Np. BTW, this might actually be faster with fewer engines (less mass to move), and with a more streamlined shape (lower drag). Something like a long tube or cone with the engines inline.
@jamesPLANESii
In the game, it lists two weights for an aircraft, Empty Weight and Loaded Weight. Realistically, empty weight is the weight of the aircraft, and loaded weight is the weight of the aircraft plus fuel, crew, passengers, luggage and cargo. So an airplane that has an empty weight of 4,000 pounds, but carries 2 people, their luggage and 100 gallons of fuel, might have a loaded weight of 5000 pounds.
In SP, fuel is one of the things that adds to loaded weight but not empty weight (in fact it seems to reduce empty weight, since they have to hollow out part of the wing or fuselage to make room for the fuel tank).
Dead Weight (which I did add to represent passengers) is considered part of the aircraft and increases the empty weight.
What I am trying to figure out is what can I add to a plane, other than fuel to increase it's loaded weight. If I were to add 1500 pounds worth of fuel (about 225 gal. in SP) instead of the 40-50 gal. of fuel the plane is supposed to have, I'll end up with around five times the range!
Oh ho! I didn't realize this was an actual plane. Looking at the drawings of the real Natter, the wings need to be moved back a bit and the horizontal stabilizers should be a bit wider (front to back). Both of those things would help with the stability.
@Lotusrocks Floats forward helps with the rolling tail over nose, but you need to lower the center of mass or it will just roll upside down. The heaviest part of the boat wants to be underwater.
Nah, it's just that I've been doing this a couple of months longer. If you take this design and play around with a bit-move wings, shift the poontoons, move weight around, you will learn a lot about what it takes to make a plane float correctly.
@Lotusrocks Like ADSFASDF1 said, it's the weight. Most of the plane's weight is on top, and slightly forward of center, so the plane wants to flip tail over nose.
What you need to do is shift the center of mass lower so that it wants to stay right side up, and either further back (which will probably require moving the wings back) or bring the floats forward to counteract the tendency to pitch forward.
I posted one way to deal with it (under successor aircraft), but there are lots of other ways to accomplish the same thing.
@LiamW I figured it wasn't simple. As for "easily" getting the right shape, well not necessarily for me, at least not yet. I tend to work on smaller designs and often run into situations where I can't quite get the shape I want out of it. Scaling helps somewhat, but it also brings new problems.
But it was just a thought. There are quite a few good 3D plane models out there.
Depending on just how complicated your cockpit design is, you might be able to do simply by overlapping some fuselage cones. Pick one cone for the nosecone, and possibly give it a bit of a drop at the tip, then use a smaller, squashed cone for the windows, and color them in a glossy black or blue.
@Gvb2003 Thanks. I'm working on it. I'm surprised at how well it's working out so far. I kinda eyeballed it for wing shape and such and it actually worked. I'll need to adjust dimensions, mass and drag a bit more to fit with official specs, but at least it flies.
If you want upvotes then you have to post aircraft that appeal to people in someway. Most of the experienced people here, the ones with thousands and thousands of upvotes, tend to make very advanced and aesthetically pleasing designs, and they probably won't be all that interested in basic designs unless they have some sort of novelty to them.
I don't quite have as many upvotes as you and I got most of mine from a handful of Ornithopter designs, that caught some people's interest, and even then most of my upvotes were from a handful of people who were also interested in ornithopers.
Just build aircraft, post the ones that you like, and let the upvotes fall where they may. You can even enter some of the contests, but do so for the fun of challenge and the learning experience of building a plane under constraints, don't do it (or anything else here) just for the upvotes. It's not like they are worth anything.
I tried to fix it just enough so that it can fly, the link is under successors.
BTW, just what are you trying to do with this thing? Five x1000 BFE 500 engines is more thrust than this, or just about any other vehicle can handle.
While, as already mentioned, structural wings are the way to go, if you don't want to or can't XML edit things, you can reduce wing wobble by just using normal wings at the points where you want control surfaces, and structural wings for the rest, combined with nudging the wing a big into the fuselage for a bit of extra support.
Just how much this will help depends on you design and just how much it pushes the envelope.
@Minecraftpoweer Yup. But I'm thinking more about scaling down a SP build to match up better with a real airplane.
For example, let's say I'm building a replica of an old WWI biplane, and, once I work out the shape and parts, it weights 3000 pounds in SP, but the actual airplane weighed 1500 pounds, so I scale down the mass to 0.5 on everything to get the weight down to 1500.
Now if I wanted to reflect the lightweight, and less durable materials used on old biplanes I might scale down the Health from 100 to 50. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't double dipping.
Oh, BTW can one 2 unit long section take the same damage as one 4 unit long section, or half?
I think it's those two forward angled bits in the middle of the plane that give it the bulky look. Try taking those out and extending the long row of angled bits at the back, and/or the rounded part with the rocket pod and see if it looks better.
