Aircraft Design Company- Matsura's Planes Are Always Fastest!

[open_sketch]

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Stress 0​

Office Stress 0​

XP 5​

Spoiler: Character Sheet

Matsura Asuka
Head Designer for Ohara Airworks
Age 24 (Legally 25)
Year 12 AF (After Flight)

Design Stats
Aerodynamics Engineering - +2
Structural Engineering - +2
Chemical Engineering - +1
Mechanical Engineering - +1
Ballistics Engineering - +1
Electrical Engineering - 0

Personal/Political Stats
Social Skills - 0
Politics Skills - 0
Importance - 2
Income - 1
Investments - Ohara

Resources
Power - 0
Wealth - 2

Designs
Type 1 Series - Military Variation (Designated T1M1)
Type 2 Racer (World Speed Record October 1910-April 1911, 180kph)
Model 2 Scout (Designated T1M2)
Navy Scout Prototype (Drowned Rat)
Dive Bomber B1M1 "Duck"
Machine Gun Carrier R1A "Dragonfly" (World Speed Record May-July 1911, 200kph)
Naval Rescue Water-Landing Supply Plane NR1M0 "Dolphin" (World speed record 240kph)
Rhino Demon Train Hunter
The world's first airliner
The world's first pulsejet airplane

Assets
Slide Rule
Computator (1 Reroll per Routine)

Languages
Albian
Gallian

Familiar Vices
Drinking
Prostitutes
Dancing

Family Life
- Engaged to Arita Yachi, formerly the leading Ace in the Imperial Army. Designated #1 Cutest Army Boy, he's having some serious problems with PTSD right now.
- Taking a second try at dating Mikami Kiho, ex-dockerwork from the south.

Upgrades
- 3 XP to upgrade a stat.

Spoiler: Ohara Airworks

Ohara Airworks
Start Up, Imperial Capital, Akitsukuni

Owner
- Mr. Ohara, Rich. Aircraft Enthusiast. Business guy.

Engineers

Kibe Koume, 26, Office Manager
Tiny & angry, Kibe went to school in Albia, picking up the language, the religion, and a fuckload of swear words. Speaks Albian.
Mechanical +2, Ballistics +1
Office Manager: If Kibe is not assigned to a team, the Office Stress is reduced by 1.

Sakane Jun, 26, Second Team Leader
A soured patriot, Sakane is married and has a young child being raised gender-neutrally. His two brothers who fought in the war.
Structural +2, Aerodynamics +1
Team Leader: If there are any additional projects, Sakane will lead them.
Joinery: Sakane has training in the traditional Akitsukuni carpentry art of joinery, creating complex self-supporting joints with no fasteners or glue. When working with non-monocoque wooden spars or ribs, +1 Structural.

Tezuka Kenji, ???
A stoner with occasional flashes of insight. Nobody really knows what he does, but he's probably useful?
Aerodynamics +2, Chemical +1
Flashes of Brilliance: Each natural 10 rolled by any team Tezuka is assigned to gives +1 forward to the next research roll.

Hasegawa Morio, 26
A hopeless nerd with a photography habit, mostly on account of developing his own film, Hasegawa seems to do nothing but work and stack card houses, but somehow has an incredible attractive boyfriend. Speaks Gallian.
Chemical +2, Ballistic +1
Silent Workhorse: Hasegawa can work on two different projects at once for no cost to Office Stress, providing they use different stats.

Kawamura Yosai, 25.
Serially successful womanizer and incredibly attractive, Kawamura doesn't seem to have much of a personality outside of seducing women. Well, except for that time he seduced Asuka, which nobody talks about. Speaks Dyske.
Structural +2, Electrical +1, Social +1
Easily Distracted: If Kawamura is working on the same team as a female or non-binary employee, the team is at -1d10.

Koide Hatsu, 24.
One of the few female graduates of an Akitsukuni engineering school, Koide is brilliant and incredibly driven, but her first job at Akibara was both humiliating and exposed her to an abusive coworker. Her father is a rich businessman with factories in Joseon, and she's engaged to Ken from Castles of Steel. Speaks Joseon.
Mechanical +2, Structural +1
No Sleep: If you let her, Koide will work herself to death. She can work a second project for no Office Stress, but all her stats will be reduced to 1 for the routine.

