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

[The Optimist]

I have reached the point where my planes start blowing up at around 120 m/s because my bearing is literally a stack of different designs. There's a stayputnik bearing, a regular wheeled one, and a tiny antenna bearing at the very front. Also, the nosecone doesn't turn because it drags the prop down and blows up the whole thing while it was attached.

[Majorjim!]

Just now, The Optimist said:

I have reached the point where my planes start blowing up at around 120 m/s because my bearing is literally a stack of different designs.

So make it better! Seriously, testing turboprops/elec props is so easy as it's all done on the pad and strip. Just try different approaches man. Experiment and see what does and what does not work. Tweak it, millimeter by millimeter, be persistent and thorough, don't ever give up until its perfect.

[The_Rocketeer]

53 minutes ago, lgsolaris said:

Fastest I've gotten with them was about 80 m/s, and even that fast my plane could not lift off the ground. That was even with the global drag multiplier at its lowest.

That should easily be fast enough to get airborne as long as you have enough wing and as long as the classic CoM/CoL distributions are set up correctly. Seriously, that speed is pretty respectable for a first attempt - many of my early attempts couldn't get over 20m/s. Most of my single-engine planes get airborne about 50m/s and then accelerate up over 100m/s once they're in the wind.

44 minutes ago, The Optimist said:

I have reached the point where my planes start blowing up at around 120 m/s because my bearing is literally a stack of different designs. There's a stayputnik bearing, a regular wheeled one, and a tiny antenna bearing at the very front. Also, the nosecone doesn't turn because it drags the prop down and blows up the whole thing while it was attached.

3 bearings? Why? Most likely one of them is a consistent weak link and failing first. Also it could be redline issues due to too little prop drag. Try adjusting prop pitch to increase torque and reduce engine revs.

[life_on_venus]

13 hours ago, lgsolaris said:

Well, I finally decided to go and try to build a turbo prop by experimenting. Looked at some designs and copied some, but for whatever reason I cant make them have enough power to actually lift anything off the ground.

Fastest I've gotten with them was about 80 m/s, and even that fast my plane could not lift off the ground. That was even with the global drag multiplier at its lowest.

Then you did better than me trying to get planes to fly!

[Gman_builder]

22 hours ago, lgsolaris said:

Well, I finally decided to go and try to build a turbo prop by experimenting. Looked at some designs and copied some, but for whatever reason I cant make them have enough power to actually lift anything off the ground.

Fastest I've gotten with them was about 80 m/s, and even that fast my plane could not lift off the ground. That was even with the global drag multiplier at its lowest.

80 m/s is more than enough speed to lift off. 2 things you can do are, 1. Increase the size of your wings. Have more lifting surfaces will obviously make it easier to fly. If they start to bend to much you can always do a double Decker design like Azimech has been using in the Chakora since the beginning. Very easy and sturdy. 2. Reduce weight. All my planes are very mimalistic. Just the engine and as little "fuselage" as possible. My Gremlin Mk3 is a good example of that. http://imgur.com/m7rrLu4 Look how little the actual plane weighs.

[The Optimist]

On 11/23/2016 at 4:14 PM, Gman_builder said:

80 m/s is more than enough speed to lift off. 2 things you can do are, 1. Increase the size of your wings. Have more lifting surfaces will obviously make it easier to fly. If they start to bend to much you can always do a double Decker design like Azimech has been using in the Chakora since the beginning. Very easy and sturdy. 2. Reduce weight. All my planes are very mimalistic. Just the engine and as little "fuselage" as possible. My Gremlin Mk3 is a good example of that. http://imgur.com/m7rrLu4 Look how little the actual plane weighs.

Sticks are efficient, but they look like exactly that. A stick. If you want an aerodynamic and well-functioning plane, a small engine and a fairing body should work well.

[The_Rocketeer]

Does anyone else have CTD issues with KSP when using multi-craft vessels like these? Anybody know what I should do about it? Mostly it seems to happen when I have a tooltip up.

Presenting:

The P1d "Diddly", a 4-Juno, 7.884t, 109 part, two-seater biplane.

 

With 400 LF, she can cruise to the island runway at 50m/s, land and return to KSC with fuel to spare. All stock, no F12 menu. Not bad for a plane in near-realistic Kerbal scale, eh @Azimech?

 

Spoiler

 

Edited November 24, 2016 by The_Rocketeer

[Azimech]

That's a very nice biplane :-)

About the CTD's ... did you use the aerodynamics overlay (F12)? It crashes KSP after half a minute or so, even when enabled for just a second. Should be fixed in 1.2.2.

