Please explain 'simple': is it a maximum number of parts? Standard blocks only? No interior? No rotators? I'm wondering how detailed I can make. 1940's classic prop and still be within the 'simple' limits.
The elegant solution: increase the range of the two landing gear rotators from 90 to 135° the landing gear will no longer end up one over tht other and competing for space.
It took me 1/2 an hour to rearrange the input and rotor settings to my liking. But then, the helicopter flew like a dream, even without the gyro. Congratulations
@YuYsukablyat that's between about 500 and 650 mph. Good to know. My idea was to make a potent 2-seat trainer and transform it into a 1-seat light ground attack craft with the space for the second seat used for a cannon and bomb bay
Congratulations. Your plane was the best entry in my Mr. Coats wants a ride challenge... Or rather the only flyable out of the 3 entries. By the rules of the game that should give you 10 upvotes. So I upvoted the 10 most interesting planes out of your arsenal. With this you are but one plane away from reaching silver. Congratulations
20 years of continuing improvements. The original F-18a came into service in the early 1980's. The super hornet in the mid-2000's.
Over that time there were lots of components that just got better, chiefly everything with a computer in it.
It also got stronger engines to carry more payload.
And if you see them side by side, due to the new engines, the Super Hornet has square air intakes. The 1980's model nas rounded ones.
Nice aircraft, nice details.
One little gripe though: The front wheel turns left when you're steering to the right and doesn't turn at all when steering to the left. You have to go into the overload editor, invert the input and set the minimum range from 0 to -1.
Otherwise a real neat flying plane. I would have wished for flaps, but it lands surprisingly well without them. So I let that one slide
1) front wheel works perfectly. Only that it buries itself in the fuselage. Either diminish the rotation range of the rotator or open the two fuselage blocks the wheel touches in the overload Editor and set the :DisableAircraftCollisions value from 'false' to 'true'
2 For the rear wheels, disconnect all and then reconnect, the rotator, the top arrow to the fuselage, the bottom arrow to the gear.
@AviVr yea. That's how SimplePlanes is. I am not saying you did anything wrong with 'taking a right-handed approach'. I know a couple of fellow builders who love it that way and go great lengths to defend their views. If I would wish you did something different, it would be that you would note it in the description. That's all.
And yes, I spend almost as much time testing and tweaking as I spend building. That's SimplePlanes for you....
Ps: left slider is Trim, right slider is VTOL. I know there is some discussion whether this is more intuitive than the regular SimplePlanes lauout. But this plane does it. So either fly around a.littlw until you get used to it or reverse the input for your own custom plane.
@MIGFOXHOUND31BSM26 that's the beauty of SimplePlanes. You can crash as often as you want and just reload and try again. Plus the jet fuel doesn't dissolve your skin on contact like the C-Stoff reagent of the Me-163 did.
Update: downloading the aircraft again for some test flights, I found that the left and right nozzles are slightly off and also too far back. If you have this plane downloaded, consider changing the position of the nozzles from z=0.50 to z=0.65
@Supersoli8
Ok.... (Step 0, before trying to open the doors, consider adding three long-legged retractable landing gear legs to the plane: one in the front and two under the wings. Opening the bomb bay will be a lot easier to watch if the bomb bay doors have some space to rotate.) Step1: take a standard square block and a hinge rotator. Turn the rotator until the main body is up and the tip is down. Then move it over the block. If it hasn't connected by itself, open the connections tab and connect the lower arrow of the rotator to the top arrow of the block. Start your plane on any airfield. The block should now be visible with the rotator sticking out. If you move VTOL, the rotator should rotate forward and back. Step 2: move the rotator with block to the bottom of your plane. If the rotator doesn't connect by itself, open the Attachment Editor tab and 'add a connection': connect the top arrow of the rotator to the bottom or side of your fuselage block. Run again and check if now the rotator moves through block.
If it doesn't, again open the connections tab and make sure the block is connected only to the rotator. If this doesn't help, delete ann connections on the rotator and once again connect the top arrow of the rotator to the fuselage and the bottom arrow to the dock
Step 3:scale the rotator block to 0.5,1,0.2 and use the placement tool to move it to the place you want to connect the bomb bay doors. Again go to the airfield and again test if the block still rotates. If it doesn't, check the connections again. Step 4: now delete all connections of the block, then delete the block. Instead move one of your bomb bay pieces to the location and snap it into place. Then delete all connections and reconnect it to the hinge rotator only. Important hollow fuselages have a strange way of connecting. You deliberately have to connect the bottom arrow of the rotator to the side arrow of the hollow fuselage piece. You might have to try a couple of times to get this right. Go to the runway and test the bomb bay opening. If you got it right, it should work without problems. If it doesn't, go back to the construction screen and check the connections of the bomb bay pieces. It should be connected only to the rotator. If this still doesn't help, delete this connection also and reconnect again, making sure you connect the bottom arrow of the hinge rotator to the side arrow of the hollow fuselage bomb bay door piece. Go to the airfield aga
I actually don't see a problem there. The rotators work fine as long as you connect them to the SIDES of the hollow pieces. You just have to think of the pieces of hollow blocks you use for the bomb bay as actual blocks and connect the rotators likewise. Here I connect the bottom to the bay door
Two quickies to improve the plane yourself:
1) The center of lift could benefit from being moved way forward towards the center of gravity. Move the wings a good deal forwards.