Kobayashi Ayao, ???
Disowned heiress of the Kobayashi family, all Kobayashi wanted was a career and to be a modern woman. For her trouble, a cousin threw acid on her, scarring her face, neck, much of her torso, and her left arm. Despite appearing serene and above it all, she's actually an avowed communist activist and baseball player.
Aerodynamics +2, Social +2

Adachi Ren, 24
Adachi learned chemistry from her father, one of the most famous chemical engineers in the country, rather than through formal schooling. She's married, has a kid, and takes spirituality very seriously. Yes, you did the math right, she had Yuki when she was 17. It's 1912, folks.
Chemical +2, Electrical +1
Young Mother: Adachi will cause double Office Stress if she has to work multiple tasks.

Uyeno Sei, Ballistics Engineer, 31.
The oldest member of the crew, this is Uyeno's second career. Her first was as an officer in the Imperial Navy with specialized technical training: her very promising career was cut short by her transition. Her work in a naval arsenal on machine-guns landed her the job here. Briefly dated Satomi (the age range is a bit creepy but again, 1912), she's missing a piece of her ear and is deaf on that side, from an exploding cannon. Recently returned from Varnmark from experimental surgery, she's known for her skill navigating gendered bureaucracy.
Ballistic +3

Mi Kyung-Jae, 23
A recent graduate of the Imperial College of Heijo, Mi is from the recently annexed territory of Joseon. For those keeping track at home, that means he's a Korean national living in Imperial Japan in 1912. We haven't seen much of his personality because he's rightfully terrified of everything around him. He has a specialty in endurance engine design and modification. Speaks Joseon.
Mechanical +1, Chemical +1
Endurance Engines: Mi has an excellent understanding of metallurgy and tolerances. Any engine he works on gains +1 Reliability if a 16+ is rolled.
Pulsejet Wizard: Mi is now one of the world's leading experts on the pulsejet engine. He can be given his own project to custom-craft pulsejet engines, and he gives +1 to any pulsejet-related project.
Joseon National: Mi does not have security clearance to work on any top-secret projects.

Miyoshi Shigeri, 23.
A non-binary person and admirer of Asuka's work, they were in an support role in the Army before joining the company.
Structural +1, Mechanical +1, Aerodynamic +1
Mechanic: Miyoshi has some experience repairing and refurbishing aircraft. They get +1 if assigned on the clean-up phase.


Other Employees
- Ohara Satomi, 22, Mr. Ohara's niece and the company test pilot, Ohara is a general lesbian disaster. She's good at flying planes, driving cars, and kissing girls. She's bad at being patient, being respectable, and sticking to literally anyones conceptions of gender roles. Deeply in lesbians with Coralie D'Amboise.
- Fujkikawa Sotatsu, old, modelmaker. He's an old man and toymaker and we don't see much of him because he locks himself in his workshop a lot. He's friends with Kawamura?

Assets
- Engine Test Rig (Allows engine tweaking and optimization.
- Wind Tunnel (+1 Aerodynamics)
- Rapid Prototype Lab (+1 Clean Up)

Spoiler: Expanded Cast

Expanded Cast

Akitsukuni Industry
- Homura Mohoko: Head Engine Designer for Kobayashi. First female engineer in the country. A lot of sex appeal.
- Okumura: Head of Akibara aircraft design.
- Yamanaka Hajime: Kobayashi engineer. Young and eager.
- Igarashi Masazumi: Kobayashi engineer. Reserved and experienced.
- Admiral Akibara Toru: Imperial Navy Admiral. Maximum nepotism. Maximum douchebag.
- Lt.Cmnd Akibara Shinzo: The above's son. A hottie but very forward.



