Template:Sandbox/Turbine Car
The Vash NT, short for Vash Firearms Novelty Turbine, is a series of exploratory compact cars developed by the arms company Vash Firearms Design & Manufacture. The cars are not mass produced; rather, they are built at the discretion of the CEO of the company, Rikharthu Tavash. The NT was first conceived as a concept car in the late 2170's, before Vash Firearms was founded. Since then, the company has only produced a very limited number of NTs, all of which it considers to be fully-functioning prototypes, and even fewer of which are owned by persons other than those affiliated with VF.
All models of the Vash NT series have many things in common, such as an abundance of aircraft-style analog and digital gauges; however, their most common aspect is their main design philosophy, which involves the rebuilding and repurposing of otherwise decommissioned turboshaft engines, taken directly from military helicopters. This design, coupled with a number of other aesthetic and functional choices, are the reasoning behind the Vash NT series often being considered exotic and fuel-hungry crosses between military vehicles and supercars.
While decommissioned military engines are not exclusive to purchase by military personnel only, the primary designer of the Vash NT series, Rikharthu Tavash, is a known military officer and chief of staff of the research and development wing of the ASC Department of Defense. Tavash openly considers the Vash NT series to be a pet project of his very own, as opposed to any sort of government-backed development.
Concept Car (V0; 2170—2190)
The concept that eventually was made into a fully functioning vehicle began around 2170 as the idea of either 1) dropping a military turbine engine into a civilian car, or 2) building an entirely new civilian car around a military turbine engine, similar to the notion of the A-10 Warthog having been ideated as a plane expressly built around a rotary cannon. Ultimately, idea #2 was chosen, due to difficulties in finding a suitably sized compact car that could fit the engine in a satisfactory manner.
First Generation (V1; 2190—2200)
The first generation of the Vash NT was one of the first products of the Vash Firearms company that wasn't a military surplus and/or (entirely) decommissioned item. It featured at its core, a Verity 370 recuperated gas turboshaft engine mounted at the mid-rear of the chassis. When used in the V1, the Verity 370 engine is fitted with a non-standard variable-pitch power turbine, whose blade pitch is adjusted via the throttle pedal. When the throttle is at zero percent, and the vehicle is at speed, the power turbine's blade pitch is slightly reversed, which provides a moderate amount of engine braking, as required of any street legal vehicle. In the V1, the engine's power turbine is connected to the rear wheels via a one-speed planetary gearbox and a differential, altogether operating at an overall gear ratio of roughly 5:1.
Dashboard Features
The Vash NT V1 features an all-electronic driver's side dashboard display, with a number of emulated analog gauges and their digital readouts presented to the operator on a ~26:9 aspect ratio, 60hz refresh rate monitor. The middle of the dash is made to be clearly visible through the opening in the steering wheel, while the left and right extremities of the dash are visible beyond the left and right sides of the steering wheel. Left to right, by default the dash displays the tachometer, compass, oil pressure, temperature, accelerometer, date and time, oil temperature, battery charge, odometer, shift select, speedometer, fuel flow, alert panel, thrust, throttle, brake, fuel level, and option buttons. The option buttons consist of six different options, some of which are entrances to deeper option menus. These six options are cruise control, the unit selector (switching from imperial measurements to metric and back), a rear view displayer, gauge configuration, auxiliary gauges, and auxiliary systems.
Tachometer
Similar to most helicopters, the NT V1's tachometer not only measures the rotational speed of the N1 (compressor) and N2 (power) turbines, but measures their speed in percentage ranging from 0% to 150%. For the N1 turbine, 100% corresponds to 30,000 RPM. For the N2 turbine, 100% equals 9000 RPM. The NT V1's compressor turbine idles at 66.6% (20,000) RPM. The tachometer redlines (overspeeds) at roughly 110% for both N1 and N2 turbines, which is specifically set at 33,000 RPM and 10,000 RPM, respectively.
Visible safety margins put in place on the tachometer allow a readout of between 100% and 125% RPM before damage is actually likely to occur within the engine. These can be seen first in a change of readout color from a nominal green to a cautionary yellow, plus a clearly visible overspeed warning. When the tachometer redlines, the readout will show up red, an overspeed alert will show, and an audible warning will sound until the engine RPM drops to a safer level. Finally, there is a red dot present on the tachometer which indicates the speed at which the engine is electronically and mechanically governed to a maximum RPM of 125% (37,500).
