Whish I would have known about your problems with the cowling. We have one of them parked at our local airport. Some local enthusiast with too much money spends his time restoring and flying it.
The flight computer has to be rotated. In the placement editor it's rotation needs to say: 0° x-axis, 0° y-axis, 0° z-axis, otherwise the chase view is messed up.
Once this was taken care of, it's a pretty nice plane and a surprisingly nice flyer. Mr Coats approves
@WinsWings works pretty good. In fact I got most of my starting knowledge from this tutorial . My only gripe is that the RCN nozzles could be explained better. (From what I know now) They are SimplePlanes' solution to moving the plane in hover mode
@WinsWings yea, he's a charmer. That's why I can't deny him to have his own plane, or car I stead of just looking over my shoulder when I am flying SimplePlanes
Did I see this right? Your engine is a rotator block with four wings attached to it? Kudos ... I claim the 50th upvote for this thing. Though to be sure, you deserved that upvote alone for using shock absorbers in your landing gear already.
Love this plane. It's well thought-out with many details other builders, especially with less than one year of experience, either overlook or don't care about. Also, again like many other planes of builders with more experience, the flying characteristics are pleasant and generally free of vices. And the incide view from the cockpit adds a nice layer of complexity. Congratulations.
Not bad for 46 parts, and it is a pleasure to fly as well. I do have some suggestions for improvements, primarily to make the tail wheel steerable for better taxiing. But I'm not here to criticize. I just enjoy flying the.plane too much
That being said....
1) move the outer two of your five cannons forward until you can see the 'base', that's the bigger back part of the cannon. Apparently That's where SimplePlanes thinks the shells are coming from. If you bury the base completely in the fuselage, the plane will blow itself up
2) replace the back landing gear with a short retractable one. In order for the airplane to rise you have to be able to push the tail down. With four wheels of equal length, you literally have to pivot on your back wheels before you can gain any height.
@Trainz448 I must be getting deja vu experiences. I swear that just last weekend I downloaded a plane with exactly the same wing arrangement and the same engine pods
@WinsWings then you might consider changing the input for the rear engine from ' 'Throttle' to 'Throttle+a*Trim+b*Pitch' with a around 0.5 and b about 0.2. the exact numbers will depend on tht aircraft and will have to be tweaked by lots of flight testing.
Look how I did with my Golden Rocketship. The front bottom 2 engines do the trim, the Pitch is added to the rear bottom 2 engines. (The clamp(rate(Altitude)-0.5, -1,0) factor is the automatic descent control. It kicks in when the rate of descent is bigger than 0.5....)
Do you use engine power or propeller pitch for thrust control? I think Pitch might give a quicker response but I'm not sure as I haven't tested it yet.
(I assume you use differential thrust on the front and back engines to control pitch in hover mode)
Not bad for a first build with standard blocks. Yes, landing can be tricky, especially with the massive power of the turboprop. But apart of that, it flies surprisingly well.
@Ninja451 if you need some ideas on how to make a wing brake, a year ago, I uploaded a demonstrator aircraft that uses a dummy wing bureied inside the main wing to 'pull out' air brakes. May be you can take a look.
Nice upgrade from the previous plane. However still no limiter on the engine travel, meaning you can crash it k to your own fuselage if you're not carefully and pull Trim too far down. Also for my taste it relies too much on the gyro with for instance roll and yaw not even possible by areodynamical means (ailerons and rudders are for show only). Still visually a feast to behold
Not bad for 90 pieces. One gripe though: switch the input for the engine mount rotators from 'VTOL' to 'clamp(VTOL,0,1)'. Otherwise, if you slide the VTOL slider backwards, even by mistake, the props will hack into the fuselage and self-destruct.
@MiloAviation here's what I have on my computer: https://ibb.co/JLCQ0Kq a pretty complete picture of all the Fokker F-7 variants found in the Internet. Apparently copied from a Russian magazine.
As you can see, there are two types of wings. The short wing from the one-engined F-7 and the early 3-enfined ones and a long-wing used for many of the record-setting aircraft. The short wing remained a standard for many short/medium ranged passenger transports.
Engines were the seven-cylinder Wright Whirlwind in the earlier versions and the nine-cylinder ones in the later. Variants with five-cylinder Bristol and Gnome-Rhone engines have been known to fly as well.
https://ibb.co/zT8NdR5v The Fokker T-2 was a long-wing nine-cylinder F-7 built for the US Air Force. The 'Friendship' was the first T-2, given to admiral Richard Byrd for a record flight across the Atlantic. Note the 'American-style' forward sloping windshield and the larger elevator. The blue aircraft below is the 'Southern Cross' from Australian aviation pioneer Charles Kingsford-Smith. This was the prototype long-wing Fokker that somehow ended up in storage in California where Smith bought it pretty much at scrap value and extensively upgraded it. Note the non-standard engine mounts and tail plane.