Character Families
- Matsura(?) Mizuko: Asuka's sister. Was paralyzed in an accident in Asuka's first flight. Lives Elsewhere and is married now. Can't forgive Asuka, even though she's tried.
- Adachi Motoki: Adachi's husband, an accountant. Legally blind.
- Adachi Yuki: Adachi's 7 year old daughter and wannabe pilot. Very adorable.
- Yachi's Brother: Exists.
- Sakane's Wife: Exists. Drives him a bit crazy, but he loves her.
- Yachi's Brother's Wife: Exists. Is statistically likely to be pregnant.
- Lt. Coralie D'Amboise: Gallian pilot in exile. Satomi's girlfriend. 25. Accomplished bisexual duelist. She flew in the war for a single day, and for her troubles got a hole blown in her cheek and had her left arm paralyzed.

Akisukuni Army & Ex-Army
- Lt. Torio Tanaka: Yachi's former observer as an enlisted man. Was jumped up to fly Ducks and lost a leg on his first mission. A trained painter, married to Torio Saya.
- Captain Amari Shiro: A Dragonfly pilot who ended up flying as Yachi's partner. Kind of delightfully twinky. They sorta slept together at one point, which wasn't great. He lost his previous boyfriend in the April Offensive and turned his plane into a shrine. He was shot in the gut and is still recovering.
- Major Izuhara: Logistics officer, Imperial Army, this bespectled officer stood up to the Caspian Crown Prince and accidentally kicked off the Akitsikuni-Caspian War. The guilt was so much that, after almost a year of running Army procurement, he shot himself in a phone both.
- Captain Nakai Sekien: Army scout pilot. First person to drop a bomb from an airplane, later head of the Duck Squadrons.
- Captain Teshima: A Desk pilot that fought with Yachi. Lost an arm in the process, took over for Major Izuhara after his death. Seems cheery despite it all.
- Captain Nashio: A real piece of shit dude and probably a rapist, he's also a war hero as the second-highest scoring ace on the Akitsukuni side. He was a young shitty kid in way over his head but it's no excuse.
- Lt. Kinjo: Kind of a dumb lump and Nashio's friend, one of the desk pilots. Dead at 19.
- Lt. Okazaki: Yachi's friend from before the war and pilot, he died in a spin in his dragonfly. His death probably hit Yachi the hardest.

Westerners
- Rose & Antoinette Sears: Pioneers of flight. Sisters. Black in 1910s not!America. Yikes.
- Timina Guasti: Famous aircraft designer from Otrusia. Likes big planes and green.
- Prince Protasov Vasilyevich: Crown Prince of Great Caspia. Real dick. You gotta hand it to him though, a decent flier.
- Count von Zeppelin: Invented rigid airships. Runs a successful airline business. Damned impressive.
- Bennhold: Aircraft Engineer. Experimenting with metal aircraft.
- Aileen Middlemiss: Albian reporter for the Artimis Times. Well meaning and oblivious.

Spoiler: Technology

Available Tech

• Materials: Wood, Duralumin, Molded Wood, Wood & Silk Composite, etc
• All engine mounts
• All wing types
• Basic reinforcement
• Wing warping and ailerons
• Basic water radiators
• Flying Wings
• Semi-Monocoque design (requires at least half the slots have frame pieces)
• Valved pulsejets
• Basic weapon mounts and turrets

Tech not Yet Developed

• Custom engines
• Monocoque construction
• Cantilever Wings and associated tech
• V and T tails
• Tailless designs
• Aluminum and titanium
• Cellulose surfacing
• Any kind of radar
• Weapon accessability mods
• Interruptor gear
• Geared propellers
• And Maybe Other Stuff

Spoiler: Akitsukuni & World

Akitsukuni
Island Nation

Government
Constitutional Monarchy
- The democratic portions of the government are dubiously legitimate.
- The head of state is the Empress of Akitsukuni. She gives her blessing to newly formed governments.
- The Navy and a small number of families have undue influence on politics.

Economy
Developing Mixed Market
- Most industry is controlled by a small number of wealthy, family-owned companies.
- The state provides most contracts to industry. Consumer good market is anemic.
- Exports are few, mostly cultural.
- Imports are raw minerals, food, oil, and expertise.
- Currently suffering an economic crash after the last war.

