Plane vs plane! (frak-1 vs 61b-legisy)

[Spartwo]

SPEED: That is nearly machingbird territory.

CEILING: It can easily sustain level flight up to 40+ km. 4.5/5

MANEUVERABILITY: While it is agile enough to literally fly straight backwards and can right itself from a stall thanks to gratuitous SAS-torque, its center of mass is far enough back to stop it from being very precisely controllable. 3/5

NOOB-FRIENDLINESS: The fuel is distributed such that the central engine burns out VERY early compared to the other two. 2/5

-It is machingbird territory.

-Never got it that high myself.(apart from orbital hops)

-I always end up with back-heavy planes somehow.

-Must have been an old .craft

These might actually get me to the top of the maching-board()

Edited December 3, 2013 by Spartwo

[inigma]

Can u review the SSI Ion? See my sig for craft.

[Spartwo]

Tested the Arrow in FAR.

It has 50% less wing area of a VL-110EA, but it has 35% more mass.

Wait...FAR.It's quite a dense craft,double/triple wings,3 tanks fitted into the width of 2.

EDIT:I fixed a few things 2 toggles torque.

Edited December 3, 2013 by Spartwo

[Pds314]

Can u review the SSI Ion? See my sig for craft.

You don't have a sig. I wonder how well an Ion works in FAR???

OKAY, what i've discovered is that the SSI Ion works fine as a plane, but unless I'm doing something wrong, can't get to orbit (in FAR anyway).

Edited December 3, 2013 by Pds314

[inigma]

You don't have a sig. I wonder how well an Ion works in FAR???

OKAY, what i've discovered is that the SSI Ion works fine as a plane, but unless I'm doing something wrong, can't get to orbit (in FAR anyway).

I've not tested it in FAR. Does this challenge have to be FAR compatible?

[Pds314]

I've not tested it in FAR. Does this challenge have to be FAR compatible?

No. But I have FAR installed.

[Tidus Klein]

Bump to show new location

[Khobai]

Does anyone have any tips for making a plane more maneuverable? Does it have to do with wingspan?

[Pds314]

Does anyone have any tips for making a plane more maneuverable? Does it have to do with wingspan?

Maneuverability tips:

Putting the center of lift and/or drag (not shown) way at the back of the plane will make it not very maneuverable.

A control surface near the center of mass or drag will do very little. Instead, do as you would with RCS on rockets, e.g. Roll control is at wingtips or at least somewhere on the wings, Pitch control is at the front or back, and yaw control is at the front or back as well.

Putting a bunch of mass or drag at the wingtips or back or heaven forbid the front is a bad idea. Mass will cause the rotation to start slowly and end slowly, drag will cause the terminal velocity of rotation to be low.

Big things can get pretty massive. They also have mass on outriggers. In general, if you double the scale of a plane it will have 4x the drag area, 4x the lift area, 8x the mass, and 16x the moment of inertia. Realistically, this would mean 4x the intake area, but many people might devote 8x the intake area. Assuming it also has 8x the engine power, this yields 40% more top speed at a given altitude with an excess of intake air. Of course, this assumes constant thrust, which is only true of rockets. Anyhow, what this means is that if spaceplane A is an N times scaled up version of spaceplane B, then spaceplane A will take N times longer to get up to a given rotation rate, but will have a maximum rotation rate sqrt(N) times higher (because it is moving sqrt(N) times faster.).

In KSP stock aerodynamics, big planes are even worse because drag is proportional to mass. This means a plane twice as big is 4x slower at accelerating in rotation and has an equal maximum rotation rate.

If possible, put your center of mass just ahead of your center of lift.

Faster and more maneuverable go hand-in-hand. Remember that at low altitude turning radius is irrelevant to speed, so if you have a similar aircraft but with twice the thrust, it will take 30% less time and the same distance to turn.

Tails create a lot of rotational drag. Having a mega-long tail means you will be very stable in pitch and yaw, but will have trouble turning in those directions. Again, look at my VL-110, The "tail" is full of light control surfaces, the heaviest thing there is 4 R 48-7S rockets each weighing 100 Kg, and that is only on the SSTO (130x130 km) Spaceplane variant. On the atmospheric or suborbital varaints, there are zero or two of them. Also note that the "tail" is only 5 meters from the center of mass. This helps dramatically with not generating too much drag. Compare this to the standard pile of wings, fuel-tanks, big rockets, turbojets, and everything else people put back there (SAS? RCS fuel? Landing gears?).

Having the center-of-drag be far behind the center of mass at high angles of attack will mean that you can't turn quickly because you won't be able to get into a high angle of attack.

Vectored engines, SAS, RCS, etc are all speed-independent in terms of rotation power, whereas control surfaces scale in proportion to the square of the speed. Therefore, adding SAS to a hypersonic plane will have little effect.

A single 1x1 meter canard at a reasonable AOA can easily generate between 30-300 Kilonewtons of force in FAR, and probably more in stock. Think about it, that is a TWR of somewhere between 75 and 750, by comparison, even the highest-TWR stock engines have a TWR of 25 or 30 (The mainsail and 48-7S, respectively). Also, despite this, canards have no fuel requirement. The only disadvantage is that you can't shouldn't are a monster if you use them to propel you forward.

[celem]

Wasn't really paying attention and so haven't broken down my comparison into the categories suggested in the OP, so I may miss something.

That said, I downloaded the Legisy (have had the FRAK .craft for some time) and flew both for a bit to get a feel for the new build.

No FAR installed.

I vastly prefer the Legisy, even though I've been in love with the FRAK since I got it.

