[Stock Helicopters & Turboprops] Non DLC Will Always Be More Fun!

[Azimech]

This is exactly why I don't like electric motors in KSP: I adapted the Chakora v3 to an electric version. In the shaft I embedded 20 RTG's and eight 2.5m SAS modules. It's slower but doesn't have a drop off in power with altitude like the blowers have. Infinite range and no penalty (the RTG's don't even heat up). You want more power and speed? Just add more SAS modules, simple as that.

Electric motors in KSP are more the realm of science fiction, real world problems aren't there.

[Azimech]

In my sudden quest to fly around Kerbin I modified Chakora v3 to be a long distance runner.

After 650km I was busy in the kitchen and the autopilot overrevved the engine. Turbine damaged: lost 3 out of 8 blades, resulting in a horribly unbalanced engine and huge loss of power. So anyway, I limped on.

I set yet another long distance record: 953 km until tanks dry.

Glided down and parked, then the fuel truck arrived.

With the tanks full I took off again ... but without pleasure ... slow everything.

When I finally reached 3000 meters I cut off the first stage blowers ... apparently I shouldn't have done that, shortly after my bearing started to fail. Curseword!

 

Positive about this endeavour: I improved the bearing some more and will soon upload Chakora v 3.1.

 

 

[sdj64]

On 8/3/2016 at 7:49 PM, Gman_builder said:

Uh how exactly? Less torque, less speed, not as mature.

Maturity meaning what, exactly?  I thought it was mostly about bearing design because the rest of the motor is trivial in comparison, especially if it's electric.  Just slap some SAS on any bearing developed for a turboprop.  In my experience they have a lower top speed but more torque and more acceleration at low speeds.

 

On 8/3/2016 at 11:06 PM, Gman_builder said:

YA Solar Impulse 2 flew around the world but it took 18 different stops, had a max speed of 56 mph, could only fly 1000 miles,(dunno why, cause it's solar powered) and had a max altitude of only 27,000 feet.

Now compare that to a jet powered aircraft  with the same wingspan.

I.E. a Boeing 747-400ER      O_O

Max speed: 608 mph

Max range: 7,670 miles

Max altitude: 41,000 feet

Plus it would probably only take somewhere around 5 stops to circumnavigate the world.

1st generation jets still had better performance of these 2nd or whatever generation electric planes. Another downside of electric aircraft is that electric motors are very heavy, SUPER inefficient, and don't produce nearly as much thrust as a jet engine of comparable weight and size.

A electric aircraft would require solar panels covering the wings and fuselage to achieve any sort of range that could be useful. But then all those solar panels mean you need massive wings and a fuselage which increases drag and decreases speed. Which essentially cancels out all benefits of electric travel.

Solar Impulse 1 & 2 are a experiment and wont lead to any development that could make electric air travel feasible. After all it took Impulse 2 72 HOURS to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

You can say similar things about electric cars. They have lower range and speed. But obviously those two things don't matter as much in land based travel.

Emissions are also hardly relevant.

Nothing wrong with the electric motors, just electric power sources.  Electric motors are much more efficient than combustion engines (from a useful energy vs waste heat perspective).

However, batteries and solar panels in real life are really useless compared to KSP (but sort of a pointless comparison since we don't know what an EC is).  Solar aircraft will probably never be useful for passengers or cargo in real life, but electric aircraft will be with a better power source.  Fuel cells might be an answer, batteries surely aren't an answer at less than 1/100th the mass efficiency of jet fuel!  Solar drones might have some uses because they can stay up forever until they need maintenance.

The Solar Impulse 2 took shorter distance flights because of the possibility of bad weather and that it carried a human pilot.  You can't just stuff someone in the cockpit and expect them to fly nonstop for a month! (though it's easy to see why we would forget since Kerbals are just fine with it )

For electric cars, look at the Porsche 918.  Fastest accelerating production car, made possible because it's a gas-electric hybrid.

 

Real life electric motors are pretty heavy compared to what we have in KSP, though.  For the weight of an large reaction wheel, a real life electric motor would give you... 2kN*m of torque.  You get 15x better power to weight in the motor, and I wouldn't be surprised if KSP solar panels and RTGs are also 15x or more better power to weight too.  So KSP electric motors have much more potential than RL.

