totm june 2018 Work-in-Progress [WIP] Design Thread

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

After modifying the descent stage of my lander to accommodate the new leg design, I found that it was still having some problems. But now I've finally figured out what's been causing my problems all along. Struts (and possibly fuel lines) apparently have a collision mesh on their root end. Who knew? So either I'm going to have to figure out a way to turn around the struts on my leg (not likely since they need something for the other end to attach to anyways), or I need to adjust them so they don't contact the other struts or sides of the descent stage (will probably compromise looks somewhat, ah well).

Anyways, I took a bit of a break from that to do some work on a new variant of my E-50, the E-50B. Changes include a vertically aligned rotor system, and a pair of wheesley forward motion jets. It has demonstrated a cruise speed of 120m/s, which is more than twice that of the E-50A, allowing transit times to the island of about 7&1/2 minutes.

However, it is currently proving to be no more reliable than my Helene prototype (speaking of which, I'm going to remove that from KerbalX, it's a deathtrap, and I don't have any idea how to fix it). At certain speeds, various factors seem to result in pitch instability, or at least make it prone to pilot induced oscillations. This, combined with the fact that the rotors will self destruct when subjected to hard maneuvers, means it is often just one mistake away from falling out of the sky. There's also a weird roll-right tendency noticeable at high speed, and hard to counteract at high power (wet mode). I'm a bit perplexed, as the coaxial rotor system should cancel out any disymmetry of lift. My current hypothesis is that the draggier multiple-part turbine of the upper, counterclockwise spinning rotor results in it spinning slightly slower.

 

Anyways, @klond the airbrake actuator reminded me that, while I haven't tested it yet, I have a concept in my head that might solve the problem of blade pitch on stock tilt-rotors. The idea is to attach the blades to the hub using some kind of elastomeric twist bearing (for KSP just some kind of part arrangement that has some give in the joints when subjected to torsion), with the blades being attached so that their default position is cruise pitch. The blade is set so that most of it kind of trails behind the bearing a bit. Like this:   ___/||||||||||||||||||||||||||/

When trying to hover, the forces on the blade will be enough to twist the bearing so the pitch decreases to 5 degrees or so.

As speed increases, the forces on the blade decrease and the blades move back towards their default position.

This would probably only be viable on large prop-rotors though

Edited March 14, 2017 by EpicSpaceTroll139
missing period + OCD

[9t3ndo]

Working on a new stock ion fuel section. Can power up to 12 ion engines without solarpanels.

[Yukon0009]

Figured out how to build a Dragon engine nacelle that looks like the original- much better than my old one and lighter to boot

[Castille7]

 

For those casual Fly Boys out there!

Spoiler

 

Edited March 16, 2017 by Castille7

[Gman_builder]

On 3/13/2017 at 8:31 PM, Servo said:

Let's play the "Name which airplane I'm recreating next game!"

Here's your first hint:

 

Kinda poor ninja edit: @EpicSpaceTroll139 wins, before I could even finish formatting my post right.

Here's how it works:

 

Its a XB-70 Valkyrie. 

A Classic

[seiryu]

hey! I made fullstock analogclock!

Well, it was too quick･･･

[Castille7]

2 hours ago, seiryu said:

hey! I made fullstock analogclock!

Well, it was too quick･･･

Maybe if I look at it again tomorrow then I will believe what I am seeing  .....Amazing!

[Majorjim!]

2 hours ago, seiryu said:

hey! I made fullstock analogclock!

Well, it was too quick･･･

Absolutely stunning work! It is so smooth!

 You guys are showing that thermo hinges are the most versatile mechanism in KSP by a LONG way! You make me so proud!

*Sheds a tear of joy

Oh, and this deserves its own thread!!

 

Edited March 16, 2017 by Majorjim!

[Castille7]

The Camelback Bridge Project
Update: 03.16.17

Well now we are back at it again, I do love this bridge building stuff so the work continues. My hopes are this bridge will hold up to the reentry from a saved game, we'll see! if not it's all a bunch of fun and learning at the same time.

Right now I am towing 9 sections of Bridge with the Ship Seahorse, it's making about 18 m/s, in the real world this wouldn't be bad for this amount of load being in tow.

The reason for the towing, I had some twisting when pushing more than about 5 sections of Bridge from what I remember. Also I lost some previous game saves so we are back en-route with some time saving......I think.

My first mission was to design a towing system of some kind, you will see this in a future video, this worked out well after a few tweaks, the first trip I found the tow bars were too low.  