It was considerably faster than the FRAK (the higher ceiling helping here to get into really thin air), I did have a few issues getting it off the deck, mainly over-rotation on lift-off leading to a cobra-style rear, stall and back-flip out. This was almost certainly pilot error and over-aggressive AoA. After a few launches I was able to get it flying quite happily. I do still feel the FRAK was easier to lift, though this may be in part because I am already familiar with it's handling, which bias' that test a little.

Looks: I vastly prefer the look of the Legisy, the FRAK's large deltoid arrow-head shape has always bugged me a little, feeling that it should be more slender and stream-lined looking. That said, I absolutely hate ramscoops on the nose of my aircraft as I find it hard to believe that inakeAir can be easily routed through the cockpit and back toward the engines. I kept the Legisy .craft and it will enter service in my space-program, though I intend to drop that nose scoop for a docking port and make a few tweaks to turn it into a fully-fledged spaceplane. My test-pilots are trembling as I write, as the thing is in the hanger being reverse-engineered and I have a habit of making 'tiny' changes that completely break designs.

[Pds314]

My test-pilots are trembling as I write, as the thing is in the hanger being reverse-engineered and I have a habit of making 'tiny' changes that completely break designs.

Ah yes, there is a spot I can fit another engine, or two, or six...

[Pds314]

Would be nice, with all of these spaceplane fighters to have a spaceplane carrier. That is to say, a craft weighing several hundred tonnes that goes into orbit with oodles of spare rocket fuel and some spare jet fuel as well.

Of course, bigger spaceplanes only work better in FAR. In stock, they have just as much drag/mass as ordinary ones.

The fighters would then dock to the underside of the carrier and have fuel transferred to them, after which, they would be capable of striking and then returning to orbit.

The carrier could also have guided missiles for destroying enemy spacecraft and stations, or it could have nuclear and/or ion engines allowing it to attack laythe. If needed, the carrier itself could deorbit, land, refuel, and then use its FAR-powered scale-efficiency to bring most of its jet and rocket fuel back into orbit.

Let's see, if I modded my VL-330B, a B9-based FAR 146-Kerbal space-liner to have only 14 Kerbals (maybe we need replacement pilots or something) and be filled with fuel and 2 nuke-engines instead, I think I could get an extra 7360 units of fuel/oxidizer onboard in the same mass. Considering the thing has over 500 m/s Delta-V after orbit anyway, and that by orbit, it will only weigh around 124 tonnes instead of 144, I could pretty easily get 3.8 km/s post-orbital Delta-V If I switched to the nukes immediately after reaching orbit on SABRE-power. Granted, Stock parts don't scale up quite as well, especially for giant load-bearing delta-wings and the Stock equivalent of a 7-tonne SABRE M engine and precooler is 4 1.2 tonne turbo-jets and 17 0.5 tonne LV-909 engines. This combination weighs roughly 13.3 tonnes, making it take up an additional 10 tonnes on the craft. If fuel were appropriately removed, the craft would lose around 12 tonnes in fuel, lowering Delta-V post-orbit down to around 3.3 km/s. Even still, that is not bad for an SSTO with a Kerbal-to-weight ratio of 1/10.

[Tidus Klein]

Would be nice, with all of these spaceplane fighters to have a spaceplane carrier. That is to say, a craft weighing several hundred tonnes that goes into orbit with oodles of spare rocket fuel and some spare jet fuel as well.

Of course, bigger spaceplanes only work better in FAR. In stock, they have just as much drag/mass as ordinary ones.

The fighters would then dock to the underside of the carrier and have fuel transferred to them, after which, they would be capable of striking and then returning to orbit.

The carrier could also have guided missiles for destroying enemy spacecraft and stations, or it could have nuclear and/or ion engines allowing it to attack laythe. If needed, the carrier itself could deorbit, land, refuel, and then use its FAR-powered scale-efficiency to bring most of its jet and rocket fuel back into orbit.

Let's see, if I modded my VL-330B, a B9-based FAR 146-Kerbal space-liner to have only 14 Kerbals (maybe we need replacement pilots or something) and be filled with fuel and 2 nuke-engines instead, I think I could get an extra 7360 units of fuel/oxidizer onboard in the same mass. Considering the thing has over 500 m/s Delta-V after orbit anyway, and that by orbit, it will only weigh around 124 tonnes instead of 144, I could pretty easily get 3.8 km/s post-orbital Delta-V If I switched to the nukes immediately after reaching orbit on SABRE-power. Granted, Stock parts don't scale up quite as well, especially for giant load-bearing delta-wings and the Stock equivalent of a 7-tonne SABRE M engine and precooler is 4 1.2 tonne turbo-jets and 17 0.5 tonne LV-909 engines. This combination weighs roughly 13.3 tonnes, making it take up an additional 10 tonnes on the craft. If fuel were appropriately removed, the craft would lose around 12 tonnes in fuel, lowering Delta-V post-orbit down to around 3.3 km/s. Even still, that is not bad for an SSTO with a Kerbal-to-weight ratio of 1/10.

I was actually working on some thing quit similar but with rovers and still kinda am.

Sadly though the new b9 update broke the sabers. The overheat like crazy now.

Also here is a hint don't use the precoolers they are useless do like I do and use a jet fuel s2 body instead. Ksp doesn't use heat sinks so the coolers won't work, but it does transfer heat to attached parts so put as meany parts as you can on the saber with out it being wonky. That should help with overheat.

Edited December 5, 2013 by Tidus Klein

[Spartwo]

Like this?

[Tidus Klein]

Side note

What would every one think if I made Plane VS Plane a series and tested all types of different plane types?

Think BSC but with player made craft?

Ex: Plane VS Plane (heavy lifters)/(VTOL's)/ (long range SSTOS)

Any thoughts?

[zekes]

You all must remember that the FRAK-1 was built in 18.4.