Politics
The Diet is currently ruled by a Constitutional Nationalist government. It has a system of nonlocal proportional representation, with representatives appointed by the party in accordance to their share of the vote.
- Constitutional Nationalists: 50%
- Purity Club: 9%
- New Independents: 26%
- Fairness Association: 11%
- United Communist League: 2%
- Monarchists: 1%
- Assorted Fringe Parties: 5%

Demographics
Akitsukuni is mostly very ethnically homogeneous. Around 5% of the population are various minorities, most from nearby countries. Roughly .1% are westerners here for business or in advisory positions.
- Population: 55 Million
- Religion: Mostly Kodo. Roughly 2% of the population follows western religions.
- Wealth: Most wealth is concentrated in the top 5% of the country. Nearly 20% of the population lives in conditions indistinguishable from peasantry.
- Urbanization: Heavily urbanized for a small economy: 35% and rapidly growing.

Military
At Peace
- Imperial Akitsukuni Navy (IAN): The 6th largest in the world, and the most experienced.
- Imperial Akitsukuni Army (IAA): 150,000 highly experienced soldiers, and a considerable reserve.

Aspects
- Poor Resources: Aluminum costs +1.
- Damn Akitsukuni Engines!: Engines have -1 Reliability.

Spoiler: Old Map

The Main Character Of This Quest Is Nonbinary And Uses They/Them Pronouns.

I Am Putting This Here Because The Next Person To Misgender Them Is Getting Yeeted Into The Trash

Also here's the Gayaverse TV Tropes page, because why not.​

 

[Pyro Hawk]

I've been assuming that engine power roughly matches horse power x10. So our gnome engine puts out 60 HP, which seems to be around what the prewar gnome did. When trying to make an Eindecker, I used a gnome with 8 power, which seemed to get around the right performance.

So the ogre we have now seems like a ~200 HP late war monster, and it's only our inability to build planes with metal frames (that would allow very low drag wing configurations) that prevent you from seeing the 200 km/h + of late war planes. I'd guess a pre-war inverted ogre should be closer to power 13 or 14?

Sorry, didn't make the sheet public when I originally posted it. It's available here
Though I haven't fixed how additional area of control surfaces work, will get around to that later.

Click to shrink...

yeah there may be a problem specifically with the scaling of inline engines.

Click to shrink...

Just commenting here, but if you can't fix the 'Ogre Engine is a Late WW1 Engine in Pre-WW1 timeline' problem without killing off all our existing designs, there's a simple explanation.

The person who designed the engine originally did it say, two years ago. They were a lone maniac doing a pet project. So they present the result of their project to the higher ups, and said higher ups basically said 'Yes. How many can you make?'. The maniac replied, 'Let me get my plans and have a team of engineers help me figure that out'. So they got the team, went to their experimentation shed and... Well, they met the fire brigade. Said fire brigade and just finished extinguishing a fire in said shed. Fortunately, not all the plans were burnt or destroyed by water damage. But well, what they could recover meant they basically went back to the higher ups and said "Give me a team of engineers and the existing engine to reverse-engineer, as well as a couple of years and we should be able to produce more."

Lo and behold, earlier this year they finished the reverse engineering process. So they're now being sold. Then the higher ups asked if thy could improve the engine. This caused dead eyes and auras of existential dread for the engineering team. So they replied "Give us a team of scientists and a couple of years". They got them. But then we did our witchcraft by inverting it to get more power.

The engineers got even deader eyes, and auras with even more existential dread. The scientists joined them. Together they turned to the higher ups and said "We thought we were on the right track. But whatever those maniacs did has told us we're on the wrong path. So we're going to need a couple of years to figure out what then engine does... then a couple of years to figure out how it's done, but then the engineers can spend a couple of years and give you a better version. We're pretty sure. Just so long as the maniacs don't find a new source of witchcraft to flip everything we thought we knew upside down. And hopefully not as literally as it was this time..."