[The_Rocketeer]

Thanks @Azimech, that could be it. I also reinstalled KSP which seemed to improve things a bit, and having got Pilot Assistant working nicely, I'm now in a position to start tweaking the plane. I'll let you know if I get anywhere good

Coincidentally, this plane has very similar performance to the WW1 aircraft, the SPAD S.XIII. The only big difference is range, which I can cheat around.

[The_Rocketeer]

So I managed to reduce weight, halve the number of blowers, double the fuel capacity, convert to a single wing, and maintain/increase flight performance. How? It's now a turbo-electric hybrid!

Edited November 29, 2016 by The_Rocketeer

[The Optimist]

I made a plane which flies at 80 m/s without ALT-F12 menu. It's pretty easy to fly, but it has massive fuel consumption. It also only contains 160 or so parts, which is great for a turboprop.

 

[Azimech]

7 hours ago, The Optimist said:

I made a plane which flies at 80 m/s without ALT-F12 menu. It's pretty easy to fly, but it has massive fuel consumption. It also only contains 160 or so parts, which is great for a turboprop.

 

That's the trade-off, the Panthers produce quite a punch with afterburners enabled but lousy Isp and in both modes produces a lot of drag. Without Afterburners the TWR, size and drag are outmatched by the Juno's, except you need 4 times as many.

Looking at the turbine blades, I see a lot of them and I wonder what kind of material you've used. control surfaces produce more lift/drag than metal plates and this is counterproductive in an engine. Also, as a rule of thumb I never use more than 8 blades, enough to ensure an overlap so the blowers don't miss target. More blades produces more drag and extra mass, putting more strain on the bearings and increasing the risk of low frequency vibrations, robbing the engine of power and sometimes producing a feedback loop.

Overall, seems like a good design. Pushers have advantages.

11 hours ago, The_Rocketeer said:

So I managed to reduce weight, halve the number of blowers, double the fuel capacity, convert to a single wing, and maintain/increase flight performance. How? It's now a turbo-electric hybrid!

Well ... AFAIK that's a first :-)

[The_Rocketeer]

10 hours ago, Azimech said:

Well ... AFAIK that's a first :-)

It's been an interesting process.

This plane is still a horrific aerodynamic slug, hugely underpowered, top speed in level flight is barely 70m/s, and my efforts to increase engine torque without increasing fuel consumption or greatly increasing the radial size have fallen pretty flat so far. In fact hybridising it is really the only thing making it work at all - and honestly, it feels a bit like cheating. It wouldn't be so bad if the power supply was tied to the Juno's alternator output - in fact to me that would be perfect, as it would also tie EC power to throttle setting - but of course that can't happen because they're separate crafts! So instead the wheels are getting their juice from a hidden RTG in the nosecone, which means infinite EC, which breaks my immersion

Still a W-I-P then.

[Azimech]

1 hour ago, The_Rocketeer said:

It's been an interesting process.

This plane is still a horrific aerodynamic slug, hugely underpowered, top speed in level flight is barely 70m/s, and my efforts to increase engine torque without increasing fuel consumption or greatly increasing the radial size have fallen pretty flat so far. In fact hybridising it is really the only thing making it work at all - and honestly, it feels a bit like cheating. It wouldn't be so bad if the power supply was tied to the Juno's alternator output - in fact to me that would be perfect, as it would also tie EC power to throttle setting - but of course that can't happen because they're separate crafts! So instead the wheels are getting their juice from a hidden RTG in the nosecone, which means infinite EC, which breaks my immersion

Still a W-I-P then.

You should see EJ_SA's stream from last week. He decided to try and build an engine out of rover wheels to propel a ship. Unfortunately the drag in the water is massive. While watching I decided to convert a Chakora engine to a wheeled one. Got an interesting result but the wheels aren't able to drive the shaft faster than 25 rad/s running a 1.25 shaft because of their torque curve tied to their rotational speed. Obviously the wheels driving a 3.75 shaft gives the most torque but very low speed, I haven't tested 0.625 yet but who knows ... it's the way to go for a non-cheaty, real electric engine.

I might upload my test engine soon so you guys can examine it.

[The_Rocketeer]

4 minutes ago, Azimech said:

it's the way to go for a non-cheaty, real electric engine.

I had this thought, but it has so many drawbacks. Weight, drag, size... I dislike for all these reasons.

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

I guess @The Rocketeer and I were thinking along similar lines, as I've had a working prototype hybrid helicopter sitting in my hangar for a couple days now (haven't had time to do much because of a chem test I'm taking today), and it works surprisingly well. It's really ugly and needs some aerodynamic changes though . I'll post some pictures when I'm not on mobile.

Basically the idea was to use reaction wheels to provide ~90% of the lift needed for takeoff, and then the turboshaft does the rest.

[The Optimist]

21 hours ago, Azimech said:

That's the trade-off, the Panthers produce quite a punch with afterburners enabled but lousy Isp and in both modes produces a lot of drag. Without Afterburners the TWR, size and drag are outmatched by the Juno's, except you need 4 times as many.