2) likewise with the wings so far back the pitch response is better if you invert the pitch surfaces on the wings from moving against the stabilizer to moving in the same direction.
Ps @Supersoli8, @TOMAIR0808, you upvoted before I wrote the explanation behind the craft. Please read WHY I made this and decide if you still want to keep your upvote. I won't blame you if you remove it.
So what is the problem with the bomb bay? I see you haven't added any rotators, hinge rotators or even pistons. So do you want it to rotate in, out, slide forward, slide down? And what is the problem so far other than that you haven't started yet?
First reaction, has nothing to do with the bay doors but... You are using a flight computer. In order for it to work properly, all 4 of its tabs must be facing downwards. If not, it messea up your Chase View. I know,.SimplePlanes doesn't document this properly, but it's basically a flat cockpit. If you mount it against to wall, it's the same as a cockpit pointing upwards
I use blueprints for all my historical builds. They do not shape a fuselage, but they provide an image behind your build that you can use to give your fuselage (and wings) the right shape.
(Ps, I gotten into the habit when I download a plan from the Internet to first actually color it blue so it is easier to distinguish the background from the fuselage pieces you work on)
Also you can use them to project a background image of your planes flying right behind your plane so this will show up in your screenshot of the plane when you publish it.
@canadianavgeek853 finally:;the plane has trouble keeping straight when taking off due to the long wing. Consider increasing the surface of the vertical stabilizer.
@canadianavgeek853 also: the plane is very sensitive on roll- input. You can make tht ailerons smaller or slimmer or if you have the overload editor installed, you can click the wing and in the editor select 'controlsurface' and set the 'maximumdedlection' to a lower value like from 35° to 20. That worked wonderful on my copy.
Also, apparently you have two ailerons per wing, so close together they look like one. Consider deleting one of them and edit the other to span the whole length of the wings
@canadianavgeek853 ok. First off: You can delete he orbit camera as it doesn't do anything in this plane. Basically an orbit camera gives you the same functionality as the standard camera that comes with your cockpit. But if the camera somehow gets detached from the plane, the views follow the camera. Typically you use the camera for something like a launchable parachutist or a ship's sloop so you can follow the choose between following the aircraft flying on or the parachutist jumping (or the ship and the sloop.) Here, as you already have a cockpit with camera, you won't need the extra one.
@Karsond I would prefer that you can see at least part of him. The idea of the challenge is to show him showing off his plane (car, boat, rocket tank.....)
I ran I to that problem a couple of times. You used a hollow fuselage for your top block. Hollow fuselages are very picky to where you attach your pistons or rotators. Basically their front and back attachment points don't work. You have to connect your rotators to the arrow that is sticking out of the side of the hollow fuselage, not to the one at the end. Once I did this, I got it to work.
!here's the picture
Can I request a flying crane version? For a helicopter that looks like something from the 1960's Soviet Union, that's exactly what they would have done with it too.
@Kingsman472 me too, but it's pretty hard to get a helicopter to fly decently without one, even if you don't use he gyroscope for steering and keep it just for stabilization. My helicopters always oversteer without one.
Please explain 'simple': is it a maximum number of parts? Standard blocks only? No interior? No rotators? I'm wondering how detailed I can make. 1940's classic prop and still be within the 'simple' limits.
Love it. Eagerly awaiting the version with instruments on the console
+1Great plane. It says something when my only gripe about it is that it flies so easy that flying it gets boring after a while
+1The elegant solution: increase the range of the two landing gear rotators from 90 to 135° the landing gear will no longer end up one over tht other and competing for space.
It took me 1/2 an hour to rearrange the input and rotor settings to my liking. But then, the helicopter flew like a dream, even without the gyro. Congratulations
+2@YuYsukablyat that's between about 500 and 650 mph. Good to know. My idea was to make a potent 2-seat trainer and transform it into a 1-seat light ground attack craft with the space for the second seat used for a cannon and bomb bay
So what is the top speed you need to go transonic?
Love the details
Nice design, love the aesthetic, but honestly, the wing needs to get moved back a whole unit until the thing is even flyable.