 

[brmj]

For this mission, what does the D7H 6A provide over the -7A? It's two extra kilometers "safe" combat radius while being less stable, which as I understand it makes it harder to work with. Is the concern that 8 stability is too much or something?

Click to shrink...

The stability is still quite good, and it offers an extra 30 kph of top speed, which makes the margins by which it can sustainably outrun an armed version of the Caspian scout a hell of a lot more comfortable. Yes, these will go down as soon as we see proper fighters, but that extra speed makes it much more resistant to the improper ones they might they might put together as soon as we start bombing them with these.

[X] Plan Hope samd didn't derp on the math
-[ ]Sesquiplane, 5A high wing, 1A mid wing
-[ ] Extreme positive stagger (Total 18 drag, -6 structure, +10 Stability, -8 Handling)
-[ ]Lower Deck birch and canvas, upper deck either birch and canvass, or treated paper and canvas. Treated paper only used if we can't find any other way to shave off mass because that stuff is extremely flammable
-[ ] 5A Flaps on the upper deck

Click to shrink...

I don't think this passes the smell test in the context of a pusher plane. The vast majority of wing area way out front due to extreme positive stagger and a very unequal sesquiplane, combined with a pusher configuration with a heavy engine in the back? Where's the center of gravity, and why is it not well behind where most of the lift is? This may work in game, but it certainly wouldn't in real life.

 

[Crasian01]

The stability is still quite good, and it offers an extra 30 kph of top speed, which makes the margins by which it can sustainably outrun an armed version of the Caspian scout a hell of a lot more comfortable. Yes, these will go down as soon as we see proper fighters, but that extra speed makes it much more resistant to the improper ones they might they might put together as soon as we start bombing them with these.

Click to shrink...

Ah, I see. This is what I get for not clicking the URL I suppose.

Where's the center of gravity, and why is it not well behind where most of the lift is? This may work in game, but it certainly wouldn't in real life.

Click to shrink...

Reverse this, the CG needs to be ahead of the center of lift. Otherwise the aircraft is entirely unstable and cannot be controlled.

This being said, moving the wings forward is a bad play, it shifts the center of lift forward and decreases stability.

 

[brmj]

Reverse this, the CG needs to be ahead of the center of lift. Otherwise the aircraft is entirely unstable and cannot be controlled.

Click to shrink...

That's what I was saying. I was asking Sam how his design avoids a center of gravity well behind that 5A wing, and thus a plane that will make at most one very short flight.

 

[Crasian01]

That's what I was saying. I was asking Sam how his design avoids a center of gravity well behind that 5A wing, and thus a plane that will make at most one very short flight.

Click to shrink...

I'm not sure I parse your sentence well, but fair enough, my bad for misinterpreting.

 

[Crusher Bob]

As for my preferences, I'd say the D7H 7A and the D6H 6A are the best of the designs. The D7H 6A just files too weirdly, and the D6H 5A doesn't have great stability (note that +2 stability is probably pretty 'good'.

Drag reduction, the optimization we are most able to do also benefits the D7H 7A -> 420 km and the D6H 6A -> 532 km radius

The D7H 6A doesn't benefit from drag reduction at all (well, it would fly better at half fuel and/or without bombs...) and the D6H 5A goes to 560 km radius.

Mass optimization is pretty much always the best one to do, but that would be materials science, not aerodynamics...

 

[Crasian01]

@Crusher Bob
What do you mean by "flies weirdly"?

 

[samdamandias]

This being said, moving the wings forward is a bad play, it shifts the center of lift forward and decreases stability.

Click to shrink...

I know what the rules are doing, and honestly, how stagger works should be reversed for pusher planes, which would result in putting the larger wing well at the back, and the small forward wing along the "neck", just behind the canards.

So if it works rules-wise, but shouldn't possibly work IRL, we have an issue. To the numbers thread!

 

[Crusher Bob]

@Crusher Bob
What do you mean by "flies weirdly"?

Click to shrink...

It's stall speed in 100 km/h, it's cruise speed is 105 km/h (would be scary in gusty wind, etc).

