1,514 atgxtg Comments

  • Help... 5.5 years ago

    Sure, although you might be better goggling some basic aircraft stuff.

    Basically, there are four forces that act on a plane that you have to deal with: Gravity, Lift, Drag and Thrust.

    Gravity is the force that pulls you airplane down. The value of this force is called weight. The more weight on a plane the more it wants to come down to earth.

    Next is Lift. Lift is the force that pushes a plane upwards. The more lift a plane has the more it wants to go up. A plane gets lift mostly from it's wings moving through the air. The bigger the wings and/or the faster it moves, the more lift. Now if a plane produces less lift than it's weight, it will go down (fall). If it produces more lift than it's weight it will rise (climb). I it produces exactly the same amount of lift as it's weight it will fly level.

    Now the important bit here is that weight and lift counterbalance each other. You usually want to keep your center of lift (the blue CoL ball in the designer) behind your center of mass (weight, the red CoM ball in the designer). If Lift gets ahead of mass (weight) then the plane will be unstable and go out of control on liftoff. If lift is too far behind mass, then the plane gets nose heavy and wants to point down. If lift and mass are close then the plane might be very maneuverable, but unstable. Too close and the plane will be tail heavy and pitch up.

    Now we move onto Drag. Drag is the force of air that the plane flies through. The bigger the airplane the greater the drag force against it. Rough blocky shapes, and bits that stick out, such as landing gear increase drag, as do bigger wings. Drag increases with speed too, and not in a linear fashion. . Drag can be reduced by streamlining a plane, smoothing it out, and retracting or hiding parts behind other sections. Drag is the enemy of and counteracted by Thrust.

    Note that drag is like having someone tugging on a plane holding it back. If drag is distributed unevenly across a plane (too much on one side) then the section with more drag will move slower than the rest of the plane, causing it to turn to one side in a circle. Just how bad this will be depends on just uneven the drag is and how fast the plane is moving. What can be an irritating tendency at 100 MPH might mean a complete loss of control at 1000 MPH. So drag should be balanced out on both sides. This kinda holds true for top and bottom but it isn't usually a problem.

    Thrust is the force that moves the plane forward.
    Thrust is what

    +5
  • Do you guys want me to make a mobile railway? 9 months ago

    Definitely built it. Not only will it appeal to train enthusiasts, but it could be used as a launch platform for aircraft and gliders.
    In fact if someone were to put a winch on it they would have a perfect winch tow system for a glider. I could see someone like @TheGliderGuy laying out a whole winch track line on Wright Island or Maywar based on your concept.

    So this might get more than just the train people excited.

    +3
  • Airborne Tactical Pencil 1.2 years ago

    Always fond of erasing aircraft.

    +3
  • Assault Shaker 5.4 years ago

    Good thing it's not electric, then it would be Assault & Battery.

    +3
  • i just want to ask how wide the fuselage and or the cockpit of the B-25 is 5.5 years ago

    @F104Deathtrap Don't forget the mass production factor. Smaller aircraft need less materials to build, so you can make more of them.

    +3
  • airship Parorokon Ver1.1 5.7 years ago

    If Fisher-Price went to war...

    +3
  • P/W Ratio 2.7 years ago

    @AicE There is nothing you need to fix. For prop planes SP uses "Horsepower/Weight Ratio", which is shown to be 0.779 on your aircraft, which is correct (2000HP/2566lbs= 0.779).

    SP uses Power for Jet Thrust, and since the plane doesn't have a Jet Engine "Power/Weight Ratio" is N/A. It probably would have been better if they had called this Thrust/Weight Ratio instead.

    +2
  • XFWAAC-MCLV ''Actias'' Flying Aircraft Carrier 2.7 years ago

    Carrier? More like it's a flying airport!

    +2
  • Supermarine Spitfire Mk V 2.7 years ago

    This looks and flies pretty good for a bronze level replica. BTW, there is a way to get the landing gear to retract with the landing gear button instead of VTOL, if you want.

