew ok but I just couldn't get the ramjet to light off properly. Mach 1 - very low power output, Mach 2 - about 46 kN but still not enough to sustain, Mach 2.3 the jets I was using to boost up gave out and 50kN wasn't enough to spool it up.

I'll fiddle around some more when I can.

[Beowolf]

Hi, I suspect your lift is incompatible with Kerbal Joint Reinforcement 1.4.1. Every ship (even the simplest possible 3-part ship) that I add your elevator part to has the joints fail soon as the physics goes active on the pad. Not the elevator's connection, but the launch clamps, engines and tanks all disconnect, and the whole ship falls apart beautifully!

If you can't easily reproduce it then I guessed wrong about which mod. If so, let me know and I'll do some more in-depth troubleshooting from here.

[Jahulath]

Hi Beowolf, id be pretty surprised if the elevator was causing your issue as it is just a Damned robotics powered model. I suggest that you use the latest magic smoke industries plugin, that may help? Other than that all I can say is that the config is not updated for .22 so maybe we need to compare the config to those in the MSI pack... I'll have a faff with it after work :-)