swjr-swis

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

I made a plane flap its wings... (it may not have been entirely intentional...)

Had to revert a couple iterations, but finally got one that is reasonably balanced and stable. The weak-jointed hinges mean the wings do a lot of flexing on high-G turns, but they stay on and don't start flapping autonomously. I just can't seem to tweak any further without causing side effects. So this will have to do. Craft file: https://kerbalx.com/swjr-swis/Bell-X-5-Mk1b

Well, while we're at it, let's do the Bell X-5 too. Full album: https://imgur.com/a/OeZfXkJ Craft file: https://kerbalx.com/swjr-swis/Bell-X-5-Mk1b

Sigh. I really, really, *really* dislike stock robotics parts...

Go into the Tracking Station, select it from the list on the left, and terminate it. In pictures: https://imgur.com/a/Vfv1xNi

Alt-F12 (on Windows, Mod key on other systems) to call up the cheat menu. Console -> Debugging De-select the option to 'Show localization keys on screen' On Off

I visited the temple in an experimental supersonic rocket plane. And got myself called into the base cmdr's office. Can't take a joke, these guys.

Fiiiiine. Here's a Bell X-1B to add to your collection: the first aircraft to break the sound barrier in sustained level flight. The full album records many test flights and comments (https://imgur.com/a/eTasnRy). I've had to battle imgur the past couple of days over this, and only have very limited play time, so I'm not going to replicate the lot in this report. Craft file: https://kerbalx.com/swjr-swis/Bell-X-1B-Mk1b I may or may not do more. No promises.

<whisper> The real problem is not TWR or fuel capacity. It's the pressure...

I'm sorry, but that's wholly unacceptable. We had a meeting at the SWiS hangar, and that beauty deserves to go Mach 2.8. Minimum. So we tweaked it a bit.

Quick-slapped four different robotics parts on a pod to test. The locked button is in the red squares: You may need to enable 'advanced tweakables' in your game settings to see them.

Orbital Maneuvers in the Dark. (or how Jeb and Bill survived a harrowing first test, only to go back and do it again, the right way) RAPIER-based WHA-3, KSC to LKO and back, Take 001: The second sortie went without a hitch. WHA-3 tested spaceworthy - except someone forgot to fill the monoprop tanks. Docking will have to be tested some other time. TL;DR: Jeb and Bill upgraded the WHA-3 to RAPIERs and made it to space and back... after going bada-boom during the first ascent (and still getting to orbit). Too late now to make the last edits. Need to figure out how/where to add the MP tanks, and how and what kind of demonstration payload to include in place of the excess LF. I'm thinking a set of 4 comms relay sats under the wings. First sleep and work.

"I think we forgot a booster." "We did?" "Yeah... pretty sure we're short one booster." "No problem. Let's go back and fetch one." "What?!"

.. better working KSP. Ironically, people are more inclined to buy a sequel if the initial product simply... works. No frills, no launcher, just a finished product. I know, too simple. Hardly justifies a marketing budget, silly talk like that...

Still makes me chuckle when people get all fussy about 'no clipping engines and fuel tanks' rules on challenges or shared craft. Your engines are *literally* always clipped... they just made that part invisible.

Dork move, but ok. My point still stands though. Did they recompile or change the game itself to need/require/search for the launcher? They may have done this for 1.12.4, but I very highly doubt they've gone back and done the same for all the older versions. If they couldn't even be bothered to do more than edit a few tutorial files, they sure as heck didn't go back the source tree to hard-bake the launcher into the older versions. Re-download the older version of your preference, delete the launcher crap, and you're left with an install that's identical to how it was before.

I don't know that I go along with this statement. Plenty of examples of KSP not exactly doing the right thing. But thank you for taking the time to show the results of your investigation on this. It hasn't affected me personally - I keep a set of archived clean installs of old versions, so I won't have a launcher-contaminated setup ever. I assumed by now everyone did, to be honest, *especially* people using mods. It has to have been the single most repeated tip given in forums, here and on Steam. Silly question perhaps: has anyone tried reverting to the 1.12.3 install on Steam? It's right there in the list of betas...