ogeL - a toy for FlightGear
Introduction
Download and Installation
How to fly
Behind the scenes
Work to do (open item list)
Legal stuff
Introduction
ogeL is a aircraft model to be used in FlightGear.
It is modeled after a LEGO® Duplo toy-plane, that lived in my old toy-box for many years.
While playing with my old LEGO® bricks with my little 4-year old nephew we found that old plane and I had the idea of modeling
this nice peace of my history for FlightGear. I took the plane and a ruler, started my computer, created 14 objects with 2341 surfaces
made of 1551 vertices. Two textures make the face and the cool tail-logo. The result looks like this:
Download and Installation
There are two versions available. For FlightGear versions 0.9.9 and before, get ogel-jsbsim-1.x.tar.gz
and for all FlightGear versions afer 0.9.9 and current CVS, get ogel-jsbsim-2.x.tar.gz (both 342kb). The files in
the archives are the same, except for the ogel-set.xml. They differ in the <description> and <aero> values.
Create a folder named ogel in your FlighGear's Aircraft
directory and uncompress the ogel.tar.gz into that directory. When you start FlightGear with fgfs --aircraft=ogel
you should
see the splash-screen and after a few seconds you sit behind a yellow dashboard and a red propeller. Welcome aboard!
How to fly
Flying ogel is easy (remember: it's a toy!). Best is to use the checklist:
Preflight
- FlightGear loaded and started
- personal fun-level checked
- walk around (hit v, right mouse twice and move mouse left/right)
Before Takeoff
- Set Brakes (Shift-B)
- Start Engine (space, hold for 3secs)
- smile
Takeoff
- Release Brakes (Shift-B)
- pull Joystick fully back
- set throttle to full power
- immediatly after takeoff, slowly release Joystick/Elevator
Cruise/Aerobatics
Before Landing
- Throttle almost closed
- Align with RWY centerline
- Above threshold a few feet AGL idle throttle, lift nose and wait
- check: are you still smiling?
Behind the scenes
ogeL uses JSBSim FDM. The aerodynamics and propulsion parameters where
generated with aeromatic using a 1200lbs MTOW plane with a PA28 like Wing and a 200hp piston engine on a 8ft fixed pitch propeller.
Since aeromatic generated a empty weight of 700lbs or so there is enough power do really fly like kids do with the toy in their hands.
Work to do (open item list)
- get some morei fun into the model
- spend more times wiht the kids
Legal stuff
LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO® Group (http://www.lego.com/).
The tail-logo was created by Alexa (http://www.DasAtelier.de/).
The 3d model was created by Torsten (http://www.t3r.de/).
All my work presented on this page is released under Gnu General Public License
(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html).
Permission to use the model for noncommercial use has been granted by LEGO®.
last modified: 2006-01-13 14:26
