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X-Plane Skyfun model - Work-in-progress...

Posted by Andrew Rabbitt on October 18, 2011 at 5:43am

Thought I'd share my progress so far on an X-plane model of the Skyfun.  I'm still struggling with PlaneMaker at the moment, so I've not flown it and have generated the data purely from scaling photographs knicked from t'interweb.

If you can help out with dimensions (metric please!) of things like the tail fins, chord lengths etc, that'd be great.

When it flies to some level of satisfaction, I'll release a version into the wild.

3689428952?profile=original

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Comments

  • Andrew Rabbitt February 7, 2012 at 6:49pm

    Petrus, I believe the CoG is meant to be where the two semi-circular divots in the bottom of the airframe are.  See the photo above for reference.

  • Petrus Botha February 6, 2012 at 1:19pm

    Can you please tell me where the CG must be for the Skyfun jet, I will be scratch building one this week from Depron foam.

    (Edited to remove ALL CAPS...)

  • Anish October 19, 2011 at 9:43am

    that is defenitely an interesting though, havent seen any body suggest this one on rosekinect mialing list :)

  • jcrubino October 19, 2011 at 9:37am

    I have been pondering this problem.

    Would it be possible to create accurate point clouds with a kinect or 3D laser scan airframes into useable data files?  Having accurate wings and propellers could be great with X Plane blade theory.

     

  • Anish October 19, 2011 at 3:09am

    great to see more models getting into x-planes. BTW any chance we could more of the x-plane community excited about this...

    PS:- i do play around with x-planes and fsx

  • Curt Olson October 18, 2011 at 7:10pm

    I modeled the Resolution3 airframe in FlightGear.  I realize it's apples to oranges with compared to the x-plane process, but the result (having your airframe reasonably modeled in a simulator) is hugely valuable.  There's so much you can do with it in terms of prototyping and testing all sorts of things:

    http://gallinazo.flightgear.org/uas/resolution/real-time-uas-simula...

    Here is one very simple experiment I did:

    http://gallinazo.flightgear.org/uas/resolution/simulation-modelling/

    FlightGear's YAsim flight dynamics engine is conceptually similar in many ways to X-Planes.  The way I'd characterize the main difference is that in x-plane you input the basic geometry and mass and airfoil and x-plane figures out how it thinks it should fly.  With FlightGear you input similar geometry and mass information, but then you give it a cruise configuration and approach configuration (i.e. you have some idea of how the aircraft flies) and then FlightGear uses a solver to create an airfoil with the proper lift/drag characteristics to achieve the specified performance.  Both approaches can be used to get pretty close to the true flight characteristics, but they come at it from slightly different directions.

    Real-time UAS Simulation and Visualization
  • Andrew Rabbitt October 18, 2011 at 6:14pm

    Do you really think so Chris?

    I'll admit though, the side profile was a bit of a guess...

    3692288866?profile=original

    3692288735?profile=original

     

    (same drawing overlayed on the two images)

  • Moderator
    Alex October 18, 2011 at 2:24pm

    I have a skyfun so PM me if you need any specific dimensions, i can also give images if you require :)

     

    I have some experience of planemaker so could help you if you need.

  • Jimmy P. October 18, 2011 at 9:46am
    That's very scientific of you, Chris!
  • 3D Robotics
    Chris Anderson October 18, 2011 at 5:47am

    You're getting there...stretch it out a bit lengthwise.

This reply was deleted.