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

[Pds314]

3 minutes ago, Azimech said:

Hmmm ... how did you come to this conclusion? I'd like to see your train of thought. No criticism, just trying to understand what's going on here.

 

Well, decreasing prop pitch by much decreases thrust output to unviable levels. I fiddled with it a bit and can't seem to find a situation where the prop is at good rpm and good thrust at the same time. I think the prop isn't really the right prop for the plane.

Edited July 14, 2016 by Pds314

[Azimech]

Just now, Pds314 said:

Well, decreasing prop pitch by much decreases thrust output to unviable levels.

Because you increase the surface area and therefore increase drag, got it. What else?

[Pds314]

2 minutes ago, Azimech said:

Because you increase the surface area and therefore increase drag, got it. What else?

It doesn't fly at good RPM. It does fly at bad RPM. Honestly I think it might actually be flying on a stalled prop, since it can statically get the RPM up to 2100 stalled.

Edited July 14, 2016 by Pds314

[Azimech]

4 minutes ago, Pds314 said:

It doesn't fly at good RPM. It does fly at bad RPM. Honestly I think it might actually be flying on a stalled prop, since it can statically get the RPM up to 2100 stalled.

I'd like to see your design ...  would you like to upload this version?

[Pds314]

6 minutes ago, Azimech said:

I'd like to see your design ...  would you like to upload this version?

Variant of E4 used on the McShnivels posted above. Clockwise and anticlockwise. Here's the McSchnivels itself for any masochists who like flying at the lower limit of performance. It holds nearly 9 tonnes of fuel, hypoethetically, but trust me, you will not be flying with 9 tonnes of fuel.

DOWNLOAD Clockwise E4M3

DOWNLOAD anticlockwise E4M3

DOWNLOAD The McSchnivels

[Gman_builder]

10 minutes ago, Pds314 said:

It doesn't fly at good RPM. It does fly at bad RPM. Honestly I think it might actually be flying on a stalled prop, since it can statically get the RPM up to 2100 stalled.

Honestly I have no clue what all these fancy numbers about torque and mega newtons and what not mean but you seem to be getting somewhere...so keep up the good work.

[Azimech]

7 minutes ago, Pds314 said:

Variant of E4 used on the McShnivels posted above. Clockwise and anticlockwise. Here's the McSchnivels itself for any masochists who like flying at the lower limit of performance. It holds nearly 9 tonnes of fuel, hypoethetically, but trust me, you will not be flying with 9 tonnes of fuel.

DOWNLOAD Clockwise E4M3

DOWNLOAD anticlockwise E4M3

DOWNLOAD The McSchnivels

Gotta call my gf, may take a while.

[Pds314]

27 minutes ago, Gman_builder said:

Honestly I have no clue what all these fancy numbers about torque and mega newtons and what not mean but you seem to be getting somewhere...so keep up the good work.

Generally, in KSP anyway, prop performance seems to do this:


Data Taken from a running static McShnivels engine at 15% throttle

Edited July 14, 2016 by Pds314

[Gman_builder]

8 minutes ago, Pds314 said:

Generally, in KSP anyway, prop performance seems to do this:


Data Taken from a running static McShnivels engine at 15% throttle

Yo how'd you do that?!??!?!? That's a awesome plugin!

[Pds314]

12 minutes ago, Gman_builder said:

Yo how'd you do that?!??!?!? That's a awesome plugin!

No. You misunderstand. That's excel. I waited for the RPM to stabilize, then copied it over to a spreadsheet, then adjusted by 10, then waited for the RPM to stabilize, etc.

LOL. I wish I had a plugin like that. I know kOS can log data, but damn if I'm gonna write a program to log data for my props.

If you must know. It's the right engine (anticlockwise). I expect the left engine would have extremely similar performance.

LOL... a wierd thought just went through my head... KSP is very likely Turing Complete. Simply attach a small engine to your logic gates and...

Edited July 14, 2016 by Pds314

[Gman_builder]

6 minutes ago, Pds314 said:

No. You misunderstand. That's excel. I waited for the RPM to stabilize, then copied it over to a spreadsheet, then adjusted by 10, then waited for the RPM to stabilize, etc.