    +2
  • Supermarine Scimitar F.1 3.6 years ago

    @ollielebananiaCFSP LOL! I didn't think so last nught when I hit the wrong button in flight. I was like: "What!?? No,no,no, no..oh, wait it's still flying. Handles pretty good too." Moral of the story: don't drink and fly.

    +2
  • I need help 5.4 years ago

    You can alter the size and shape of the ends, right down to individual corners (on manual),. You can also use fuselage cones to help too.
    I suggest finding a plane that you think looks good, downloading it, and taking it apart to see how they did it. Pick something with a fairly low part count to keep it easy.

    +2
  • Eminent Comp 5.5 years ago

    Simply Gorgeous design.

    +2
  • Wings fail 5.5 years ago

    If you don't or can't XML Mod it, what you can do is build your wings in two sections. Use a structural wing for the part that connects to the fuselage, and a standard wing for the part with control surfaces.

    You can also use the position tool to nudge the wings into a fuselage a little. That seems to help reduce wing flexing.

    +2
  • Scout Deadstick V.2 *Floats* 5.5 years ago

    Nice looking plane.
    BTW, If you use the water pedals, you can take off without using the flaps. Great water pedals.

    +2
  • Another landing gear problem 5.5 years ago

    With landing gear it depends on their aspect to the wind (think or wide) as well as if they are shielded by something else (like the fuselage). I've had some designs where the gear produced more drag when up.

    What you need is someplace out of the way for the gear to fold up into.

    +2
  • Upcoming Mod? 5.6 years ago

    We finally get to see SP underwater! Great!

    +2
  • Force 14 XVF - 340 5.6 years ago

    It's a nice design, and capable of speeds well over 1000 mph. I've gotten one up to 1107 mph.

    +2
  • i dont even know anymore .KEPLER 1B 8 months ago

    It's not that you are doing anything wrong per say, it's more a case of where you sit on the learning curve vs. what people are looking for.

    When most people start off in Simpleplanes they build fairy basic, simple aircraft, as they should. But these basic designs usually do not have much that would interest more experienced builders. So new players don't get much traffic or feedback. Also keep in mind that all new designs sort of compete with each other for attention and advanced designs will coll features tend to attract more attention, downloads and feedback.

    Just keep plugging away and as you make more designs and as your designs get progressively better, you should eventually make something that interests people and gets more feedback. It just takes time. I've been playing SP for 5 years and I only have about 1400 more points that you do. Most of those came from things that I didn't expect earn points, while most of the stuff I though would get points didn't.

    +1
  • Navigation; multiple conditional statements 9 months ago

    @Korzalerke2147483647
    They don't seem to work, If i recall correctly when you have an conditional statement that is false, nothing that follows it gets processed. In the past I've had to multiply and add up several conditions to get around it.

    On a positive note MrCOPTY 's https://www.simpleplanes.com/a/8bjkWo/Grumman-F9F-2-Panther-FULL-EXPERIENCE, has a waypoint system that is almost exactly what I was going for. I just have to reverse engineer his variables. The variable do seem to be much better than typing out formula's multiple times.

    So at least now I know it can be done, because it has been done.!

    +1
  • The ExGLIDE 9 months ago

    He's right; they do.

    I'm still trying to figure out how you make these vertically stable.

    +1
  • CH-49 Gyrodyne one year ago

    @WinsWings
    That would depend on the size of the rotors. I think a 4 rotor one with, say 400" rotor blades might just work. Oh, btw, if you increase the virbration damper on the rotors it won't shake.