During this towing process it was like cat and mouse trying to connect the two long sections of Bridge together so I used my new helpful Craft Versatile. I was planning to use this Craft just to help lineup the two long sections of Bridge.....yea right! The sections were not lining up, for some reason (Maybe when I hit the two sections together kinda hard....) I lost a docking port and the couplers were not even. Now another fun hurdle to jump. I needed a way to lift the Bridge section slightly so the sections would connect. First time was a charm, I designed a jack on the bow of the craft to lift the section and whoa la! it worked, something is going right.... Well it was, just now while making this post something strange was going on, I was about to hit land so I started changing course and when I hit AG3 I must have tapped AG2 at the same time, AG2 is reverse!! so my tow and ship were jack knifed just now!!  Someone give me a break will ya!.

Well sorry for so much filling in on the project, I am guessing some of you are ok with it? Here are some recent photos for this update.

Looks pretty cool with the smoke stacks blowing

Spoiler

 

Somehow I seem to keep getting the Night Shift!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 16, 2017 by Castille7

[ghostbuzzer7]

Hawker Hunter Progress:

[seiryu]

well, I made a clock few days ago.

So,I made a fullstock elevator for kerbals for next project!

 

[Columbia]

So, uh, I haven't posted here in a long time..

 

I made this video back in October and pretty much forgot to post it, but once my airliners are done I'll have to start revamping the thread (with this included in it.)

I revamped my DC-8, mostly focusing in the wings and engines. I'm just happy it can at least be distinguished from a B707.

I did a few changes on the Boeing B777, most of which involved making the wings not rip, though some focus was placed into the wingtip rakes and making the tail thinner.

Then the A320 was made to work, though it kinda looks like an A319. Puny, isn't it..

And the B727 was also revamped. There's something about it, though, that doesn't make it look right..

 

And to top it off.. a lagfest?

 

 

 

 

 

[Castille7]

5 hours ago, Columbia said:

So, uh, I haven't posted here in a long time..

I made this video back in October and pretty much forgot to post it, but once my airliners are done I'll have to start revamping the thread (with this included in it.)

(Snip! Snip!)

That's a lot of impressive work on the craft and video, love that shot of the DC-8

[Azimech]

Before we had RUD, we had SMEF: Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure.

Starship Titanic. The first ever space liner with the "infinite improbability drive" (IID). Right at the start of her maiden voyage she sent out an SOS and promptly vanished. The engineers were so busy with making failures as improbable as possible, the engine actually used the high improbability factor as fuel, creating a failure in the process.

Moments later the gigantic ship crash landed on top of your house ... then the game begins.

Building this beauty in stock is a challenge. Especially because it's highly improbable kerbals are able to build an IID. You need a cup of very hot tea and we all know kerbals don't drink tea.

Current design in the SPH has a length of ~80 meters which makes it probably a quarter of the "original length", no blueprints exist so it's all eyeballing. More info will follow. Soonish.

 

[SaturnianBlue]

I messed with a bizarre creation, a long range bomber propeller powered aircraft capable of reaching fighter speeds (~180 M/s) and capable of carrying at least 4,500 kg of bombs. I basically messed with the stock Albatross and heavily modified it to essentially be a very oversized P-38. 

Whether this unconventional design would actually be plausible in real life, I'm not sure.

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

17 hours ago, Columbia said:

<snip>

And the B727 was also revamped. There's something about it, though, that doesn't make it look right..

<snip>

And to top it off.. a lagfest?

<snip>

Nice work, glad to see you back

 

Perhaps on the 727 it's the tail? The tail taper and all 3 engines should be pretty close to the vertical centerline of the fuselage.

Spoiler

As for the lag fest, any estimates on the number of parts in range there? Reminds me of when I parked all of the airliners I had at the time (totaling a little over 1850 parts) in front of the KSC for a photoshoot. It was laggy as [REDACTED]. I can't find original one, but I did find a picture of me playing "airplane bowling" afterwards with them.

Spoiler

 

Anyways, I think I need to completely redesign the legs mechanism on my LM... Again... Ugh...*

Been working on the CSM in the meantime

 

*If anyone else with KSP mechanical contraption experience thinks s/he could make something like this work, feel free to PM me, I'd be happy to share the craft and give due credit on release. -MajorJim! is currently doing this. Thanks MajorJim!

Edited March 19, 2017 by EpicSpaceTroll139

[klond]

19 hours ago, seiryu said:

So,I made a fullstock elevator for kerbals for next project!

 

 Nice chain!

 I like that the elevator cab looks realistic and you don't have to lift the whole motor mechanism, unlike my lift (shameless plug) with it's linear gear.  Much more realistic.  Easy to be jealous.

 I can easily see the wheels-on-ibeam thing made horizontal for a monorail or cablecar or such.