LOL. I wish I had a plugin like that. I know kOS can log data, but damn if I'm gonna write a program to log data for my props.

If you must know. It's the right engine. I expect the left engine would have extremely similar performance.

Ok, but how did you port running data from the prop over into Excel? I am a pretty tech-savvy person but half the stuff you say goes way over my head and the other half goes WAY way over.              

Edited July 14, 2016 by Gman_builder

[Pds314]

8 minutes ago, Gman_builder said:

Ok, but how did you port running data from the prop over into Excel? I am a pretty tech-savvy person but half the stuff you say goes way over my head and the other half goes WAY way over.              

Step 0: set pitch to -150 and throttle to 15%.
Step 1: run prop.
Step 2: increase pitch by 10.
Step 3. Wait for RPM to stabilize.
Step 4. Pause game.
Step 5. Look at RPM.
Step 6. Write down RPM in excel.
Step 7. If (pitch <150) go back to step 2.
Step 8. Make graph.
Step 9. Use Windows snipping tool on Graph.
Step 10. Save snip to pictures library.
Step 11. Upload snip to imgur.
Step 12. Use tags to post here.

 

It's not elegant, but it works.

Edited July 14, 2016 by Pds314

[Azimech]

16 minutes ago, Pds314 said:

No. You misunderstand. That's excel. I waited for the RPM to stabilize, then copied it over to a spreadsheet, then adjusted by 10, then waited for the RPM to stabilize, etc.

LOL. I wish I had a plugin like that. I know kOS can log data, but damn if I'm gonna write a program to log data for my props.

If you must know. It's the right engine (anticlockwise). I expect the left engine would have extremely similar performance.

LOL... a wierd thought just went through my head... KSP is very likely Turing Complete. Simply attach a small engine to your logic gates and...

Logic gates huh? You like that? You might like this:

 

[Pds314]

3 minutes ago, Azimech said:

Logic gates huh? You like that? You might like this:

 

Would be very nice to have. Any stock logic gate probably won't be able to manipulate engine controls. The best you MIGHT be able to do is choking an air intake or blocking the engine or similar.

Edited July 14, 2016 by Pds314

[Azimech]

Just now, Pds314 said:

Would be very nice to have. Any stock logic gate probably won't be able to manipulate engine controls. The best you MIGHT be able to do it choking an air intake or blocking the engine or similar.

It wasn't made with turboshaft engines in mind ... rather this:

 

[Pds314]

Just now, Azimech said:

It wasn't made with turboshaft engines in mind ... rather this:

 

Oh, yes. I remember you posted something about one of them doing a "powered glide."

[Gman_builder]

The weirdest thing just happened. I did a fresh install so I could test turboshafts faster and I get lower FPS. I had RSS and All the NEAR mods and I got around 45 FPS with this particular plane I was flying. Now I have no mods except the essential plugins and i'm getting 15 FPS with the same plane

Dafuq is dis

Edited July 14, 2016 by Gman_builder

[Pds314]

36 minutes ago, Gman_builder said:

The weirdest thing just happened. I did a fresh install so I could test turboshafts faster and I get lower FPS. I had RSS and All the NEAR mods and I got around 45 FPS with this particular plane I was flying. Now I have no mods except the essential plugins and i'm getting 15 FPS with the same plane

Dafuq is dis

Do you have jet engine smoke enabled or similar?

Also, which plugins are essential? I don't really use much besides stock to design and fly. I know a lot of people use VOID.

Edited July 14, 2016 by Pds314

[Gman_builder]

5 minutes ago, Pds314 said:

Do you have jet engine smoke enabled or similar?

Also, which plugins are essential? I don't really use much besides stock to design and fly.

I meant a normal plane. I was flying this one - https://kerbalx.com/Gman_builder/Aurora

It is only 200 parts and wasn't hard on my computer previously. By essential I mean, VOID, pilot assistant, TAC fuel balancer, FAR, EER, Mouse aim flight, Waypoint manager, Thermal monitor, Fuel jettison, and Trajectories.       None of those mods exceed 1 megabyte.