It can (maybe, depends on assumptions) cruise with flaps down @ 100 km/h (and the flaps push the stall speed very far down) so you don't have to worry about stalling with flaps down. But that would limit your combat radius to 400km instead of the 420 km listed in the spreadsheet.

 

[Crasian01]

@Crusher Bob
Man that stall speed is nice and terrifying. Why this.

[x] D7H 7A Duck

it is then, because dying from a bad wind gust is stupid and flying with flaps down is also dumb.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Why is flying with the flaps down dumb in the context of this design?

It sounds like the fundamental problem with this plane is that it's a bit marginal on lift- it can't fly without being close to its maximum speed. If the flaps somehow provide extra lift, why wouldn't you use them then?

 

[Crasian01]

Why is flying with the flaps down dumb in the context of this design?

It sounds like the fundamental problem with this plane is that it's a bit marginal on lift- it can't fly without being close to its maximum speed. If the flaps somehow provide extra lift, why wouldn't you use them then?

Click to shrink...

I really have no idea where you're coming from on this. Why would you use flaps when you could just design an airplane which doesn't need them to fly its mission? We literally have the alternative design sitting right there, which gets 398 km instead of the 400 km just described, and takes exactly 1 more area. What trade are we worried about?

 

[Simon_Jester]

I really have no idea where you're coming from on this. Why would you use flaps when you could just design an airplane which doesn't need them to fly its mission? We literally have the alternative design sitting right there, which gets 398 km instead of the 400 km just described, and takes exactly 1 more area. What trade are we worried about?

Click to shrink...

What I mean is, if the airplane needs the flaps to function for long distance cruising, then wouldn't you just think of the flaps as "those things you only disengage under special circumstances, but that the airplane normally needs?"

I'm not saying another design wouldn't be preferable, as a solution to the problem of too-small wing area keeping the plane from having a safe performance envelope. I'm just questioning why it's "dumb" as such to have an airplane that needs a certain set of flaps to be in the 'down' position for normal cruising flight.

Look, I'll even vote for the 'less extreme and more plausible/sane' version of the plane, I'm just trying to understand what you mean by 'dumb.'

[x] D7H 7A Duck

Just commenting here, but if you can't fix the 'Ogre Engine is a Late WW1 Engine in Pre-WW1 timeline' problem without killing off all our existing designs, there's a simple explanation.

The person who designed the engine originally did it say, two years ago. They were a lone maniac doing a pet project. So they present the result of their project to the higher ups, and said higher ups basically said 'Yes. How many can you make?'. The maniac replied, 'Let me get my plans and have a team of engineers help me figure that out'. So they got the team, went to their experimentation shed and... Well, they met the fire brigade. Said fire brigade and just finished extinguishing a fire in said shed. Fortunately, not all the plans were burnt or destroyed by water damage. But well, what they could recover meant they basically went back to the higher ups and said "Give me a team of engineers and the existing engine to reverse-engineer, as well as a couple of years and we should be able to produce more."

Lo and behold, earlier this year they finished the reverse engineering process. So they're now being sold. Then the higher ups asked if thy could improve the engine. This caused dead eyes and auras of existential dread for the engineering team. So they replied "Give us a team of scientists and a couple of years". They got them. But then we did our witchcraft by inverting it to get more power.

The engineers got even deader eyes, and auras with even more existential dread. The scientists joined them. Together they turned to the higher ups and said "We thought we were on the right track. But whatever those maniacs did has told us we're on the wrong path. So we're going to need a couple of years to figure out what then engine does... then a couple of years to figure out how it's done, but then the engineers can spend a couple of years and give you a better version. We're pretty sure. Just so long as the maniacs don't find a new source of witchcraft to flip everything we thought we knew upside down. And hopefully not as literally as it was this time..."

Click to shrink...

@open_sketchbook

This needs to be canon. This so, SO needs to be canon.

 

[Crasian01]

Look, I'll even vote for the 'less extreme and more plausible/sane' version of the plane, I'm just trying to understand what you mean by 'dumb.'

Click to shrink...

