Anyone built a stock boat?

[annikk.exe]

Hello,

I was a bit disillusioned at how quickly my boat thread got buried in this extremely busy forum. I had somewhat been hoping to exchange design tips with other experienced builders. That didn't really happen... ergo, this thread.

I have questions:

Have you built a boat out of stock parts?

Did it work?

How did you get it into the water?

What is the top speed and handling like?

How long does the fuel supply last?

What guiding principles do you follow for building a boat?

Please, KSP community... share with me your knowledge and screenshots, such that I might improve my own crafts.. :>

[neXus74 100]

SHOGUN

[annikk.exe]

Wow, that's awesome! :>

Able to answer above questions about it? :>

[neXus74 100]

it is a replica, so the boat is bad.

Maximum speed is about 20 m / s

went to the water on the chassis.

[annikk.exe]

Still very impressive. It's clearly meant to be a replica/work of art rather than a form-follows-function speedboat. :>

[wasmic]

SHOGUN

Because Red Alert 3. One of the best C&C games ever.

[panzerknoef]

If i build boats, i usually make them float on air intakes. This give me a top speed of around 120m/s with a good structure

They don't even barely look as awesome as that guys boat though! They work on jet engines and I drive them into the water on wheels. I hope this awnsers your questions, got some more, feel free to ask (i'm pretty much a boat newbie though)

[Mareczex333]

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It's not complete yet

Edited December 1, 2013 by Mareczex333

[xoknight]

Are those drogue chutes you're using? Because I would expect the plane to be ripped apart if they had normal chutes.

[Mareczex333]

It's 2x Mk2-R something. I don't fly 200 m/s then using I'm using it at about 60m/s

Plane would rip apart if i would attach them to wings or something

[zekes]

I've got a stylish Cargo Boat... with the help of kerbpaint plugin.

[The Fleet Master]

Two Patrol boats and a Midway class Destroyer.

The top speed on the PT boats is 30 m/s but you have to turn below 15 or risk rolling.

The top speed on the Destroyer is 28 m/s You can turn at full speed with that boat.

All of my boats are Hydro foils and have a range of 20-50 km

[Spartwo]

Did I hit a gold mine?,I got up to 150m/s.

[koshelenkovv]

Back in 0.17 times, before great forum wipe, there was challenge 'Boat race to the South Pole'.

Back then there was no intakes, girders and cubic struts.

Now anyone can just go and build a boat/rover combo which is able to reach South Pole in 3 hours. It's became trivial.

> Have you built a boat out of stock parts?

yes

> Did it work?

yes

> How did you get it into the water?

I have built a cage out of structural fuselages around it and just rolled into water very slowly. There was no rover wheels, so I've used jets to move it.

After ship was delivered in water, cage was decoupled and fell apart in several parts.

> What is the top speed and handling like?

Top speed was about 200 m/s, but at this speed fuel burns too fast. Practical speed which allowed to reach south ice cap was slightly above 100 m/s.

It was impossible to turn safely by canards at speeds over 15 m/s. It was possible to turn it by disabling/enabling jet engine on either side of it. It was dangerous to turn at over 30 m/s.

> How long does the fuel supply last?

At about 100 m/s three XL-3200 (biggest grey tanks) was just enough to reach ice cap from equator.

Jet engine fuel consumption was totally different back then - jets ate much more fuel (1 L/s at full thrust), but tanks had only fuel in them.

> What guiding principles do you follow for building a boat?

I used swept wings with tail fins and canards on them. Four swept wings, submerged in water at some angle and four tail fins on the tip of each swept wing. When fuel get used up, ship emerges somewhat and one tail fin destroyed. This cause that side of ship to submerge somewhat and opposite side to emerge and symmetrical tail fin is destroyed too. It's some kind of self-balanced system. At the end of travel 8 tail fins and 4 canards were destroyed.

You do not need it now - just use air intakes instead of underwater winglets.

Also, at this speeds ship shaking pretty much from SAS modules and canards, so I placed all 3 fuel tanks and rover in the middle of structural fuselages beam, suspended on large 2m-1m adapters. The rest of the ship was strutted firmly. In result, all the frame, behaving as one piece, was shaking like mad around the core which stayed in place because of its high inertia. Such way ship was very stable and deviated off course only 2-3 degrees per 300 km.

Edited December 1, 2013 by koshelenkovv

[RocketPilot573]

I have an exploration boat that can go 100 m/s. It's fairly useful at my Laythe Base due to the fact that it's reliable (it won't disintegrate after 5 minutes).

Oh, and there's this battleship...

[Ojimak]

Back in 0.18.2, I made modular Laythe base components, all on winglet hydrofoils. As I had not mastered precision landings, I created fast and efficient tugs that could bring modules together from anywhere on Laythe, if necessary. Their max speeds without payloads were around 180 m/s and with payloads, 60 m/s.

Pictures:

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Yes I built boats.

Yes they worked.

They entered the water via parachute drop when on Laythe, and via jet pro pulsed frame during testing on Kerbin.

See above for top speeds. Handling was fairly excellent, turns under 60 m/s were usually safe.

The fuel supply lasted fairly long, even longer with the refueling modules.

More recently, I made a small proof of concept aircraft carrier to land small VTOLs on that was parachute dropped in the water by a large VTOL. It's max speed was around 70 m/s without VTOLs.

-Ojimak

[Goodle...]

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It's not complete yet

SO OBSOLETE. (jk) good job though. it does not look Aircraft carrier in any angle

[Assault Bunny]

Can someone explain the intake thing? Do radial air intakes make things float better?

[Ojimak]

Can someone explain the intake thing? Do radial air intakes make things float better?

Air intakes are very buoyant and have low drag when closed, making them ideal for use as hydrofoil foils.

-Ojimak

I don't use them though, simply because they look cheaty and ugly, IMO.

[Rune]

I have tried my hand at carrier operations, in the past:

The trouble is, docking two ships above water tends to end up with less than optimal results:

KSP doesn't like two objects occupying the same space. Anyhow, the carrier itself steamed at about 30m/s with just the one jet, and I got her into the water (as I do with all boats) with aircraft landing gear that I later decoupled

Rune. I wonder if you can do a non-exploding water docking with KAS...