Looking at the turbine blades, I see a lot of them and I wonder what kind of material you've used. control surfaces produce more lift/drag than metal plates and this is counterproductive in an engine. Also, as a rule of thumb I never use more than 8 blades, enough to ensure an overlap so the blowers don't miss target. More blades produces more drag and extra mass, putting more strain on the bearings and increasing the risk of low frequency vibrations, robbing the engine of power and sometimes producing a feedback loop.

Overall, seems like a good design. Pushers have advantages.

Well ... AFAIK that's a first :-)

The turbine blades are radiators because, well, 8 afterburning Panthers aren't very healthy for metal plates.

[Gman_builder]

What 

Is

Up

My dudes

I've been trying to build a stock battleship gun turret with full lateral and vertical traverse and i'm having some trouble. 

1. Part count is absurd already at 490 ish so putting it on a actual boat will be a stretch.

2. I can't seem to design a reliable vertical traverse mechanism, i got the actual firing mechanism and horizontal traverse down but im struggling.

This is what i have so far-

 

Heres the craft file

https://www.dropbox.com/s/na77yrx3i6il72t/Battleship gun.craft?dl=0

 

If anyone can help me out with the vertical drive i would really appreciate it. Currently im using pitch trim to adjust it but the downside is that you have to be viewing the gun to adjust pitch and you need to have SAS off in order to adjust it which makes the projectiled unfirable because they rely on a SAS to stabilize.

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

I don't remember if this is a picture of my hybrid helicopter taking off, or whether it was skittering around on the tarmac, but I do remember I got it flying that day.

Some additional pictures:

Spoiler

This next picture was taken today

 

9 minutes ago, Gman_builder said:

<snip>

I've been trying to build a stock battleship gun turret with full lateral and vertical traverse

<snip>

If anyone can help me out with the vertical drive i would really appreciate it. Currently im using pitch trim to adjust it but the downside is that you have to be viewing the gun to adjust pitch and you need to have SAS off in order to adjust it which makes the projectiled unfirable because they rely on a SAS to stabilize.

Would it not be simpler to just put some rtgs and reaction wheels on the triple-barrel assembly and have the rest of it free to rotate so you can just point the turret with the wasd keys?

[Gman_builder]

@EpicSpaceTroll139 Can you show me a pic or something. I'm not really sure what you mean.

It sounds much simpler than mine though XD. I'm currently working on a pneumatic piston that i am trying to use. Complicated.

[andrew123]

18 minutes ago, Gman_builder said:

What 

Is

Up

My dudes

I've been trying to build a stock battleship gun turret with full lateral and vertical traverse and i'm having some trouble. 

1. Part count is absurd already at 490 ish so putting it on a actual boat will be a stretch.

2. I can't seem to design a reliable vertical traverse mechanism, i got the actual firing mechanism and horizontal traverse down but im struggling.

This is what i have so far-

  

Heres the craft file

https://www.dropbox.com/s/na77yrx3i6il72t/Battleship gun.craft?dl=0

 

If anyone can help me out with the vertical drive i would really appreciate it. Currently im using pitch trim to adjust it but the downside is that you have to be viewing the gun to adjust pitch and you need to have SAS off in order to adjust it which makes the projectiled unfirable because they rely on a SAS to stabilize.

 

Hm.

I did have a destroyer with full stock vertical and horizontal traverse.

Haven't loaded her since 1.1.3 or something, but it should still work.

 

As for a stock shooting gun, I also had one. I abandoned the project after 1.2 borked the material I used for the barrel along with the difficulty of making an autoloader.

 

Unrelated, but I'll get working on my carrier again, though I might make a WWII carrier replica beforehand. I'm just really busy atm with college apps and schoolwork.

 

 

[Gman_builder]

Can you send me a pic or the craft file for the turret drive?!!??!? I Need it rn. Mine isn't really progressing.

[andrew123]

7 minutes ago, Gman_builder said:

Can you send me a pic or the craft file for the turret drive?!!??!? I Need it rn. Mine isn't really progressing.

I sent the craft file. Good luck with your project. 

 

Also, note that the ship itself probably doesn't work in the new version of KSP as well as it used to. I've replaced it with a new hull.

Edited December 1, 2016 by andrew123

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

20 minutes ago, Gman_builder said:

@EpicSpaceTroll139 Can you show me a pic or something <snip>

This quick thing I made only has one barrel, and is perhaps a bit more bulky than it needs to be, but the basic design principle should be applicable to yours.

[Gman_builder]

@EpicSpaceTroll139 Seems doable. The thing is i need something compact that can fit into my current design. I dont want to throw 8 hours of work down the drain and redo the whole thing.