Well firstly, I'm not sure I believe the drag penalty here. Flaps don't just increase wing area, they also change the shape of the wing and usually push a bunch of mechanical devices into the flow. Flaps massively, massively increase your drag in real life, and it's a tremendously bad idea to be flying with them deployed for any distance once you've taken off. That combat radius should really be dropping to something like 200 km or less.

From a less mechanics-driven point of view, they're a reliability hazard. Flaps being deployed means that they're subject to air loads, and all of that force is being transmitted through a hinge rather than through solidly attached structure. All that really needs to happen is for your maintenance crew to be careless one day and one or both flaps just pop loose, dumping lift on one side of the aircraft and causing an unrecoverable death spiral. Even if that doesn't happen, what do you do if the flaps can't deploy one day, or if they can't retract?

If you claim that the flaps are just permanently deployed all the time, then.... why not just add the extra area to the wing? Like, that's literally what you've done, except the extra area is housed in a vulnerable, weaker linkage rather than just being part of the main wing structure. You've increased the complexity for literally no reason, and I'm using the word "literally" correctly there.

On top of that, this is a warplane. Maintenance crews aren't bored and lazy, they're being shelled and are running on minimum sleep. They're also in questionable conditions, with no guarantee of support from a supply line that's 100% definitely secure. Those aren't me being pessimistic, this latest update as much demonstrates that we can't depend on a constant stream of supplies, and generally speaking why would you assume you have a good supply line anyway? That's not how these aircraft operate in this era. When you don't have this kind of guarantee, any feature that decreases the reliability of the system needs to be questioned, and as I said earlier, flaps aren't attached nearly as well as actual wing ribs. Not only is the risk of maintenance crews screwing up much higher in a wartime scenario, there's a legitimate risk that you won't be able to bring in the parts to actually repair any aircraft that needs it. It's clearly unacceptable to produce an airplane that's mission-incapable just because of one component.

All of this so far has neglected the potential impact of gunfire. Which I don't think I need to elaborate that much on, as it's pretty clear what happens if such a plane was flying over enemy lines and took a 8mm mauser round through the flap control linkage.

There's a lot of other stuff that I could say that's more speculative. Flaps might change the airflow such that they cause the wings to start vibrating, which is at best uncomfortable and at worst causes them to rip off. Flaps might encounter control surface flutter which then causes them to vibrate in their housing and then rip off. These are things I can't prove and are too dependent on real life physics to discuss properly, but are definitely concerns.

So no, I have no idea why you would just perpetually deploy flaps for the entire mission. It's clearly, clearly a bad idea.

 

[Simon_Jester]

@Crasian01

Okay, thank you for elaborating. You're still doing a bit of that thing that causes me to be grumpy and feel like you're attacking and insulting my intelligence, but I'm going to choose to assume it was just an accident; I'm in a somewhat better place mentally right now, so I can do that more easily.

 

[Crasian01]

@Simon_Jester
I mean, I don't intend to insult anyone, so I apologize if I've managed to convey that again, but your initial response really just came out of the blue. Apparently I come off as more insulting when I'm massively confused?

---

Also as an additional note, Hoerner's Fluid Dynamic Drag, which is the definitive guide on drag as far as I know, indicates that for the NACA 23012 airfoil, a plain flap (like we would be using) develops roughly twice as much drag as the airfoil without flaps when configured to fly at the same coefficient of lift. Let's take this as roughly being true for most plain flaps, with some wiggle room.

So since dimensional drag is a linear function of coefficient of drag (which is what Hoerner measures), we would expect that an aircraft flying at some fixed coefficient of lift and cruise speed would require twice as much thrust in order to maintain the same speed. Power is equal to thrust times velocity, so the power that needs to be delivered by the propeller to the flow would also double. This also means double the power from the engine. If the fuel consumption is a fixed rate with respect to power setting, then that means that double the power corresponds to double the fuel consumption rate. That should cut our combat radius roughly in half, going from ~420 km to ~210 km. Add some optimism and that gets us up to 230 or 240 km.