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

I've been working more on that swashplate thing. I made mine a bit different, and had the blade linkages riding directly on the bottom swashplate. It worked moderately well... and then it threw the blades

Despite the engines being off, the remaining parts are still (5 minutes later) spinning at insane speed (they revved up like a rocket as soon as the blades were gone). I suspect it has something to do with a lot of them being physicsless or the like.

[Pds314]

On 8/2/2016 at 9:52 AM, klond said:

That is a beautiful machine.  When you reduce main rotor power I'm assuming tail rotor power gets reduced too.  Does it work as well as it sounds like it should?

 

Speaking of parakeet, I liked how there was only one support bearing and the prop thrust pulled the shaft and held it in place/centered.  I used a pusher prop to the same effect on this flying coffee table, squeezing the shaft between the fuel tank and 2 structural pieces (forgot the part name, the light 8 sided ones) to make a machine under 1000kg.

Wow. That thing is tiny. It's like an upside down ultralite. How's the performance?

Edited August 6, 2016 by Pds314

[The Optimist]

I think we can agree that neither electric motors nor jet-blowing-on-propeller-shaft engines have any bearing (heh) on reality.

Edited August 6, 2016 by The Optimist

[Pds314]

1 minute ago, The Optimist said:

I think we can agree that neither electric motors nor jet-blowing-on-propeller-shaft engines have any bearing (heh) on reality.

Yeah, pretty much. Engines of the jet-blower design might maybe possibly work IRL, but nobody would be stupid enough to design them like that. There's also the non-trivial matter that real jet engines are usually long and thin.

[Gman_builder]

1 minute ago, The Optimist said:

I think we can agree that neither electric motors nor jet-blowing-on-propeller-shaft engines have any bearing (heh) on reality.

I agree. But in this game, reaction wheel powered craft will never outperform gas powered ones in the speed department. But obviously normal turboprops will quickly be outperformed in the endurance department. So theres a plus I guess.

[Azimech]

1 hour ago, Pds314 said:

Yeah, pretty much. Engines of the jet-blower design might maybe possibly work IRL, but nobody would be stupid enough to design them like that. There's also the non-trivial matter that real jet engines are usually long and thin.

But you can have the jet engines positioned at a different spot and the nozzles in the same way as we have now.

Right now it's waiting for fluid dynamics ... or some method I've had in my head for some months now but haven't taken the effort to write down.

 

Something different: I've made some nice improvements in the bearing department. For anyone using small landing gears, the current setting I'm using:

Spring = 2.0
Damper = 0.7

Retried my own challenge, just parked the plane after running out of fuel at 1151 km distance from KSC. That's more than 25% of Kerbin covered, flying west most of the time. This time ... without failing bearing elements, not even one. That's a first.

 

Right now it's waiting for the refueling truck but it's stuck in traffic.

 

[Pds314]

17 minutes ago, Azimech said:

But you can have the jet engines positioned at a different spot and the nozzles in the same way as we have now.

Right now it's waiting for fluid dynamics ... or some method I've had in my head for some months now but haven't taken the effort to write down.

 

Something different: I've made some nice improvements in the bearing department. For anyone using small landing gears, the current setting I'm using:

Spring = 2.0
Damper = 0.7

Retried my own challenge, just parked the plane after running out of fuel at 1151 km distance from KSC. That's more than 25% of Kerbin covered, flying west most of the time. This time ... without failing bearing elements, not even one. That's a first.

 

Right now it's waiting for the refueling truck but it's stuck in traffic.

 

That's quite impressive for a single-engine plane to make it 1100 kilometers. Anyone experimented with circumnavigational aircraft? That would be really impressive to see.

[Azimech]

38 minutes ago, Pds314 said:

That's quite impressive for a single-engine plane to make it 1100 kilometers. Anyone experimented with circumnavigational aircraft? That would be really impressive to see.

I'm not sure yet it's possible.

Anyway ... fuel truck has arrived and refueled my plane.

And suddenly all those trees popped up. Must be the season and very fertile soil.

Take off for the second leg ... I'm reducing speed from 115 m/s to 100 m/s, maybe I'll make it to the badlands.

I've noticed taking off with less than full power can create some self-induced vibration at times, with damaging results. Also sudden large decrease in throttle setting is something the engine doesn't like. Lost a single bearing element but still going strong.

Time for a tiny nap on the couch while the plane plows itself through Kerbin's netherheaven.

