Aircraft?

[Elysium]

Admit it, some of you have other fetishes than automaking.

Imagine if there were a software similar to Automation, but instead of working with cars, you build aircraft? Perhaps our gracious developers will make an aircraft spinoff when they finish with Automation.

What I had in mind was somewhat similar, but instead of running a business, you design, and fly your aircraft, be it a single seat sport plane or a 500 passenger megajumbo. You wouldn't have to design your own engine though, you could pick from a variety of real life engines for your aircraft, and mount them (almost) anywhere you want. A sophisticated flight simulator would allow you to fly your aircraft, or a number of default aircraft. You would share your aircraft in a forum similar to this one.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I wouldn't mind writing this game myself, so long as it doesn't invoke any copyright issues with Automation. The only problem so far is that I can't come up with a decent name for it.

I wouldn't be surprised If I would see a lot of unconventional and rebellious designs, Like the Beech Starship for example. If it was released now, instead of in 1989, it would be a massive success.



Post your favorite plane or helicopter, if you fancy.

[Daffyflyer]

It'd be an awesome game for sure, though maybe a bit of a smaller niche market than cars (although there are a lot of aviation enthusiats, less of them are of the gamer generation as flying is EXPENSIVE)

If someone made id be rather pleased, but I doubt we'd ever make it.

[darkjedi]

the main idea was to decrease drag and allow for much shorter takeoffs , but the elevator in the front makes any plane very unstable. if it were a stunt plane it would be perfect, or an eurofighter
besides , i could picture a sloppy pilot landing propellers first.

[oldgreg]

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I wouldn't mind writing this game myself, so long as it doesn't invoke any copyright issues with Automation. The only problem so far is that I can't come up with a decent name for it.

If you do write it, you should look into X-Plane. It already does most of what you want, but the Plane Maker bit of it doesn't really restrict you in any way AFAIK (ie, a 100 ft wingspan glider could weigh 1lb if you wanted it to). It seems like that would be the easiest way of going about it.

but the elevator in the front makes any plane very unstable.

That's quite an overstatement, not to mention a generalization. Canards can make a plane unstable if poorly designed and they are a lot easier to get wrong than a traditional empennage, but they are not inherently unstable. In addition, pusher props stabilize pitch and yaw unlike tractor props that destabilize them, so that helps. And on the Starship, there is a little downwards pointing vertical stabilizer, that would appear to keep those sloppy pilots from screwing stuff up too badly.

[Daffyflyer]

Also I beleive that Canards can give you a nice bit of warning of an impending stall as the canards tend to stall before the main wing?

[oldgreg]

Also I beleive that Canards can give you a nice bit of warning of an impending stall as the canards tend to stall before the main wing?

They're supposed to anyway, and if the canards are contributing any meaningful lift you end up with very safe stall characteristics; The nose drops before the main wing ever stalls, so you never quite get to the falling out of the sky bit.

[darkjedi]

actually it's not the canards that make it unstable. it's the rear center of gravity (engines in the back, wing in the back) and a small movement of the elevator will easily change pitch. it's much like a rear engined car.
as for pusher vs puller props it's not much of a difference: a pusher will make the cabin quieter , but will generate more vibrations because they are running in turbulent air.

[oldgreg]

actually it's not the canards that make it unstable. it's the rear center of gravity (engines in the back, wing in the back) and a small movement of the elevator will easily change pitch. it's much like a rear engined car.

Sorry, I'm not buying it.

Regardless of where your control surfaces are, they need to be appropriately sized with appropriate throws. And the exact same thing can be said for planes with a front mounted tractor prop and traditional empennage, they have a forward center of gravity and their elevators are deliberately as far back as possible, for that matter look at a sailplane. Elevators (and rudders) are supposed to be a long way from the CG, that's how they work; a small movement creating a small amount of additional drag and a small increase/decrease in lift force which, by virtue of it's distance from the cg, creates an adequate pitching moment.

What you're talking about is Gain, and that's almost completely separate from stability provided that is sufficiently low. No aircraft designer in his right mind will put such touchy controls in an aircraft that the pilot continually overshoots his intended pitch, bank or heading. It doesn't matter where the control surfaces are in this regard, it doesn't happen unless someone has f'ed up, and the many, many people who should have noticed f'ed up just as badly. What do you think test pilots get paid for?

Stability is the aircraft's tendency to return to straight and level flight after a disturbance given a lack of control inputs. As in, the pilot momentarily pulls back on the stick a bit without intending to, the aircraft pitches up a little and then gradually returns to level flight with no input from the pilot needed. In an unstable plane, after the pilot nudged the controls the plane would pitch up, then pitch up more and faster until it had stalled or looped or ripped its wings off. In an unstable plane the pilot, or in the case of modern fighter jets the flight control computer, has to constantly work to keep the aircraft balanced and level.

If you still don't beleive me, here's a quote from a 1980 review of Burt Rutan's Long-EZ, a canard-pusher that is about as rear-cg'd as a plane can get:

As the speed built up, the stick pressures increased only slightly, if at all, but the stability began to approach that of a living room sofa. At slower speeds it seemed stable, but you still had to pay attention to it. At cruise speeds, you forget about it. Flat forget it! I ran it up to twenty mph over cruise speeds, quickly releasing the stick. The nose came back up, overshot, then back down, then stabilized at the end of the second cycle. It was equally stable on the other two axis. It appears to move only if you ask it to, otherwise it will keep on trucking straight ahead forever or until it runs out of gas, whichever comes first.

[darkjedi]

well... it could be they are well calculated. they must have very high wing load on the canards.
I wonder if one could slip stall it . i tried it once in a cessna 182 and scared the shit out of my friend )

[oldgreg]

well... it could be they are well calculated. they must have very high wing load on the canards.

Yep. High wing loading on the canard is part of it, and the canard airfoil has a lower lift/AOA slope than the main wing so as pitch increases the lift from the main wing increases faster than the lift from the canard does and a downward pitching moment is created.

Like I said, it's harder to do properly than an empennage, but a well designed canard-pusher can fly just as well as any other kind of plane.

I wonder if one could slip stall it . i tried it once in a cessna 182 and scared the shit out of my friend )

Depends on the aircraft, but probably kind-of-sort-of. I think the canard would still stall first, meaning the plane would go nose down and recover on it's own. On Rutan's earlier Vari-Ez though, it's my understanding that you'd possibly find yourself in a spin instead depending on your airspeed at the time.

[darkjedi]

yeah i think the stalling canard will never let you to stall the main wing and to try that at 65 bank angle could result in a loss of control.

[Elysium]

Here's another one that I just stumbled upon. A bunch of Aerospace manufacturers in Europe, including Augusta-Westland and Eurocopter, are working on a 20 seat passenger tiltrotor to supplement the AW609. They call it "Erica".



PDF file from the design team

The game I was pondering earlier wold have two versions, one for rotorcraft and one for fixed wing aircraft. Anything else would have to be a community-written mod, it would just be too complex otherwise.