Note however that fuel consumption rate usually increases with power setting, so we would probably actually see even greater fuel consumption than just double.

 

[samdamandias]

Well firstly, I'm not sure I believe the drag penalty here. Flaps don't just increase wing area, they also change the shape of the wing and usually push a bunch of mechanical devices into the flow. Flaps massively, massively increase your drag in real life, and it's a tremendously bad idea to be flying with them deployed for any distance once you've taken off. That combat radius should really be dropping to something like 200 km or less.

Click to shrink...

Flaps massively drop V MAX. Running the numbers with my own design, cruise with flaps down should be about 35kph slower than with them up, which means we'd loose 140km of combat radius, and couldn't outrun the Cossack ohotnik.

Which is why you only use the flaps for take-off, landing, and near the start and end points of the dive.

 

[Crasian01]

Flaps massively drop V MAX. Running the numbers with my own design, cruise with flaps down should be about 35kph slower than with them up, which means we'd loose 140km of combat radius, and couldn't outrun the Cossack ohotnik.

Which is why you only use the flaps for take-off, landing, and near the start and end points of the dive.

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140km still seems too little loss, but is better than 20km.

This being said, your engine is still sized for cruising at whatever the non-flaps-deployed-cruise-speed is. You should be able to just hit your flaps-deployed max speed fairly easily, though admittedly that's pushing your engine to full throttle. Cruise speed is really essentially an arbitrary number -- it's defined by mission requirements and not the engine. For our aircraft, "top speed" should really just be an artifact of how much power we have available in order to take off in a reasonable distance.

Note that fighters are definitely designed differently, and they do in fact have a target top speed.

 

[Simon_Jester]

@Simon_Jester
I mean, I don't intend to insult anyone, so I apologize if I've managed to convey that again, but your initial response really just came out of the blue. Apparently I come off as more insulting when I'm massively confused?

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You know, that just may be it!

Flaps massively drop V MAX. Running the numbers with my own design, cruise with flaps down should be about 35kph slower than with them up, which means we'd loose 140km of combat radius, and couldn't outrun the Cossack ohotnik.

Which is why you only use the flaps for take-off, landing, and near the start and end points of the dive.

Click to shrink...

If so, then your plane still smacks into the problem that the maximum speed in level flight, and the stall speed, are pretty close together. If the plane is assumed to have a fuel-efficient 'cruising' speed noticeably below its top speed, then we have an even more serious problem, because flying at any speed much below top speed makes the plane highly vulnerable to something as mundane as a sudden shift in the wind depriving it of too much lift to remain aloft.

 

[Crusher Bob]

Since the vote seems to be tied:

[x] D7H 7A Duck

Also, have made various updates and fixes to the spreadsheet. It's available here if anyone wants to double check the sheet. Note that only the 'template' sheet has all the updates. The other sheets are the duck designs.

 

[Martenzo]

[x] D7H 7A Duck

 

[Ash19256]

[x] D7H 7A Duck

 

[Blackstar]

[x] D7H 7A Duck

 

[Blackstar]

Since the vote seems to be tied:

[x] D7H 7A Duck

Also, have made various updates and fixes to the spreadsheet. It's available here if anyone wants to double check the sheet. Note that only the 'template' sheet has all the updates. The other sheets are the duck designs.

Click to shrink...

Your short two frames and a fuselage for that spreadsheet of the duck.

 

[samdamandias]

If so, then your plane still smacks into the problem that the maximum speed in level flight, and the stall speed, are pretty close together.

Click to shrink...

They're actually further apart than the racer, at 100 and 160 respectively, or 80 and 170 if we go for a paper wing. Cruise is 20kph above stall in the first and a whopping 50kph above stall with paper wings.

Although right now it looks like trying extra hard on mass reduction is always the way to go, because it ups V Max, DNE, and Handling while also lowering stall.

On another note, the Type 3 scout has enough room in the mass and drag that we could mount a single LMG in a turret with no real loss of performance. Now, it'd still make a really shitty fighter, but adding the LMG is something that some enterprising mechanic will manage to do in the field.