Oil Pressure
The Vash NT's oil pressure gauge reads out its values in pounds per square inch (psi) by default, and can optionally be switched to kilopascals (kPa) by switching the 'Units' button from IMP to MET. The readout can further be customized to display units in MPa as opposed to kPa in the 'Gauge Config' menu. The oil pressure gauge can display values ranging from 0 to 150 psi (0 to 1,034 kPa). The normal operating range for the NT's oil pressure is between 2 and 122 psi (14 and 841 kPa). Damage is likely to occur at and beyond 130 psi (896 kPa).
Pyrometer
The engine thermometer (officially documented, perhaps incorrectly, as a pyrometer) displays a digital readout and emulated-analog gauge of the temperatures of both the turbine inlet temperature (TIT) and the turbine outlet temperature (TOT), shown on the gauge as TI and TO, respectively. The thermometer defaults to a readout in degrees Fahrenheit from 200°F to 1700°F, and can be optionally switched to degrees Celsius from 100°C to 1000°C by switching the 'Units' button from IMP to MET. The temperature units can further be customized to display units Kelvin (K) or Rankine (°R) in the 'Gauge Config' menu. The nominal operating temperature for the TI and the TO is ~1000°F (~538°C) and ~1200°F (~649°C), respectively. Unsafe operating temperatures begin at approximately 1400°F (760°C).
Oil Temperature
The V1's oil temperature is shown to the driver in degrees Fahrenheit by default. This can be optionally quick-switched to degrees Celsius, and can further be customized to Kelvin, or even Rankine. The oil temperature gauge can display a readout between 0 and 375 °F (−18 and 191 °C). Nominal operating temperatures for the engine oil fall between 50 and 275 °F (10 and 135 °C).
Battery, Odometer, & Fuel Level
Unlike the vast majority of cars on the streets of Cyberia, the Vash NT comes equipped with two twelve-volt car batteries as opposed to just one. Two are required as a two-fold solution; that being 1) providing twenty-four volts to the engine's starter via switching the batteries in series, and 2) providing twelve volts to the civilian-spec electrical system via a single battery. Interestingly, the battery voltage gauge updates only once per second as opposed to sixty times a second for the other gauges.
The odometer keeps track of not only the distance the vehicle has driven in miles (optionally, kilometers), but the amount of time the engine has been operating as well, regardless of distance, and measured in hours to two decimal places.
The fuel level displays how much fuel is present in the vehicle's tank, measured in percent (optionally, gallons or liters). The fuel level also shows roughly how many hours of fuel the vehicle currently holds, which is dependent on how much fuel per hour it is consuming at any given time.
Fuel Flow
Another unusual gauge to be seen on a street car is the fuel flow gauge, which clearly reads the volumetric flow rate of fuel into the engine. This parameter used in the calculation of instantaneous fuel economy present in its own gauge elsewhere on the dash.
Central Cluster
Positioned just above the steering column, the central gauge cluster is shown front and center to the driver, displaying an information-dense panel.
On the left and right sides, there is a prominently featured, stylized accelerometer and speedometer. The speedometer features a scrolling number line, as opposed to an indicator needle, while the accelerometer features a sliding needle. The speedometer is labeled in miles per hour (MPH) by default, and can be optionally switched over to kilometers per hour (KMH), meters per second (M/S), or knots (KTS). This can be set independently of the accelerometer on the left side, which defaults to miles per hour per second (MPH/S), and which can be optionally set to meters per second squared (M/S2) or kilometers per hour per second (KMH/S), or g-force (g). The speedometer's readout is capable of showing values from 0 to 300 MPH (0 to 483 KMH), while the accelerometer is capable of showing values between and including -30 and +30 MPH/S (-14 and +14 M/S2) [-1.5 g and +1.5 g].
Between the accelerometer and speedometer, there is shown the central cluster's emulated-analog compass at the top, which reads out the vehicle's bearing in degrees from 0° to 359°. Just under the compass is shown the current date and time in full-government formatting. Below and to the left of the date is the gear selector, the options of which are P for "park", R for "reverse", N for "neutral", D for "drive", and S for "sequential", which is actually an unusable placeholder for a cancelled sequential gearbox version of the V1. The S was taken out in later made-to-order models.
Under the gear selector there is the alerts panel, which shows short descriptions of problems the vehicle is experiencing at any given time, or otherwise harmless notifications. The alerts show up in different colors depending on their severity. For example, when the engine is off, the alerts panel will show notifications along the lines of a white ENGINE OFF and a red OIL PRESSURE ZERO. To the right of the alerts panel are the thrust, throttle, and brake gauges, which show what percentage of each is being applied at any given time. "Thrust" in this context corresponds to the fuel setting, the first two of which being "fuel cutoff" (0%) and "ground idle" (20%).