@GravityGun913 it struggles with roll instability and nosediving quite a bit, but it was pretty easily fixed - move the main wings forward a bit, increase the size of the horizontal stabilisers to match the tailplan, reduce the size of the pitch control surfaces by about two thirds, and move the wing landing gear forward so that you can lose the nose wheel. That sounds like a lot written out here, but really it took no more than a couple of minutes. Works alright after that!
@Meawk right with you mate, I've never had more than 6 on a plane. I'm content with my planes being something I'm happy with rather than being massively popular, though. @Lynette seriously don't worry about it, you're doing far better than most
I'm gonna piggyback this with the format for hyperlinks, if that's alright; I have enough first world problems as it is without having to copy and paste stuff in to my address bar.
For any redditors, it's the exact same as reddit. For any non-redditors, putting this:
[Display Text](http://www.simpleplanes.com)
in your comment will make a link like this: Display Text
Here's my entry. It's a slightly more complex update to an older plane of mine that was an experiment to build a plane with as few parts as possible. Is actually having 400hp on the prop okay? If not I'll take it down a step and reupload.
@Crdguy thanks! I'm impressed by the work that went in to your original version transforming. Also I think you just voted me up to silver, so I suppose double thanks are in order haha
@Viper28 cheers mate, although I'm confused about what the RCN thrusters are for - anything particular, or just decorative? I'm gonna keep trying to get the wings to sit on top if I can (maybe through XML editing, if need be) just to keep it faithful to the original, but I appreciate this.
@XVIindustries I dunno if you use reddit, but simpleplanes uses the same formatting system (markdown). You can do italics by surrounding things with asterisks, bold with double asterisks and so on. Do links like:
[Link Text](http://www.simpleplanes.com)
Which comes out like this: Link Text. You need to include the http://, though, which I don't think is the case on reddit.
Just please don't be one of those people that abuses the header font.
@Bill0411 I went testing and found that it does indeed do this when manoeuvering hard at (relatively) low speeds - is this the same as the problem you had? The plane is agile at high speeds partly because it's very unstable, but I don't think I tested it much at lower speeds (subsonic), so I didn't catch this. Thanks for letting me know! I'll see if I can fix it
Wow! I definitely was not expecting to see anything of this calibre. I'm looking forward to testing it, and I suspect people will be damn hard-pressed to beat this
Actually, as a general suggestion to anyone reading this: there is also the British Aerospace P.125, which I tried making, but couldn't make a decent job of without XML editing.
@XVIdarkLithium you could try out the Hawker P.1214 and P.1216 concepts, they're pretty interesting: P.1214 and P.1216. They were proposed as Harrier replacements, but sadly never reached completion.
It's not bad! I got the hang of landing it in water after a couple of attempts - the rotators for the main wings were actually really helpful for that. I've also tweaked it a bit and uploaded a new version (in case you don't know - click the "Successors: 1 airplane(s)" link under General Characteristics on this page), and explained the changes I made
@Verdnan ahh sorry, I didn't realise you meant that they were too heavy for buoyancy to work. A single block is actually a 0.5 m cube, so that's a volume of 0.125 m^3.
density of air = 1.225 kgm^-1
mass of 0.5 m cube of air = 0.125 * 1.225 = 0.153125 kg
weight of 0.5m cube of air = 1.5 N = 0.33 lb, for any imperial users here
density of helium = 0.164 kgm^-1
mass of 0.5m cube of helium = 0.0205 kg
weight of 0.5m cube of helium = 0.2 N = 0.045 lb
So yeah, assuming a totally weightless structure, we'd still only get about 0.3 lb of lift from that buoyancy - obviously not even close to enough to lift the 22 lb structure, so you're totally right. However, I would imagine that what the game is actually doing is saying "this block creates this amount of upward force when y <= 0, the water's surface", rather than actually simulating buoyancy with displacement and everything. The only difference here would be saying "this block always creates this amount of upward force"
@tominator fair enough with the style, it still works with the wings covered after all. But yeah, basically it was just too heavy, between all the dead weight and the huge fuel reserves. I'll upload an updated version in just a bit
@MylesPlanes Generally speaking, if your plane is unstable, you need to move the centre of lift (CoL) further behind the centre of mass (CoM). On the flipside, this makes your plane turn slower as well - after all, stability is just a resistance to turning. To make up for this, make sure your wing loading is low and your control surfaces are well-placed. Wing loading is the weight of your aircraft divided by the wing area. To get a low wing loading, you want bigger wings and a lighter aircraft. As for your control surfaces, the positioning is important: pitch control surfaces need to be either well in front of the CoM or well behind it; roll surfaces need to be to the left and right; yaw surfaces need to above or below, but honestly those aren't as important and most planes on here have terrible yaw control, most of my own included. If you find that your aircraft turns really slowly, your could maybe make the relevant surfaces a bit bigger. If your aircraft jerks about when turning, the control surfaces are probably too big. So, in summary:
Centre of Lift (the blue sphere) must be behind the Centre of Mass (red sphere)
Bigger wings and a less weight make for a more agile plane
Control surfaces need to be far from the CoM to work well
Alright so I downloaded this and got it working, but there's a few things about it I don't understand. First off, why did you give it thousands of pounds of dead weight? Second, do the wings need to be covered like that for any particular reason? Just trying to understand so I can make sure that I'm actually being helpful!