Finally, https://ibb.co/qYhBWzPp are the drawings I made for my wooden toys. I include them here because they show the different fuselages and rudders in detail.
@Ninja451 couple pf quick things:
1) The vertical control surfaces on the twin fins move the wrong way Change the value for 'control.surface-invert' from False to true
2) set the value for auto-center for tht cockpit camera from 'true' to 'false' so you can look around in tht cockpit
3) the joystick in the cockpit has a value 'length' play with it until you can just see the top of the joystick.while looking straight ahead
Also:
+ The writings on the switches in the Cockpit are really hard to read. May be use a different color
+ Landing is really hard. You need to at least quadruple tht since of tht air brakes to have any effect: increase their 'drag' value, use a large dummy wing as air brake or five the plane a braking parachute.
@MiloAviation do you need any detailed plans?.I tried to make a big wooden F.7 toy plane once, so I got some drawings and some insights if that can help you
@THEBATTLEBRO I did some experimenting: increasing the propeller to 130 in. is enough to get the aircraft out of the water without problems. Of course you will have to raise the floats to make the big diameter prop believable. (I didn't. I just wanted to see if it helps) Increasing the number of propeller blades to 6.also.helps, but it destroys the aesthetics of the plane even more.
Not bad for 66 parts, and at least the windows look like the genuine windows from the genuine Fokker. Might want to consider making all your fuselage pieces 'square' to have the plane look even more like the real thing
Looks great. Love the details like the door handles. On another note: plane is underpowered for water takeoff. Like to see a land version with 1930's style trousered landing gear
Challenge accepted!
At first glance:
1) front wing control surfaces (pitch) are too small, back wing control surfaces too large
2) the position of the back landing gear makes the plane park with severe nose down. This pushes the plane down when trying to take off
3) with only one Blasto-15 jet engine, the plane is severe underpowered, especially with all the bombe you added
4) center of gravity too close to center of lift. Even IF you get the plane to fly, it will stall on first maneuver
Conclusion: the plane needs a massive amount of changes. So I am afraid that the one I will actually get flying will barely look like it's predecessor anymore. Prepare for a massively redesigned fuselage and two engines at least
Flies a bit sluggish. Consider increasing the diameter of the propeller (you can move the nose up some to get the ground clearance needed). Also double-check your connections. I had several parts just 'fall off' as soon as I started flying.
Otherwise a very nice flyer and a worthy early build.
I have no problems with taking off. Just pull the flaps, increase throttle slowly and the plane will take off by itself. Landing, like you said is a little trickier. But just keeping the throttle at 10% instead of zero until your wheels hit the tarmac usually will do. For a taildragger braking is remarkably trouble-free. No rolling over when you brake too hard... Most of the time
Three inprovement suggestions:
1) when you put the throttle governor at 0% it always runs the rotor at optimal speed, regardless wether the power is on or off. Set it to 5% so it won't rotate until you push Activate1. (Do this for main and tail rotor)
2) if you use the flight controller instead of the standard cockpit, make sure the controller is installed with the flat past facing down otherwise your 'chase view' will be upside down. Rotate the one you installed from 180° back to 0
3) set the roll range of your gyroscope to something like 20° instead of 0 in order otherwise the gyro directly counteracts all the roll input from the right joystick.
Otherwise a pretty nice heli to fly around in. Especially for only 68 parts
Want to make it fly even better: make tht ailerons a little smaller and the stabilo a little bigger. Right now, it rolls real fast but has trouble pulling out of a dive.
Whish I would have known about your problems with the cowling. We have one of them parked at our local airport. Some local enthusiast with too much money spends his time restoring and flying it.
+1@WinsWings I sent a link on discord for the first draft of the tutorial
+1Hahaha... Didn't think someone would take my suggestion of a parachute and a bottle rocket seriously. Nice job. Mr.Coats will live it
The flight computer has to be rotated. In the placement editor it's rotation needs to say: 0° x-axis, 0° y-axis, 0° z-axis, otherwise the chase view is messed up.
Once this was taken care of, it's a pretty nice plane and a surprisingly nice flyer. Mr Coats approves
Some issues with stability and the landing gear is too far aft for my taste. Still it has potential. Looking forwards to your next versions
Nice plane, love the details, still, 500mph in forward flight? Me thinks you is a little overpowered
+1@caid0ngming ok. So now you got to take the figure and build an airplane around it, or a kiddie car
@WinsWings still writing my tutorial, but ll take it for a little spin after work tomorrow
+1Challenge accepted....
Have I ever... A 50 ft. 900 mph Canadian goose....
@WinsWings works pretty good. In fact I got most of my starting knowledge from this tutorial . My only gripe is that the RCN nozzles could be explained better. (From what I know now) They are SimplePlanes' solution to moving the plane in hover mode
+1July 2 nd? Forgive me if I pass. By July 2nd I may be have detailed sketches of what I am about to build.