I think heat in my laptop affects game performance, similar to a car, so I might let my computer rest for a while and come back. I'll see if it's fixed then.

Edited July 14, 2016 by Gman_builder

[Pds314]

Image of 8 of my planes. Unfortunately, the ground handing on the big ones is awful. The one with the orange tank can only generously be called a plane because it has never successfully taken off. It is underpowered, has a bad prop, and generally doesn't work. It's only depicted for the sake of completeness.

Also depicted is one plane I don't believe I've posted pics of. I originally thought it to be a dud, but I have since flown it and it actually flies pretty well. It has a compact 12-blower engine that uses solar panel-based cage and blowers.

I originally wanted a nice lineup, but I quickly realized that, since the big landing gears can't turn and don't have good brakes, I would end up breaking things. Sure enough, visible to the lower left is the result of a wing-strike by the Jumboliner.




Side view, nearly isometric zoom:

1 hour ago, Gman_builder said:

I meant a normal plane. I was flying this one - https://kerbalx.com/Gman_builder/Aurora

It is only 200 parts and wasn't hard on my computer previously. By essential I mean, VOID, pilot assistant, TAC fuel balancer, FAR, EER, Mouse aim flight, Waypoint manager, Thermal monitor, Fuel jettison, and Trajectories.       None of those mods exceed 1 megabyte.

I think heat in my laptop affects game performance, similar to a car, so I might let my computer rest for a while and come back. I'll see if it's fixed then.

Well, void isn't big, but it can be laggy if everything is on display. FAR isn't normally laggy, but there are ways it can be laggy.

[Pds314]

Hmm.. alright. I'm gonna build a new mk2 engine:

Design goals (somewhat ambitious):

18+ blowers.

Under 80 parts.

Under 6 tonnes.

High reliability

50 Rads/s or close.

Blowers and prop only non-symmetrical items

Edited July 15, 2016 by Pds314

[sdj64]

Lots of science going on here!  I figured I'd share my newest and biggest engine, it is Mk3 size with 24 blowers.  It uses the lowest part count bearing ever at a whopping 4 parts - 2x stayputnik inside structural fuselages.  I'm not sure how good the performance is - I got it going about 165 m/s steadily but it seems like the bearing has high friction.  KER says around 30 degrees per second at that speed?  I think it just has the wrong unit, but 30 rads/s seems high.  I count around 3-4 rotations per second which is about 20 rad/s.

It is a reliable proof of concept for a large engine with a wheelless bearing though.

I think I will try a 2.5m engine using a couple of service bays next.

[Pds314]

5 minutes ago, sdj64 said:

Lots of science going on here!  I figured I'd share my newest and biggest engine, it is Mk3 size with 24 blowers.  It uses the lowest part count bearing ever at a whopping 4 parts - 2x stayputnik inside structural fuselages.  I'm not sure how good the performance is - I got it going about 165 m/s steadily but it seems like the bearing has high friction.  KER says around 30 degrees per second at that speed?  I think it just has the wrong unit, but 30 rads/s seems high.  I count around 3-4 rotations per second which is about 20 rad/s.

It is a reliable proof of concept for a large engine with a wheelless bearing though.

I think I will try a 2.5m engine using a couple of service bays next.

Wait wait, what now? You have a bearing with only 4 parts and a two-part axle? That's impressive. How does the engine work? Does it blow directly on the stayputniks?

Also, helpful tip, use the aero gui in the alt-f12 menu. It's really helpful. Readout is in deg/s.

Edited July 15, 2016 by Pds314

[sdj64]

Just now, Pds314 said:

Wait wait, what now? You have a bearing with only 4 parts and a two-part axle? That's impressive. How does the engine work? Does it blow directly on the stayputniks?

No, just the axle.  The blades are 8 radiator edge panels.  The Stayputnik is just about the right size to stay inside the structural fuselage without wiggling around too much.  In this design the fuselage is part of the rotor and the stayputnik part of the plane, but there's no reason it wouldn't work the other way around.

[Pds314]

So much spin. Very roll.