@bolt which time zone?
@PuhBuhGuh it has been so long since that last happened to me
Thank you! It was for this challenge
@GravityGun913 it struggles with roll instability and nosediving quite a bit, but it was pretty easily fixed - move the main wings forward a bit, increase the size of the horizontal stabilisers to match the tailplan, reduce the size of the pitch control surfaces by about two thirds, and move the wing landing gear forward so that you can lose the nose wheel. That sounds like a lot written out here, but really it took no more than a couple of minutes. Works alright after that!
@Meawk right with you mate, I've never had more than 6 on a plane. I'm content with my planes being something I'm happy with rather than being massively popular, though. @Lynette seriously don't worry about it, you're doing far better than most
Split ailerons are what I'd like to see most. This may or may not be to do with how terrible I am at getting yaw control to work properly...
@TheReaper just for future reference, you can also hit the "reply" button on the person's comment and it will automatically put the name in for you
Man I don't even have a regular watch, I dunno how you guys deal with having something on your wrist try to get your attention all day
@GravityGun913 that was quicker than I expected! I'll test it when I'm back from work
@BigCat glad you like it! Did you ever play Wipeout?
You could try the Antonov 181, I've been wanting to give that a shot
@SnappyB I think Meawk means this one
@Ilovesthecheeses @KerbalVehiclesCompany the AE86 is a type of Corolla, so you're both right
I'm gonna piggyback this with the format for hyperlinks, if that's alright; I have enough first world problems as it is without having to copy and paste stuff in to my address bar.
For any redditors, it's the exact same as reddit. For any non-redditors, putting this:
in your comment will make a link like this: Display Text
Here's my entry. It's a slightly more complex update to an older plane of mine that was an experiment to build a plane with as few parts as possible. Is actually having 400hp on the prop okay? If not I'll take it down a step and reupload.
@Crdguy thanks! I'm impressed by the work that went in to your original version transforming. Also I think you just voted me up to silver, so I suppose double thanks are in order haha
@Delphinus cheers dude
@Viper28 that's fair, it does look pretty good
@Viper28 cheers mate, although I'm confused about what the RCN thrusters are for - anything particular, or just decorative? I'm gonna keep trying to get the wings to sit on top if I can (maybe through XML editing, if need be) just to keep it faithful to the original, but I appreciate this.
@DeezDucks cheers!
@XVIindustries fair play, sorry if I came across as patronising
@XVIindustries I dunno if you use reddit, but simpleplanes uses the same formatting system (markdown). You can do italics by surrounding things with asterisks, bold with double asterisks and so on. Do links like:
Which comes out like this: Link Text. You need to include the http://, though, which I don't think is the case on reddit.
Just please don't be one of those people that abuses the header font.
@PuhBuhGuh you should make a Warhawk challenge! I've not played the game, but I'll gladly have a look at the designs and try to make something
@Bill0411 I went testing and found that it does indeed do this when manoeuvering hard at (relatively) low speeds - is this the same as the problem you had? The plane is agile at high speeds partly because it's very unstable, but I don't think I tested it much at lower speeds (subsonic), so I didn't catch this. Thanks for letting me know! I'll see if I can fix it
@PuhBuhGuh not quite mate - Warhammer 40,000. Starting a Warhawk contest might be a good idea though!
