Realistic F-22 Raptor Replica

[Pds314]

I present to you an accurate in-game version of the Lockheed-Martin F-22 Raptor.

EDIT: This is a download link _________________________/\

Made with FAR+B9+P-wings, to spec.

That is to say, It has very accurate weight, accurate USEFUL fuel load, accurate thrust (when correctly throttled down) and roughly accurate dimensions and control surface placement. It uses the B9 F119 "replica" for engines, but they default to being throttled back to 65% so that it has a more realistic amount of thrust sans afterburner. They are also set to have thrust vectoring turned OFF at launch to avoid potentially fatal jiggle of the rear landing gears.

One thing that I've found it that it has fairly unrealistic intakes. Even though the ones I used are smaller than in real life, at service ceiling with 58% thrust (because of the over-aggressive curving far from sea level, I find that it is most realistic to set the thrust on the engines to 58 without afterburner, 83 with when at altitude, and 65/100 when ASL.) and moving at mach 1.8 (top speed and real top speed without engaging afterburners), It still pulls in around 600%-700% the required amount of air. Suggesting it should be able to operate well above the equivalent 12.5 km (5/8*20km) that it works at. It would appear that if the real thing is as efficient as B9 makes DSI out to be, it should be able to fly much higher.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

I will note that the landing there is legitimate and took place at night with no lights on the first try, but I also found that if you land at high speed, or with too much pressure on the front gear, the plane tends to fishtail and explode.

Also, take-off does not mean "Pull upward until you escape the ground." The control surfaces are set to very high pitch and if you engage the thrust vectoring on the engines before taking off, both of these forces will contribute to your back landing gears being crushed out of the way and the plane likely exploding. This didn't happen to B9 landing gears as much before 0.23, but now it is a very common issue, such that one of my previous hypersonic airliners/SSTOs that could transport 146 Kerbals to LKO now transports 146 Kerbals to a fiery death at the end of the runway.

Anyhow, I tested it to see what sort of G-load I could get out of it. It seems to be capable of +10.5/-4.5 G under exceptional circumstances such as stooping and then pulling up quickly, but normal maneuvers can only briefly get past +6 up to +9. (Note that this may not be true for high-altitude stalls.)

Speaking of stalls.... I tried stalling it several times, I once managed to even get it into a flat spin, but within a few seconds, I could easily escape from said spin and continue flying normally.

Also, kind of funny story, I flew it past the VAB and pulled up at the SPH, It bounced off the top at high speed (200+ m/s) and then hit the tower, all but an intake and the cockpit survived. I quickly used the torque to aim the intake to hit first, and managed to survive the fall and high-speed impact. Never mind blowing a $150,000,000 Stealth fighter to smithereens, I saved a Kerbal!

So yeah, extremely realistic functional F-22 replica that is extremely lucky with its SPH crashes.

P.S. This is a good demo of the fact that real planes have much lower TWRs than Kerbal ones. I've seen many subsonic Kerbal Airliners with a better TWR than this state-of-the-art fighter.

It also exemplifies that Kerbal craft are lighter than real ones, with over 11 tonnes of weight intended to do nothing but make it more realistic. (don't worry, the weights are really streamlined and dense and aerodynamic to stop adverse performance effects).

I'm also open to constructive criticism and tips on this.

Again, in order to use it as if in combat with full afterburner, set the throttle to 100 ASL or 83 at 12.5 km. Otherwise, keep it at 65 ASL or 58 at 12.5 km. Oh, and don't forget. This thing wasn't designed for KSP, but it works well in FAR. It is untested and probably not very effective in stock.

Edited January 28, 2014 by Pds314

[Pds314]

Wow, I like how it can be reinforced to high heck and still be 57 parts with P-wings.

[Deathsoul097]

This is awesome, though with those intakes it looks more like an F-35 with the engines of an F-22.

[eorin]

Imho the intakes are wrong placed. Nothing to say on the wings, but the front looks different than a f22

[Pds314]

Yeah, I went with the intakes that are what it has instead of what it looks like it has. KSP intakes are waaaaayyy too small.

[Trollkowski]

**EDIT** really nice one.

Edited January 28, 2014 by Trollkowski

[Pds314]

Tried messing with intakes and moving things around. Not sure it is much of an improvement.

This configuration allows for realistic angles from above, but not from the front.

This configuration is highly cluttered, and allows semi-realistic placement of the intakes, but they are angled weirdly upward.

In-flight at night over the SPH. I should warn you that one of my changes made it more unstable during pitch-up.

What KSP needs is some kind of procedural intakes mod that lets you modify several basic shapes into intakes of your own design and then calculates Intake Area and efficiency curves based on that. Squeezing these on was no small problem. It took perhaps 30 minutes just to move things around so that they could even sort of fit right.

>Download<

Hmm... Maybe I could talk to the person who writes P-wings about how one could do something like that. I think a rescalable parallelogram with a stretchable tail and a moveable tip would be sufficiently pliable to make pretty much any fighter intake in the last 50 years and really any sane design for such an intake.

And maybe a few other types of intake, all radial though, I don't really see why anyone would need procedural intakes just to stack on the end of a tube. (Maybe for Mk2 or Mk3 or S2 fuselages...)

Edited January 28, 2014 by Pds314

[Pds314]

**EDIT** really nice one.

The rear wings are actually two wings and an allmoving wing each. 1 for the pylon, 1 for the non-mobile part, and one forward-swept at the back allmoving part.

[i like turtles]

Actually, the picture shows the height it can achieve with INFINITE FUEL cheat on. That gives the intakes more air. Technically, it cannot reach 12km without cheats. Also, Those air intakes look more like an F-35's than a F-22's. Put more work into it!

[i like turtles]

BTW to make the landing gear be more resistant to high landing speeds, hide the landing gear like mareczex333's STOCK f22. http://youtu.be/9_bMnuHAvM4

[Mareczex333]

Actually, the picture shows the height it can achieve with INFINITE FUEL cheat on. That gives the intakes more air

With infinite fuel cheat, you don't need air intakes. Your engines will work even at 200km altitude.

BTW to make the landing gear be more resistant to high landing speeds, hide the landing gear like mareczex333's STOCK f22. http://youtu.be/9_bMnuHAvM4

Well.. I don't think that will make them more resistant, but I'm not sure

By the way Pds314, you should try to make custom air intake shape like me, but with p-wings mod:

Javascript is disabled. View full album

I don't say that mine are more accurate than yours, but you can make them better look

[ArcticX9]

Actually, the picture shows the height it can achieve with INFINITE FUEL cheat on. That gives the intakes more air. Technically, it cannot reach 12km without cheats. Also, Those air intakes look more like an F-35's than a F-22's. Put more work into it!

I don't think you need to use infinite fuel to have 0.33 intake air at 12 kilometers. It's not really that high, I've been able to do it myself. I also believe that he's put tons of work into it and came up with something reasonable for the limitations provided by the game.

The main issue I see with the intakes not looking correct is that the stock in-line cockpit isn't quite large enough for the B9 intakes. Overall, great work!