@WinsWings yea, he's a charmer. That's why I can't deny him to have his own plane, or car I stead of just looking over my shoulder when I am flying SimplePlanes
+2Did I see this right? Your engine is a rotator block with four wings attached to it? Kudos ... I claim the 50th upvote for this thing. Though to be sure, you deserved that upvote alone for using shock absorbers in your landing gear already.
+1Love this plane. It's well thought-out with many details other builders, especially with less than one year of experience, either overlook or don't care about. Also, again like many other planes of builders with more experience, the flying characteristics are pleasant and generally free of vices. And the incide view from the cockpit adds a nice layer of complexity. Congratulations.
+1Not bad for 46 parts, and it is a pleasure to fly as well. I do have some suggestions for improvements, primarily to make the tail wheel steerable for better taxiing. But I'm not here to criticize. I just enjoy flying the.plane too much
That being said....
1) move the outer two of your five cannons forward until you can see the 'base', that's the bigger back part of the cannon. Apparently That's where SimplePlanes thinks the shells are coming from. If you bury the base completely in the fuselage, the plane will blow itself up
2) replace the back landing gear with a short retractable one. In order for the airplane to rise you have to be able to push the tail down. With four wheels of equal length, you literally have to pivot on your back wheels before you can gain any height.
@WinsWings yea, see me grow. Now I already got 1/70 of your points. At that rate I might overtake you by 2050
+1@Trainz448 I must be getting deja vu experiences. I swear that just last weekend I downloaded a plane with exactly the same wing arrangement and the same engine pods
Did you reupload this one? I think I saw something almost exactly like that a week ago
@WinsWings then you might consider changing the input for the rear engine from '
'Throttle' to 'Throttle+a*Trim+b*Pitch' with a around 0.5 and b about 0.2. the exact numbers will depend on tht aircraft and will have to be tweaked by lots of flight testing.
Look how I did with my Golden Rocketship. The front bottom 2 engines do the trim, the Pitch is added to the rear bottom 2 engines. (The clamp(rate(Altitude)-0.5, -1,0) factor is the automatic descent control. It kicks in when the rate of descent is bigger than 0.5....)
+1Do you use engine power or propeller pitch for thrust control? I think Pitch might give a quicker response but I'm not sure as I haven't tested it yet.
(I assume you use differential thrust on the front and back engines to control pitch in hover mode)
Not bad for a first build with standard blocks. Yes, landing can be tricky, especially with the massive power of the turboprop. But apart of that, it flies surprisingly well.
@Ninja451 if you need some ideas on how to make a wing brake, a year ago, I uploaded a demonstrator aircraft that uses a dummy wing bureied inside the main wing to 'pull out' air brakes. May be you can take a look.
Cigogne-STOL-testbed
The dummy wing is symmetrical.so it doesn't affect the main wing when flying. It's drag is set to 5 in xml
+1Marvelous visuals, marvelous flying characteristics. I call on @Jundroo to make this the standard demonstrator helicopter in their new game.
One gripe though: 2500 hp.on tht rotor is overkill. The helicopter flies perfectly, even better, with only 250
+2Nice upgrade from the previous plane. However still no limiter on the engine travel, meaning you can crash it k to your own fuselage if you're not carefully and pull Trim too far down. Also for my taste it relies too much on the gyro with for instance roll and yaw not even possible by areodynamical means (ailerons and rudders are for show only). Still visually a feast to behold
Not bad for 90 pieces. One gripe though: switch the input for the engine mount rotators from 'VTOL' to 'clamp(VTOL,0,1)'. Otherwise, if you slide the VTOL slider backwards, even by mistake, the props will hack into the fuselage and self-destruct.
You can shave one piece off if you make one side of the vertical stabilizer a square, pull it to the middle and then delete the other
@MiloAviation here's what I have on my computer:
https://ibb.co/JLCQ0Kq a pretty complete picture of all the Fokker F-7 variants found in the Internet. Apparently copied from a Russian magazine.
As you can see, there are two types of wings. The short wing from the one-engined F-7 and the early 3-enfined ones and a long-wing used for many of the record-setting aircraft. The short wing remained a standard for many short/medium ranged passenger transports.
Engines were the seven-cylinder Wright Whirlwind in the earlier versions and the nine-cylinder ones in the later. Variants with five-cylinder Bristol and Gnome-Rhone engines have been known to fly as well.
https://ibb.co/1JRZHXVJ and https://ibb.co/ymfB3qrK seven-cylinder short-wing passenger planes from the Netherlands and Switzerland respectively.
https://ibb.co/zT8NdR5v The Fokker T-2 was a long-wing nine-cylinder F-7 built for the US Air Force. The 'Friendship' was the first T-2, given to admiral Richard Byrd for a record flight across the Atlantic. Note the 'American-style' forward sloping windshield and the larger elevator. The blue aircraft below is the 'Southern Cross' from Australian aviation pioneer Charles Kingsford-Smith. This was the prototype long-wing Fokker that somehow ended up in storage in California where Smith bought it pretty much at scrap value and extensively upgraded it. Note the non-standard engine mounts and tail plane.