Edited August 6, 2016 by Azimech

[Azimech]

End of the second leg. I've landed in the dark in the heart of the Badlands, south of the volcano, west of the great lake. Calculated distance traveled, without detour kilometers: 1303! It's only 1311km back to the KSC so if I do it right, I'll make it with this second refueling!

Altitude: 3000. Speed: 100 m/s. I might try 4000 or even 5000, would be nice to be able to fly in a line instead of evading the mountains.

"Wish I had a map ... going to be difficult to find a spot to land."

Gotcha!

 

[Gman_builder]

@Azimech God you game looks beautiful! Nice job catching that eclipse there!

cool plane too

One of the factors limiting me on a endurance challenge is obviously reliability. My engines all have high power output but can't maintain that for any sort of significant period of time.

 

[Azimech]

You've got a job to do then :-P

[Gman_builder]

Just now, Azimech said:

You've got a job to do then :-P

Ya clearly

[Gman_builder]

Here is the performance I'm getting out of my previously IMMENSLY high powered plane. No clue why it changed.

[Azimech]

9 minutes ago, Gman_builder said:

Here is the performance I'm getting out of my previously IMMENSLY high powered plane. No clue why it changed.

 

Have you tried it in a separate, fresh install? It could fix your problems.

[Gman_builder]

Just now, Azimech said:

 

Have you tried it in a separate, fresh install? It could fix your problems.

Nope not yet. That is always a last resort. I hate how having the same game for a while literally just creates bugs that previously weren't there. It's ridiculous.

And just like that, the problems that have been plaguing me for a week or so magically disappeared. I literally didn't do anything except restart the game. what ksp

[Azimech]

4 minutes ago, Gman_builder said:

Nope not yet. That is always a last resort. I hate how having the same game for a while literally just creates bugs that previously weren't there. It's ridiculous.

Are you using steam? You could just move the whole KSP folder elsewhere and tell steam to download a fresh one. This way you have at least two working versions, your original with all your mods & saved games and a brand new one.

After that it's just a matter of copying your craft file(s) to the new, install VOID, edit physics.cfg and exhaust smoke and you're done.

Edited August 6, 2016 by Azimech

[Gman_builder]

1 minute ago, Azimech said:

Are you using steam? You could just move the whole KSP folder elsewhere and tell steam to download a fresh one. This way you have at least two working versions, your original with all your mods & saved games and a brand new one.

After that it's just a matter of copying your craft file(s) to the new, install VOID, edit physics.cfg and exhaust smoke and you're done.

Ya I know how to do it, it's still a pain though. I usually launch through steam but I have a separate gamedata and saves folder on my desktop that contains all my mods and important craft info

I love the feeling when your engine explodes so violently that It destroys the entire airframe. That's how you know it's packing some serious power!

[Azimech]

Just now, Gman_builder said:

Ya I know how to do it, it's still a pain though. I usually launch through steam but I have a separate gamedata and saves folder on my desktop that contains all my mods and important craft info

Steam ... I never launch through it. Only thing I'm missing is the counter how many hours I've used KSP. I'm a bit old-fashioned.

[Gman_builder]

Just now, Azimech said:

Steam ... I never launch through it. Only thing I'm missing is the counter how many hours I've used KSP. I'm a bit old-fashioned.

Old fashioned? Your like 20 something right?

Either way it doesn't really matter except for automatic updates and stuff. I've played KSP for 1370 hours. Jees.

[Azimech]

2 minutes ago, Gman_builder said:

Old fashioned? Your like 20 something right?

Either way it doesn't really matter except for automatic updates and stuff. I've played KSP for 1370 hours. Jees.

How did I give that impression ... I'm almost twice that age ... 39 :-D What's your age?

[Gman_builder]

Just now, Azimech said:

How did I give that impression ... I'm almost twice that age ... 39 :-D What's your age?

huh. Interesting. I'm 17  You just seem like a younger guy lol. I guess that's a compliment. I've never seen a 39 year old with a cool custom built car and a interest in video games so I mean....

[Azimech]

3 minutes ago, Gman_builder said:

huh. Interesting. I'm 17  You just seem like a younger guy lol. I guess that's a compliment. I've never seen a 39 year old with a cool custom built car and a interest in video games so I mean....

I strive to keep a young heart and to develop the wisdom of an old man ... I already have the gray beard!