    +1
  • Little Eggie (For Eggcraft Challenge) one year ago

    @WinsWings Since you recognize the aircraft and expressed an intenest here is what my "Little Nellie" looks like: https://www.simpleplanes.com/a/B0H05W/Jan-28-23-Little-Nellie-Control-Match
    It's not finished and doesn't quite fly and take off the way I want yet, nor are the weapons quite right, so fly at your own risk

    +1
  • Classic Autogyro one year ago

    @WinsWings I have quite a few other designs myself. I started building them a couple of years back for that egg-shapped aircraft contest and took an interest in the Wallis autogryo from You Only Live Twice.

    The problem with autogryos, as far as the SP community is concerned is is that they aren't fast and sexy like fighter jets, they do not have have the sort of fanbase that World War 2 and Cold War era aircraft have, they aren't feasible for combat, their role has mostly been eclipsed by improvements in airplane and helicopter designs, and they don't promote any new cutting edge technology that attracts attention.
    So they are just a niche thing, much like airships, ground effect vehicles, and parasails, but the autogryo's unique thing, the rotor, isn't all that unique, or even noticed by most people. The average person usually mistakes them for helicopters.

    +1
  • Classic Autogyro one year ago

    @gigachad Fair enough. I just wanted to point out that this is pretty much how the orginal autogryo's looked. Basically they were an airplane with a rotor blade on top.

    +1
  • Classic Autogyro one year ago

    @WinsWings Your welcome. Sadly, autogryos are not well known, and most people misidentify them as helicopters. Most people don't even realize that the main rotor is unpowered (well...mostly unpowered). Most people today know more about airships despite the fact that the autogryo is still around and still quite viable.

    +1
  • Daydream Autogyro one year ago

    @WinsWings
    Thanks. As for the neglect, well autogryos just are not very popular around here, probably because most people don't know what they are, and just take them for being helicopters. There were only four entries in the Autogyro Challenge, and only half of those were actual autogryos.

    +1
  • Little Eggie (For Eggcraft Challenge) one year ago

    @WinsWings
    It's sort of the Fisher-Price version of Little Nellie for the Eggcraft Challenge. I'm working on the actual "Little Nellie", WA-116, but it's not finished. Some stuff in SImpleplanes acts weird at lower weights.

    If I recall correctly, This one has a flaw with the guns not being zero'd out properly, although I might have spotted and fixed that before posting.

    +1
  • Classic Autogyro one year ago

    @gigachad What's silly about it?

    It's a pretty standard early gryoplane design. Back when Juan de la Cierva invented it, he used an airplane fuselage. The idea was that this design was safer than the more conventional fixed wing airplane, since it would be stall proof, and if the engine gave out, the gyroplane would auto-rotate safely to the ground. Some designens even had fixzed wings in addition to the rotor blades.

    Even today, this sort of design is considered safer than the modern pusher-propeller autogyros, with maybe the Benson-Wallis designs being the exception, because, well, Ken Wallis probably knew as much about autogyros as anyone.

    So this build is the real deal.

    +1
  • XYZ coord label (get map coordinates like longitude, latitude and altitude without console commands) 1.1 years ago

    @Kendog84
    Actually the FT code for determining the heading and distance is the easy part. People do it in real life. check out: https://www.igismap.com/formula-to-find-bearing-or-heading-angle-between-two-points-latitude-longitude/

    I probably take a stab at that later and use Wright Airport as a test.

    To me, the hard bit would be selecting the destination. I can see a few ways to do it.

    1) Each of the islands (and the Kraken/Cthulhu) could be it's own table, perhaps tied to an activation group. This would be easy, but lead to a lot of locations and clutter up the dash board.. Perhaps it could be put on some sort of rotating part (think revolving license plate) that use use a slider so as to only show one location and heading at a time.

    2) The VTOL and Trim sliders could be the X and Y coordinates. Since the SP world takes up around a 200 mile by 200 mile area, we'd have to multiple the sliders and add the result to a centrally placed location. This means you could find the heading and distance to practically anywhere worth going to on the map, but in fairly large increments (about a mile per 0.01 difference on the sliders).