@Zyvx OH! In that case change the floppy hinge you use for take off to a fixed 10% or so. It greatly increases lift. I know a couple of our flappers can carry 3 cleavers, so you could attach one to your mech and see if you can airdrop it.
I wonder if this would benefit from a Spanwise Adaptive Wing. Basically a SAW wing is one where part of the wing can fold 90 degrees (up or down)during flight. The lower wing area means less drag so the aircraft can go faster, and the vertical section adds stability. Both features might be nice considering the bombs.
@Zyvx and @DustyT33 too. Check out FWG2014s Flamingo Ornithoper. It has pairs of wings flapping in alternating directions, eliminating most of the up and down motion that comes with most onirthopers. It's very steady, without a gyroscope. I think if we could incorporate that into our designs we'd get more stable flappers.
Plus I think if we had two sets of wings we could set one to floppy to keep the VTOL capability and the other to fixed so we could keep the speed, or at least some of it.
@Zyvx Speed isn't everything. There's also contro,l stability, ability to take off, etc. I think the reason why we got to making fast onithopters is because other people left us good base models to work from. I haven't created much of anything new as far as Onithopers go-except maybe the pitching tail, and that is mostly cosmetic.
When you feel like flying again, come join the party.
Np. BTW, this might actually be faster with fewer engines (less mass to move), and with a more streamlined shape (lower drag). Something like a long tube or cone with the engines inline.
@jamesPLANESii
In the game, it lists two weights for an aircraft, Empty Weight and Loaded Weight. Realistically, empty weight is the weight of the aircraft, and loaded weight is the weight of the aircraft plus fuel, crew, passengers, luggage and cargo. So an airplane that has an empty weight of 4,000 pounds, but carries 2 people, their luggage and 100 gallons of fuel, might have a loaded weight of 5000 pounds.
In SP, fuel is one of the things that adds to loaded weight but not empty weight (in fact it seems to reduce empty weight, since they have to hollow out part of the wing or fuselage to make room for the fuel tank).
Dead Weight (which I did add to represent passengers) is considered part of the aircraft and increases the empty weight.
What I am trying to figure out is what can I add to a plane, other than fuel to increase it's loaded weight. If I were to add 1500 pounds worth of fuel (about 225 gal. in SP) instead of the 40-50 gal. of fuel the plane is supposed to have, I'll end up with around five times the range!
I think you succeeded.
Oh ho! I didn't realize this was an actual plane. Looking at the drawings of the real Natter, the wings need to be moved back a bit and the horizontal stabilizers should be a bit wider (front to back). Both of those things would help with the stability.
Using the wheels for vertical stabilizers is clever.
Yeah, but his post said to "finish it". He can always take the gear off, and add another 50 gal. of fuel forward to balance it off.
@Lotusrocks Floats forward helps with the rolling tail over nose, but you need to lower the center of mass or it will just roll upside down. The heaviest part of the boat wants to be underwater.
Nah, it's just that I've been doing this a couple of months longer. If you take this design and play around with a bit-move wings, shift the poontoons, move weight around, you will learn a lot about what it takes to make a plane float correctly.
What else needs to be done?
@Milo1628xa I thought it looked a lot like a minisub, with that great forward view and fin-like forward wings.
I had a similar problem, but it told me to disable all mods, and then it worked. Try disabling mods.
@Lotusrocks Like ADSFASDF1 said, it's the weight. Most of the plane's weight is on top, and slightly forward of center, so the plane wants to flip tail over nose.
What you need to do is shift the center of mass lower so that it wants to stay right side up, and either further back (which will probably require moving the wings back) or bring the floats forward to counteract the tendency to pitch forward.
I posted one way to deal with it (under successor aircraft), but there are lots of other ways to accomplish the same thing.
@LiamW Aren't you always working on designing a plane?
@LiamW I figured it wasn't simple. As for "easily" getting the right shape, well not necessarily for me, at least not yet. I tend to work on smaller designs and often run into situations where I can't quite get the shape I want out of it. Scaling helps somewhat, but it also brings new problems.
But it was just a thought. There are quite a few good 3D plane models out there.
@LiamW I was thinking that even if the object was turned into bunches of fuselage blocks it would still be a way to get the right shape into the game.
@InternationalAircraftCompany It should work except there is no way to import the files. In theory it should be a two way process.
This is a really clever way to do a powerless engine.
Nice.
Depending on just how complicated your cockpit design is, you might be able to do simply by overlapping some fuselage cones. Pick one cone for the nosecone, and possibly give it a bit of a drop at the tip, then use a smaller, squashed cone for the windows, and color them in a glossy black or blue.
@stig27 No, I just typed it. I could build it. Hmm, maybe a triplane would be better?