Finally, https://ibb.co/qYhBWzPp are the drawings I made for my wooden toys. I include them here because they show the different fuselages and rudders in detail.
This is hands down the easiest plane to land on an aircraft carrier. Especially if you tweak the air brakes to deploy on (engine) brake as well.
+1@Ninja451 couple pf quick things:
1) The vertical control surfaces on the twin fins move the wrong way Change the value for 'control.surface-invert' from False to true
2) set the value for auto-center for tht cockpit camera from 'true' to 'false' so you can look around in tht cockpit
3) the joystick in the cockpit has a value 'length' play with it until you can just see the top of the joystick.while looking straight ahead
Also:
+1+ The writings on the switches in the Cockpit are really hard to read. May be use a different color
+ Landing is really hard. You need to at least quadruple tht since of tht air brakes to have any effect: increase their 'drag' value, use a large dummy wing as air brake or five the plane a braking parachute.
@Ninja451 ok, give me a couple of hours to fly around in it and if I find something, I will let you know
+1@MiloAviation do you need any detailed plans?.I tried to make a big wooden F.7 toy plane once, so I got some drawings and some insights if that can help you
@THEBATTLEBRO I did some experimenting: increasing the propeller to 130 in. is enough to get the aircraft out of the water without problems. Of course you will have to raise the floats to make the big diameter prop believable. (I didn't. I just wanted to see if it helps) Increasing the number of propeller blades to 6.also.helps, but it destroys the aesthetics of the plane even more.
Dude what happened to your horizontal stabilizer?
Not bad for 66 parts, and at least the windows look like the genuine windows from the genuine Fokker. Might want to consider making all your fuselage pieces 'square' to have the plane look even more like the real thing
Looks great. Love the details like the door handles. On another note: plane is underpowered for water takeoff. Like to see a land version with 1930's style trousered landing gear
Really, I don't deserve a single upvote on this. It should all go to Dots. He did all of the work other than five minutes of repainting
@Mitterbin I since uploaded a version with custom XML flaps. Check it out HERE
+1Love the look and feel of this build.
You did notice your tailplanes move down when they should move up?
And I just did...
Too much parts for me to fly on my little cell phone, but every builder that spends 300 points on a historically correct engine deserves my upvote
+1Challenge accepted!
At first glance:
1) front wing control surfaces (pitch) are too small, back wing control surfaces too large
2) the position of the back landing gear makes the plane park with severe nose down. This pushes the plane down when trying to take off
3) with only one Blasto-15 jet engine, the plane is severe underpowered, especially with all the bombe you added
4) center of gravity too close to center of lift. Even IF you get the plane to fly, it will stall on first maneuver
Conclusion: the plane needs a massive amount of changes. So I am afraid that the one I will actually get flying will barely look like it's predecessor anymore. Prepare for a massively redesigned fuselage and two engines at least
Flies a bit sluggish. Consider increasing the diameter of the propeller (you can move the nose up some to get the ground clearance needed). Also double-check your connections. I had several parts just 'fall off' as soon as I started flying.
Otherwise a very nice flyer and a worthy early build.
I have no problems with taking off. Just pull the flaps, increase throttle slowly and the plane will take off by itself. Landing, like you said is a little trickier. But just keeping the throttle at 10% instead of zero until your wheels hit the tarmac usually will do. For a taildragger braking is remarkably trouble-free. No rolling over when you brake too hard... Most of the time
Three inprovement suggestions:
1) when you put the throttle governor at 0% it always runs the rotor at optimal speed, regardless wether the power is on or off. Set it to 5% so it won't rotate until you push Activate1. (Do this for main and tail rotor)
2) if you use the flight controller instead of the standard cockpit, make sure the controller is installed with the flat past facing down otherwise your 'chase view' will be upside down. Rotate the one you installed from 180° back to 0
3) set the roll range of your gyroscope to something like 20° instead of 0 in order otherwise the gyro directly counteracts all the roll input from the right joystick.
Otherwise a pretty nice heli to fly around in. Especially for only 68 parts
+1Want to make it fly even better: make tht ailerons a little smaller and the stabilo a little bigger. Right now, it rolls real fast but has trouble pulling out of a dive.
@Destwoy01 naa, the trimming on the fuselage was the only 'custom' paint parts, the rest were all regular components,.just colored differently.
+1Again, If you want the chase camera to work, rotate the flight controller behind the front gear 180°. The octagon part should point up.