    3) Somehow each locations and it's coordinated could be assigned to a position on the Trim slider. Something like Avalance, Krabola, Wright Island, and Maywar. I think it's possible to do that, but a bit beyond my current understanding.I might be able to program 3 locations to a slider. Maybe if I used a slider and an activation group I could get more.

    +1
  • XYZ coord label (get map coordinates like longitude, latitude and altitude without console commands) 1.1 years ago

    @Kendog84
    THe slow flying on autpilot thing is more when I'm testing a build to see if I got the fuel rate and range right. It's annoying to run out of fuel while island hopping.

    As far as the circling thing goes, yeah, it seems possible. Basically it would have to check the coordinates to determine if the plane was within a certain distance from the island, and then initiate a slight bank and a bit of pitch to hold altitude. And then hope the plane doesn't fall into the sea or fly into a mountain, as there is nothing that prevents a plane of autopilot from doing either of those things.

    What I think might be easier to implement and a bit more practical would be to select a destination (in SP, one of a handful of islands) and then the nav system displays the heading and distance to that destination. So if someone was in the ocean north of Wright Island and they wanted to go to Krakabloa it might show a bearing of 60 degrees and a distance of 20 miles/32km.

    +1
  • XYZ coord label (get map coordinates like longitude, latitude and altitude without console commands) 1.1 years ago

    @Kendog84 Well getting lost depends a bit on what type of aircraft I flyy and how I
    fly it. If I'm flying fast jets and fly near an island or fly from one to another, then I almost always know where I am. But if I am flying something slow like a small prop plane or autogyro that is going under 200 mph, then I might use more autopilot when going from one island to another and watch a video. At those time I might overshoot an island or undershoot it and not know quite where I am.

    +1
  • XYZ coord label (get map coordinates like longitude, latitude and altitude without console commands) 1.1 years ago

    @Kendog84
    Yes, very useful. Sometimes I get lost between islands, especially when using weather effects.

    +1
  • Beechcraft 99 Airliner 1.1 years ago

    @MAPA
    So are you going to enter the MAPA challenge?

    +1
  • XYZ coord label (get map coordinates like longitude, latitude and altitude without console commands) 1.1 years ago

    This is nice, thanks. It can really help me figure out what direction to turn to when I get lost in the middle of the ocean. I just need to visit all the islands and get their general coordinates.

    BTW, if you want an 360 degree heading instead of the +180 to -180 use {Heading<0? floor(Heading+360):floor(Heading)}

    +1
  • How can i make my flying wing more stable ? 1.2 years ago

    You could angle the main wing so that it is a bit V-shaped. That would make it provide vertical stabilization on it's own.

    +1
  • THE AUTOGYRO CHALLENGE 1.2 years ago

    @WinsWings
    What about autogyros that have a pre-rotator? They would have a powered rotor but not power it during flight.

    +1
  • Forward or Reverse? 1.7 years ago

    @TheFlightGuySP
    Thanks again. Oh, and if you want to see what sort of monster you helped to bring into the world: https://www.simpleplanes.com/a/XriRWP/725t-Autogyro

    Note- it's a testbed, not a finished design. But it does help to reverse engineer how some things work so as to the desired performance out of a build. Because autogyros are weird.

    +1
  • Forward or Reverse? 1.7 years ago

    @TheFlightGuySP Yeah that does seem to work, and

    <color=#{ IAS>5&(AngleOfSlip>90 | AngleOfSlip<-90) ? "FF0000":"00ff00"}>mph
    {round(IAS*2.236936);}

    seems to work in the HUD to change the speed from green to red when it stalls. I did reduce the IAS factor as 5m/s is borderline "too late" for this particular build, but the code does the trick.

    Thanks, you saved me a lot of work. I was going to try and use the rate of change of the latitude and longitude with trig to get a direction of movement and then compare that to the heading to see if it is moving in the direction it is facing or not.

    Your method is a lot simpler! Thanks.

    +1
  • ??avtojir 1.7 years ago

    It's not a bad autogryo.