+1Love the details.
Congratulations. Your plane was the best entry in my Mr. Coats wants a ride challenge... Or rather the only flyable out of the 3 entries. By the rules of the game that should give you 10 upvotes. So I upvoted the 10 most interesting planes out of your arsenal. With this you are but one plane away from reaching silver. Congratulations
Congratulations @Mineglacier7251yt . Your plane won the first place. Runners-up are @Supersoli8 and @Imakestupidplanes
Keep on it. It took me one year to get to silver. One year later I made Gold.
20 years of continuing improvements. The original F-18a came into service in the early 1980's. The super hornet in the mid-2000's.
Over that time there were lots of components that just got better, chiefly everything with a computer in it.
It also got stronger engines to carry more payload.
And if you see them side by side, due to the new engines, the Super Hornet has square air intakes. The 1980's model nas rounded ones.
@Halcyon215 still allow me to build a simple pioneer aircraft around my detailed pioneer engine. If you don't like it, you can always delete it.
I kept thinking, how do you use 600 pieces in a smooth shape like this, then I saw the cockpit.....
You mean just a dummy engine to be used as a fancy visual in a boat or airplane?
Nice aircraft, nice details.
One little gripe though: The front wheel turns left when you're steering to the right and doesn't turn at all when steering to the left. You have to go into the overload editor, invert the input and set the minimum range from 0 to -1.
Otherwise a real neat flying plane. I would have wished for flaps, but it lands surprisingly well without them. So I let that one slide
1) front wheel works perfectly. Only that it buries itself in the fuselage. Either diminish the rotation range of the rotator or open the two fuselage blocks the wheel touches in the overload Editor and set the :DisableAircraftCollisions value from 'false' to 'true'
2 For the rear wheels, disconnect all and then reconnect, the rotator, the top arrow to the fuselage, the bottom arrow to the gear.
That's all, honestly
@AviVr yea. That's how SimplePlanes is. I am not saying you did anything wrong with 'taking a right-handed approach'. I know a couple of fellow builders who love it that way and go great lengths to defend their views. If I would wish you did something different, it would be that you would note it in the description. That's all.
And yes, I spend almost as much time testing and tweaking as I spend building. That's SimplePlanes for you....
Ps: left slider is Trim, right slider is VTOL. I know there is some discussion whether this is more intuitive than the regular SimplePlanes lauout. But this plane does it. So either fly around a.littlw until you get used to it or reverse the input for your own custom plane.
@MIGFOXHOUND31BSM26 that's the beauty of SimplePlanes. You can crash as often as you want and just reload and try again. Plus the jet fuel doesn't dissolve your skin on contact like the C-Stoff reagent of the Me-163 did.
But otherwise, landing is actually pretty smooth
Update: downloading the aircraft again for some test flights, I found that the left and right nozzles are slightly off and also too far back. If you have this plane downloaded, consider changing the position of the nozzles from z=0.50 to z=0.65
@WinsWings
+1https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NmEgmyQN0wJi1kh8AinAXG5FaNO9YBguuWmJPsl-dnc
Here you go...
@Supersoli8
Ok....
(Step 0, before trying to open the doors, consider adding three long-legged retractable landing gear legs to the plane: one in the front and two under the wings. Opening the bomb bay will be a lot easier to watch if the bomb bay doors have some space to rotate.)
Step1: take a standard square block and a hinge rotator. Turn the rotator until the main body is up and the tip is down. Then move it over the block. If it hasn't connected by itself, open the connections tab and connect the lower arrow of the rotator to the top arrow of the block. Start your plane on any airfield. The block should now be visible with the rotator sticking out. If you move VTOL, the rotator should rotate forward and back.
Step 2: move the rotator with block to the bottom of your plane. If the rotator doesn't connect by itself, open the Attachment Editor tab and 'add a connection': connect the top arrow of the rotator to the bottom or side of your fuselage block. Run again and check if now the rotator moves through block.
If it doesn't, again open the connections tab and make sure the block is connected only to the rotator. If this doesn't help, delete ann connections on the rotator and once again connect the top arrow of the rotator to the fuselage and the bottom arrow to the dock
Step 3:scale the rotator block to 0.5,1,0.2 and use the placement tool to move it to the place you want to connect the bomb bay doors. Again go to the airfield and again test if the block still rotates. If it doesn't, check the connections again.
+1Step 4: now delete all connections of the block, then delete the block. Instead move one of your bomb bay pieces to the location and snap it into place. Then delete all connections and reconnect it to the hinge rotator only.