@Gvb2003 Thanks. I'm working on it. I'm surprised at how well it's working out so far. I kinda eyeballed it for wing shape and such and it actually worked. I'll need to adjust dimensions, mass and drag a bit more to fit with official specs, but at least it flies.
@AWESOMENESS360 Stack two layers. Lol!
Shouldn't this be a biplane? ;)
Glad to help. Your first small jet is a lot better than my first small jet was (R.I.P.).
Kinda neat
@randomusername A 1 pound spaceship with 1000 pounds of thrust should be able to accelerate at 1000G's, which is over 21,000 mph per second.
If you want upvotes then you have to post aircraft that appeal to people in someway. Most of the experienced people here, the ones with thousands and thousands of upvotes, tend to make very advanced and aesthetically pleasing designs, and they probably won't be all that interested in basic designs unless they have some sort of novelty to them.
I don't quite have as many upvotes as you and I got most of mine from a handful of Ornithopter designs, that caught some people's interest, and even then most of my upvotes were from a handful of people who were also interested in ornithopers.
Just build aircraft, post the ones that you like, and let the upvotes fall where they may. You can even enter some of the contests, but do so for the fun of challenge and the learning experience of building a plane under constraints, don't do it (or anything else here) just for the upvotes. It's not like they are worth anything.
I tried to fix it just enough so that it can fly, the link is under successors.
BTW, just what are you trying to do with this thing? Five x1000 BFE 500 engines is more thrust than this, or just about any other vehicle can handle.
@DustyT33- I think the key to faster water speeds might be to put a flapper at the BOW of the craft. Putting one aft makes it go in reverse.
Oh, and horizontal flappers work just fine underwater. Most of our earlier designs function underwater.
While, as already mentioned, structural wings are the way to go, if you don't want to or can't XML edit things, you can reduce wing wobble by just using normal wings at the points where you want control surfaces, and structural wings for the rest, combined with nudging the wing a big into the fuselage for a bit of extra support.
Just how much this will help depends on you design and just how much it pushes the envelope.
@Gvb2003 You're welcome.
@jamesPLANESii Thanks. I only installed Overlord last week, so I had to find some solutions to problems that didn't involve editing the XML data.
Nice place you got there Grandma. With all the Ack-Ack, watch towers and and the Zero you uploaded earlier I take it this isn't a Club Med resort?
Do you still need help?
@jamesPLANESii Congrats! I bet if you contacted them, they'd let you use those logos, too.
MB 152?
@Minecraftpoweer Yup. But I'm thinking more about scaling down a SP build to match up better with a real airplane.
For example, let's say I'm building a replica of an old WWI biplane, and, once I work out the shape and parts, it weights 3000 pounds in SP, but the actual airplane weighed 1500 pounds, so I scale down the mass to 0.5 on everything to get the weight down to 1500.
Now if I wanted to reflect the lightweight, and less durable materials used on old biplanes I might scale down the Health from 100 to 50. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't double dipping.
Oh, BTW can one 2 unit long section take the same damage as one 4 unit long section, or half?
Thanks.
This is great!
So you need a mile clearance on either side to land it! Lol!
This is a very nice bomber. It can reach speeds of Mach 2, and uses a VTOL engine and thrusters that help with maneuvering.
I think it's those two forward angled bits in the middle of the plane that give it the bulky look. Try taking those out and extending the long row of angled bits at the back, and/or the rounded part with the rocket pod and see if it looks better.
Very nice plane. Very stable and easy to take off and land with.
@Zyvx OH! In that case change the floppy hinge you use for take off to a fixed 10% or so. It greatly increases lift. I know a couple of our flappers can carry 3 cleavers, so you could attach one to your mech and see if you can airdrop it.
I wonder if this would benefit from a Spanwise Adaptive Wing. Basically a SAW wing is one where part of the wing can fold 90 degrees (up or down)during flight. The lower wing area means less drag so the aircraft can go faster, and the vertical section adds stability. Both features might be nice considering the bombs.
Cool, and a practical application of walking technology. Can you make a walker than can fly too?
@Zyvx and @DustyT33 too. Check out FWG2014s Flamingo Ornithoper. It has pairs of wings flapping in alternating directions, eliminating most of the up and down motion that comes with most onirthopers. It's very steady, without a gyroscope. I think if we could incorporate that into our designs we'd get more stable flappers.
Plus I think if we had two sets of wings we could set one to floppy to keep the VTOL capability and the other to fixed so we could keep the speed, or at least some of it.
@Zyvx Speed isn't everything. There's also contro,l stability, ability to take off, etc. I think the reason why we got to making fast onithopters is because other people left us good base models to work from. I haven't created much of anything new as far as Onithopers go-except maybe the pitching tail, and that is mostly cosmetic.
When you feel like flying again, come join the party.
Glad to help.
What I wonder now is what would happen it we hoked up pistons to that bird tail. Then we'd have five wings flapping.