    +1
  • Paramotor! 1.7 years ago

    This is impressive.

    +1
  • Can you stop wheels from moving. 2.7 years ago

    @FabioGalvao5679 Thanks for trying to help.

    +1
  • Can you stop wheels from moving. 2.7 years ago

    @FabioGalvao5679 Thanks for the reply, but the aircraft doesn't use a car engine. In fact the car engine weights more than the (empty) gyro.

    +1
  • my first airplane 2.7 years ago

    Let's see:
    1. It didn't blow up -that's better than my first plane.
    2. It took off - that's also better than my first plane, and my second.
    3. Once in the air it flew-better than my next 3 or 4 planes.
    4. It didn't crash- Now better than anything I had in single digits
    5. It landed on one piece without flames or anything- Better than my first dozen airplanes.
    6. When I landed it, the tail went over the nose three times and the aircraft ended up rightside up and undamaged. - I've never built a plane that could do that!

    So it's a great start!

    +1
  • Little Eggie (For Eggcraft Challenge) 2.7 years ago

    @BlackThuNDR Yea 43.5 points! That's better than I expected. I had a ball, or should I say egg?

    As far as deployment goes, It's a decent scout craft for flying around the canyons and mountains, and has enough reserve lift thanks to collective (VTOL) to avoid mountains. I believe the actual WA-116 was first submitted as a scout craft. The weapons were just props added on for the movie.

    It's a flawed ground attack craft at present, as the rocket pods are accidentally 5 degrees above the point of aim. This was one of a half dozen pesky errors that slipped by me until after I submitted it. I did correct that, reduced Yaw in the gyroscope, added additional pitch control for improved take offs, and the ability to fly level at very slow speeds- say 20 mph at 15 feet above sea level. The improved, fixed version would probably make a nice tank killer, I've done it around the volcano at Krakabloa (it's similar to the volcano in the film). But the fixed version would be something created after the deadline and thus unfair.

    So I vote for scout craft. Without the weapons it will actually be lighter and faster.

    Thanks for the contest. I had a lot of fun building and flying this, and had to learn new things to get the design to work.I found a bug with Rocket Pods, that causes an aircraft to stop flying, too. So thanks again.

    +1
  • Little Eggie (For Eggcraft Challenge) 2.7 years ago

    @BlackThuNDR Thanks. I sort of ran out of time on it before I could add in the air mines and fine tune everything. I should have an improved version in a few days. Thanks for the contest- I learned some new stuff about SP building this.

    +1
  • Vought F4U Cosair 2.7 years ago

    Love the gunsight!

    +1
  • Supermarine Spitfire Mk V 2.7 years ago

    @Raiquaza19AirComp Yeah, you need overload to change the activation for the hinges, but you do not need overload to use them once modified. I could modify the hinges for you and re-post it to you. Then you'd be able to use those hinges for this plan and any others you want to make custom landing gear for.

    +1
  • RJ-EE Wasp USAF 3.3 2.7 years ago

    This is a fun little jet. Size and wingspan similar to an A4 but with twice the weight and six times the thrust. Plus an after burner! Definitely fun.

    +1
  • Semedian Birdin OrC41A "Casquilho" 3.1 years ago

    @SemedianIndustries
    Truly. Just look at any one of my attempts compared to yours. Yours makes mine look like one of those pre-Write Brothers aircraft that you see in black & white newreels that fall apart before your eyes.

    +1
  • I Need Your Help! 3.5 years ago

    Maybe this might work as a start: http://www.simpleplanes.com/a/Qlm2x4/SonicManias-Biplane

    I played around with the design a little and got it flying. It doesn't fly well but it flies. What I did was move the fuel (and weight) forward, and added some wings into the lower front wing and the tail section. You can adjust the performance to your liking by altering the size and scale of those wing pieces and/or the airfoil shape.

    Let me know if you need more help with it.

    +1