Link for the lazy
@FlOu it's from a tabletop game called Warhammer 40,000; this is an entry to my contest to build WH40K aircraft
Yep, it even flies well. This thing is badass.
Wow! I definitely was not expecting to see anything of this calibre. I'm looking forward to testing it, and I suspect people will be damn hard-pressed to beat this
@realluochen9999 the biggest ones
@XVIindustries maybe those classes could be spread out in to some sort of tournament?
@Challenger with regards to the length of the challenge, personally I prefer the full week to the three days
@Challenger sweet! Thanks
@XVIindustries and I'm not even the only one here! We still need Wales and Northern Ireland to show up before we have the full set, though
Well damn, I did basically the exact same thing and we uploaded within a minute of each other. Great minds and all that, I'm sure
@TheDerpyDude damn that's even more impressive! Did you use XML editing, or just loads of patience?
Well there's not a chance in hell that my phone will let me fly this, but it looks impressive enough to earn a vote anyway
@realluochen9999 @yeolde1rishman @lindv @Saruman thank you all!
Scotland!
Actually, as a general suggestion to anyone reading this: there is also the British Aerospace P.125, which I tried making, but couldn't make a decent job of without XML editing.
@Quintasoarus well they're not mine in any way, so feel free! I'm hopefully gonna have a crack at the P.1214 sometime soon
@XVIdarkLithium you could try out the Hawker P.1214 and P.1216 concepts, they're pretty interesting: P.1214 and P.1216. They were proposed as Harrier replacements, but sadly never reached completion.
It's not bad! I got the hang of landing it in water after a couple of attempts - the rotators for the main wings were actually really helpful for that. I've also tweaked it a bit and uploaded a new version (in case you don't know - click the "Successors: 1 airplane(s)" link under General Characteristics on this page), and explained the changes I made
@tominator no bother
@Verdnan ahh sorry, I didn't realise you meant that they were too heavy for buoyancy to work. A single block is actually a 0.5 m cube, so that's a volume of 0.125 m^3.
density of air = 1.225 kgm^-1
mass of 0.5 m cube of air = 0.125 * 1.225 = 0.153125 kg
weight of 0.5m cube of air = 1.5 N = 0.33 lb, for any imperial users here
density of helium = 0.164 kgm^-1
mass of 0.5m cube of helium = 0.0205 kg
weight of 0.5m cube of helium = 0.2 N = 0.045 lb
So yeah, assuming a totally weightless structure, we'd still only get about 0.3 lb of lift from that buoyancy - obviously not even close to enough to lift the 22 lb structure, so you're totally right. However, I would imagine that what the game is actually doing is saying "this block creates this amount of upward force when y <= 0, the water's surface", rather than actually simulating buoyancy with displacement and everything. The only difference here would be saying "this block always creates this amount of upward force"
@tominator never mind, I see someone else has already done it
@tominator fair enough with the style, it still works with the wings covered after all. But yeah, basically it was just too heavy, between all the dead weight and the huge fuel reserves. I'll upload an updated version in just a bit
@Verdnan really? You mean the ordinary fuselage sections and so on? I tend to find that most of the weight in my aircraft comes from fuel and engines.
@MylesPlanes Generally speaking, if your plane is unstable, you need to move the centre of lift (CoL) further behind the centre of mass (CoM). On the flipside, this makes your plane turn slower as well - after all, stability is just a resistance to turning. To make up for this, make sure your wing loading is low and your control surfaces are well-placed. Wing loading is the weight of your aircraft divided by the wing area. To get a low wing loading, you want bigger wings and a lighter aircraft. As for your control surfaces, the positioning is important: pitch control surfaces need to be either well in front of the CoM or well behind it; roll surfaces need to be to the left and right; yaw surfaces need to above or below, but honestly those aren't as important and most planes on here have terrible yaw control, most of my own included. If you find that your aircraft turns really slowly, your could maybe make the relevant surfaces a bit bigger. If your aircraft jerks about when turning, the control surfaces are probably too big. So, in summary:
Centre of Lift (the blue sphere) must be behind the Centre of Mass (red sphere)
Bigger wings and a less weight make for a more agile plane
Control surfaces need to be far from the CoM to work well
Alright so I downloaded this and got it working, but there's a few things about it I don't understand. First off, why did you give it thousands of pounds of dead weight? Second, do the wings need to be covered like that for any particular reason? Just trying to understand so I can make sure that I'm actually being helpful!