swjr-swis

A very quick way to search for craft using a single mod: https://kerbalx.com/mods , which can be found through the About page. Click on any of the mods listed, and you get a full list of all craft in which that one specific mod has been identified. If you want to search on a set of mods (eg. your current mod setup), first create a 'mod pack' (basically a list of mods - you can create multiple and save them for easy reference), then click the mod filter button on the top right, and 'load mod pack'. Voila, a selection of craft that will work with that mod setup. You can also filter whether to show craft using ONLY those mods, or AT LEAST those mods (include). And btw, that information is CKAN-fueled.

The (Phantom) Force is strong in this one...

Two minutes to bed time and you get the voices in my head to start a singalong. Thanks. <mutters into the group> So, were we having a good time?

Any landing you can swim away from is a ... thousand miles from the shore, usually. Your turn to paddle, Doodgar.

I fully expect a video with a South-American accented commentator going "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!" Yes! Do people still understand that this is what it's supposed to be about? Don't do that. Don't put ideas in my head when I still have more than half the work week ahead and already running behind on sleep. Argh...

No KSP2, no sleep... and feeling nostalgic for the apparently soon-to-be-lost SPH. So I spent some time tinkering. A free-form variation on @Hotel26's Conchiglie. Clearly. Bob would not accept any other designation than CSH for this one. Nerd.

Efficiency discussion aside: that one statement put an involuntary smile on my face. The graphs were glorious. Monday all forgotten.

Don't know how @Nazalassa did it, but in my experience it is possible to get down to 1-2 m (and even <0.5 m, altimeter showing 0) over the water surface with a pure stock game, with a well-balanced plane, even at over mach 2 speeds. No SAS, just using stock trim for adjustments. I have to say: at mach 2.31, it's nerve-wrecking. Stock trim is still in very discrete steps, which means climb/drop rate is almost never exactly 0. A bit easier on the nerves is to use stock SAS to keep ORB PRG, and manually adjust variable angle of incidence on the wings to finely tune the amount of lift. Also helps to fly only at half the speed.

I for one am excited to welcome our new ginormous plushy Kerbal Overlords... Note the normal kerbal down there...

Always happy to see pilots enjoying my planes (or derivatives thereof!). I was a bit surprised at your findings that you needed any extra fuel tanks at all, considering that I've circumnavigated Kerbin with the fixed-wing original, let alone on a much shorter DSC-KSC run. Made me wonder if there's a marked difference in fuel consumption between 1.3.1 and later versions. Or if it was caused by the extra drag of the variable-sweep redesign of the Mk2. So I went and did the DSC-KSC trip at full afterburner blast in 1.12.4, with the MK2 since that's the draggier, slower, and fuel-hungrier version of the two: Departing from DSC with the default amount of 950 units LF in the tanks. Engines set to wet mode from the start, no expenses -or fuel- spared. And this is 19m18s later on the KSC tarmac. Flown at full throttle wet mode, cruising at mach 2.7+ and peaking in dive at mach 2.9. Still 624 units LF left. And it was by no means an ideal run - see the spoiler for some flight details. My SPH engineers respectfully but categorically conclude that whatever caused the high fuel consumption was not due to the original plane design...

I guess I'm into pain these days. I took on another DLC robotics part build, this time importing my 1.3.1 non-DLC 41-F Blackwood into 1.12.4 and adding some BG DLC rotors to allow changing the wing sweep in flight. The video shows Jeb on the first serious test flight, scaring the heck out of the KSC crew and generally giving the SPH engineers nightmares while stress-testing the structural integrity of the rotor-actuated wings under all possible flight regimes. Craft file: https://kerbalx.com/swjr-swis/SWiS-41-F-Blackwood-Mk2

I remembered that I did a very similar plane a while ago, only missing the variable sweep wings because 1.3.1 didn't have DLC. I imported the plane into 1.12.4 today and decided to give it a try. I ended up ditching the hinges for this one. Even using the bigger-size hinges, the joint strength was too low and it kept either flapping or altogether breaking off, even in straight flight. So then I tried with the rotors, and those seemed to work a bit better. They are draggier than the hinges and thus impact performance a bit more, and there is still a good bit of flexing on high G turns, but overall I think it still a success. The plane is extremely controllable at all times, and the wings stayed on even through some pretty rough testing. Feel free to re-use this solution for your builds. The entire wing assembly, including the 'counter-lift' sections that stay clipped inside the fuselage, is attached to the rotor. From the underside, looking from the back towards the landing gear, you can just grab the lower corner of the rotor and offset it for inspection or lift it off and save as a sub-assembly for reuse. Some video footage showing Jeb putting the SWiS 41-F Blackwood Mk2 to the test:

Make sure you offset the nosecone forward past the bottleneck of the nozzle. The Nerv is one of the few engines that checks exhaust blocking from inside its nozzle. Quoting for relevance.

Start by removing pitch (and yaw, while you're at it) authority from the ailerons (elevon 5). In that position they have near to zero pitch leverage anyway, plus their 'hinge line' goes right through the CoM which very often causes KSP to randomly reverse their pitch action mid-flight. This one change by itself makes the plane controllable at least. It will still miss considerable lift to perform adequately. The swept wings are horrible lift surfaces, despite their better-than-stock-average looks. Note that in my Bell X-5 replica, they are literally just for show: the actual lift is provided by the clipped Type D wing sections. As for the flapping: it suddenly happened after what seemed like a tiny and completely unrelated change to my Bell X-5 too. I had to then revert several iterations because they *all* suddenly had the flapping bug. If I manage a bit of playtime I'll see what I can tweak on the Tim C Car.

I know gif/mp4 embedding doesn't work in here, but this link is relevant enough to follow. https://i.imgur.com/qDf0eht.mp4