 

[Foxster]

On 14/03/2017 at 11:59 PM, 9t3ndo said:

Working on a new stock ion fuel section. Can power up to 12 ion engines without solarpanels.

I like that. 

Don't you have a lot of LF+O though?

I make it you'd need 5250 x 2 x 0.02 = 210 LFO ... or just 8 x ROUND-8 tanks.

 

[Jefzor]

Still working on my collection of semi-realistic Military jet replica's. 

 

MIG-21: (quite happy with how the cockpit turned out)

 

Mirage 2000:

 

F-15:

 

SU-27

 

SU-25 (hardest one to recreate, still not completely happy with it):

Edited March 20, 2017 by Jefzor

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

On 3/18/2017 at 6:19 PM, klond said:

I can easily see the wheels-on-ibeam thing made horizontal for a monorail or cablecar or such.

Roller coasters and/or rocket sleds anyone?

[Castille7]

8 minutes ago, EpicSpaceTroll139 said:

Roller coasters and/or rocket sleds anyone?

I've had a Roller Coaster in the works for a while and it's still on the back burner!

[Servo]

I've been working on a few projects in addition to my Jet-of-the-day collaboration (which is less than a month from being complete, it feels like last week that I started it).

This is the most successful screenshot to come out of my turboshaft explorations. I've been playing around with extremely small engines a la @klond, but most of my designs have been too underpowered to get off the ground for long. This particular design uses four junos spinning a battery via thermo hinges. It spins up just fine, but when I increase the angle on the blades, it can't keep up. As you see here, it jumps off the ground just fine, but then it drags down and lands. My best jump was 22 meters, but most were sub-10m. Any tips for increasing the power of these engines, or does it all lie in minimizing the mass of the rest of the craft?

And, as expected, some military jet replications that I've been working on.

There's something to be said about elegance in simplicity. The Prowler (top one) is less than 50 parts, while the F-16 is only 39. Both are a bit below 1:1, but that's expected when doing kerbal-scale replicas. Not everything can be like my F-14, which is an upside (these actually fly reasonably well). Which reminds me, I have a sub-30 part F-86 that I showed off a few weeks ago that I never put up for download if you guys are interested.

[Columbia]

On 3/19/2017 at 5:56 AM, EpicSpaceTroll139 said:

Nice work, glad to see you back

 

Perhaps on the 727 it's the tail? The tail taper and all 3 engines should be pretty close to the vertical centerline of the fuselage.

  Hide contents

As for the lag fest, any estimates on the number of parts in range there? Reminds me of when I parked all of the airliners I had at the time (totaling a little over 1850 parts) in front of the KSC for a photoshoot. It was laggy as [REDACTED]. I can't find original one, but I did find a picture of me playing "airplane bowling" afterwards with them.

  Hide contents

 

Anyways, I think I need to completely redesign the legs mechanism on my LM... Again... Ugh...*

Been working on the CSM in the meantime

 

*If anyone else with KSP mechanical contraption experience thinks s/he could make something like this work, feel free to PM me, I'd be happy to share the craft and give due credit on release. -MajorJim! is currently doing this. Thanks MajorJim!

Yeah, the tail is positioned wrongly, and the degree of sweep is much higher than what I portrayed. I have a feeling, though, that the Mk3 Cockpit may also play a part - It barely resembles a 727's nose. And God would I want to do bowling with the aircraft I have now too.. 

The B747 is 394 parts, B777 is 147, A330 is 198, 757's 159, A380's 259, MD-80's 123, and B767 is 137. That totals to.. 1417 parts. Kind of a far cry from yours!

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

18 hours ago, Servo said:

<snip>

This is the most successful screenshot to come out of my turboshaft explorations. I've been playing around with extremely small engines a la @klond, but most of my designs have been too underpowered to get off the ground for long. This particular design uses four junos spinning a battery via thermo hinges. It spins up just fine, but when I increase the angle on the blades, it can't keep up. As you see here, it jumps off the ground just fine, but then it drags down and lands. My best jump was 22 meters, but most were sub-10m. Any tips for increasing the power of these engines, or does it all lie in minimizing the mass of the rest of the craft?

<snip>

What kind of blade angles are you using for your helis? I've gotten the best results from angles of 5 deg, sometimes less. Beyond that the blades start to stall.

 

Anyways, I've been working on the S-IVB stage for my Saturn V. Annoyingly the J-2 engine was about halfway in-between the size of a Mainsail and a Rhino, so neither of those looked right. 

I was able to get the shape and size right with a fairing, but gosh the white engine bell looks awful. 

[pTrevTrevs]

18 hours ago, Servo said:

Hey, it's the Prowler! That plane is so useful to me in Wargame.