Me163 Jet Exaust Eye Candy

[AtmkRstr]

Wouldn't it be appropriate for the Me163 to leave a trail of smoke behind it? I can't find a photo of an Me163 flying with the engine burning, but every photo of it on the ground with the engine running has clouds of smoke/steam bellowing out of it.  

I would speculate that it would leave a trail just like a rad hit does on a liquid cooled piston engine.

Perhaps some use of the new lighting effects would be of some use aswell to make that perdy bird light up at night.

The Me262 doesn't smoke in r/l,  does it?

[AtmkRstr]

To answer my own question:


7. the fuels when mixed produced a colorless relativly non toxic exaust that showed no "exaust plume" inflight


-gunnss

[Wilbus]

I've got some nice film of it on VHS, leaves a nice thick trail of white smoke behdind it, might be too FPS demanding though.

[LLv34_Snefens]

Great page about the engine of the Komet (this is not front page)

http://www.walter-rockets.i12.com/design/fuels.htm

From that page:

"As a result, with complete combustion, the exhaust gases are comparatively safe and inert, although the temperature of the jet efflux will be in excess of 1800o centigrade.

In the earlier Walter motors for the Messerschmitt Me 163A Series, the "cold" reaction was initiated by a permanganate catalyst which stained the motor efflux purple.

 
Here, the catalyst was more neutral, and the motor exhaust was much paler, with a yellow/green almost transparent colour until the steam condensed into a dense vapour trail in the air. The power of the reaction, the velocity of exhaust gases and the narrowness of the venturi opening of the motor often led to "diamond" shock waves appearing in the high speed exhaust as Messerschmitt Komet aircraft began their "sharp starts" at take-off."

Pic shows clear exhaust flame, but the text could be read that it only appeared when the Komet was taking off (slow speed)

Anyway, 1800 degree "super-heated steam". I would say this is bound to leave a contrail in almost any kind of weather at any alt.
But I guess we won't see this until the time we get contrails for the rest of the planes (at high alt).

[Replicant]

[GRUNHERZ]

Well that settles it replicant!  

[Pyro]

The white trail you see in the footage comes from the earlier 163s that used the "cold" engine.

[Shiva]

Originally posted by Pyro
The white trail you see in the footage comes from the earlier 163s that used the "cold" engine.

There's another bit of eye candy I'd like to request if you can get around to it. In another threa on Komet fuel tanks, AtmkRstr notes that there's an Aux tank that empties in a second or two when the engine spools up. Now, I know that the 163 had a small fuel tank that contains the fuel to start the main turbines, which is what I would expect the AUX tank is. In pictures showing the 163 starting up, the generator that spools up the turbines produces a cloud of steam out of a vent in the underside of the aircraft that gets left behind when the 163 accelerates. It would be a nice bit of eye candy to produce one or two white cloud puffs right behind the 163 when it lights off on the runway that would dissipate normally. As you can see in the bottom picture, while there isn't really a visible exhaust from the 163, you can see the small cloud of smoke from the turbine starter left behind the plane as it rolls out:

[icemaw]

The engine in the 163 is of the same type as the rato units on the arado. Hydrogen peroxide rocket motors make tons of smoke. I have seen films of 163 taking of and they make a huge smoke trails. Allso there used to be a couple funny cars that ran these type rocket motors one was called the chi town hustler looked like a chicago police car. I saw it run at O.C.I.R. in the late 70's and I can tell you personally they make a lot of smoke and I mean A LOT OF SMOKE. You couldnt even see them pass the tru the lights at the end of the track. Would I like to see our 163 smoke prolly not frame rate hits and stealth would suffer. But it sure would look kewl.

[hyena426]

any rocket gives a huge smoke trail,,and yes it wasnt as stealthy as the 163 in here,,that can sneek up on you with out even noticing anything,,,but the smoke mite make horrible frame rates<~~but then again the smoke and stuff from the wings dont slow it down too much:)

[Shiva]

“The 163A’s fuel created a low-temperature chemical reaction that didn’t burn and didn’t have a flame. The exhaust temperature was about 600 degrees C, and it left a long dense trail behind it. We put a little rudder-like tab in the exhaust nozzle and coupled it on a ratio to the rudder to provide rudder control on takeoff.   ...   The ‘hot’ engines in the 163B did not permit the use of such tabs; they had a 10-foot-long flame and an exhaust temperature of 1800 degrees C, but by then, we had a steerable tailwheel coupled to the rudder.”
-- Rudy Opitz, Messerschmitt test pilot

Sounds pretty clear to me that there was a difference between the 163A and 163B as far as what the rocket exhaust looked like.