Important hollow fuselages have a strange way of connecting. You deliberately have to connect the bottom arrow of the rotator to the side arrow of the hollow fuselage piece. You might have to try a couple of times to get this right. Go to the runway and test the bomb bay opening. If you got it right, it should work without problems. If it doesn't, go back to the construction screen and check the connections of the bomb bay pieces. It should be connected only to the rotator. If this still doesn't help, delete this connection also and reconnect again, making sure you connect the bottom arrow of the hinge rotator to the side arrow of the hollow fuselage bomb bay door piece. Go to the airfield aga
I actually don't see a problem there. The rotators work fine as long as you connect them to the SIDES of the hollow pieces. You just have to think of the pieces of hollow blocks you use for the bomb bay as actual blocks and connect the rotators likewise.
+1Here I connect the bottom to the bay door
Two quickies to improve the plane yourself:
1) The center of lift could benefit from being moved way forward towards the center of gravity. Move the wings a good deal forwards.
2) likewise with the wings so far back the pitch response is better if you invert the pitch surfaces on the wings from moving against the stabilizer to moving in the same direction.
Ps @Supersoli8, @TOMAIR0808, you upvoted before I wrote the explanation behind the craft. Please read WHY I made this and decide if you still want to keep your upvote. I won't blame you if you remove it.
@Supersoli8 no, it just uses the Mr.Coats figure and therefore it's flight computer became the standard cockpit
So what is the problem with the bomb bay? I see you haven't added any rotators, hinge rotators or even pistons. So do you want it to rotate in, out, slide forward, slide down? And what is the problem so far other than that you haven't started yet?
First reaction, has nothing to do with the bay doors but... You are using a flight computer. In order for it to work properly, all 4 of its tabs must be facing downwards. If not, it messea up your Chase View. I know,.SimplePlanes doesn't document this properly, but it's basically a flat cockpit. If you mount it against to wall, it's the same as a cockpit pointing upwards
Get her I to SimplePlanes... Mr Coats doesn't want to be the only one in there
I use blueprints for all my historical builds. They do not shape a fuselage, but they provide an image behind your build that you can use to give your fuselage (and wings) the right shape.
(Ps, I gotten into the habit when I download a plan from the Internet to first actually color it blue so it is easier to distinguish the background from the fuselage pieces you work on)
Also you can use them to project a background image of your planes flying right behind your plane so this will show up in your screenshot of the plane when you publish it.
@canadianavgeek853 finally:;the plane has trouble keeping straight when taking off due to the long wing. Consider increasing the surface of the vertical stabilizer.
But that it for now
+1No problem. Just post it anyway. As long as it runs halfway decent on a recent model smart phone it should be good
@canadianavgeek853 also: the plane is very sensitive on roll- input. You can make tht ailerons smaller or slimmer or if you have the overload editor installed, you can click the wing and in the editor select 'controlsurface' and set the 'maximumdedlection' to a lower value like from 35° to 20. That worked wonderful on my copy.
Also, apparently you have two ailerons per wing, so close together they look like one. Consider deleting one of them and edit the other to span the whole length of the wings
+1@canadianavgeek853 ok. First off: You can delete he orbit camera as it doesn't do anything in this plane. Basically an orbit camera gives you the same functionality as the standard camera that comes with your cockpit. But if the camera somehow gets detached from the plane, the views follow the camera. Typically you use the camera for something like a launchable parachutist or a ship's sloop so you can follow the choose between following the aircraft flying on or the parachutist jumping (or the ship and the sloop.) Here, as you already have a cockpit with camera, you won't need the extra one.
+1Nice little plane with a great look.
+1@Karsond I would prefer that you can see at least part of him. The idea of the challenge is to show him showing off his plane (car, boat, rocket tank.....)
I ran I to that problem a couple of times. You used a hollow fuselage for your top block. Hollow fuselages are very picky to where you attach your pistons or rotators. Basically their front and back attachment points don't work. You have to connect your rotators to the arrow that is sticking out of the side of the hollow fuselage, not to the one at the end. Once I did this, I got it to work.
!here's the picture
Love the way you used Mr. Coats' paint schemes for the whole plane
No problem. Posing is just taking the parts in the 'spanner tool' and moving and rotating it.
A tailhook on an F-16?????
+1Ps, how did you get the label to display Cyrillic letters?
Can I request a flying crane version? For a helicopter that looks like something from the 1960's Soviet Union, that's exactly what they would have done with it too.
Wait, is this just a tutorial plane in blue with a 5-blade propellers?
+1So if I get it right, the idea is to rebound the tutorial plane?
@Kingsman472 me too, but it's pretty hard to get a helicopter to fly decently without one, even if you don't use he gyroscope for steering and keep it just for stabilization. My helicopters always oversteer without one.
And you did all that without using a gyroscope?
Congratulations
+1