[Need help catching Duna orbit]

This. If you find that the maneuver node widget controls aren't sensitive enough

Don't think I've ever had that problem since I found out that you can push the opposite side in, which seems more sensitive than pulling the side you want out. Also keep in mind, the farther you push/pull the knob, the faster the node changes, so be careful with the mouse.

[Part generator Version 2.X release / open beta]

its a decent mod and I'm sure it took some work, but I personally just don't see too many uses for it. Maybe if it was released around the time of 0.13 it would have been much more useful. It's just simple shapes with a config setting; when it'd be almost just as easy for people to model these themselves even as a novice or simply alter existing parts and their configs. don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to belittle your efforts in the slightest, I just think your efforts could be better spent on better things.

As far as altering existing parts, not always an option. The one time I used this program was to create fuel tanks for my apollo-style munar excursion modules. The stock 1.25m tanks looked wrong under a mk 2 command pod, and the smallest 2.5m tank is large enough that two of them plus the engines made the lander look wrong. Instead, I used this to crank out 2.5m tanks that were just about the exact amount of fuel I needed, and they were an excellent size for the project.

Yes, I could have taken the time to learn blender, and some day I probably will, but this let me get the results I wanted right away.

[Need help catching Duna orbit]

What I usually do in a case like that is put up a maneuver node just outside Kerbin's SoI and play around with the three directions. In a case like this, you can see the kinds of adjustments you need to make. You're arriving too late (behind Duna, and your solar apoapsis is higher than Duna's orbit. The first is a bigger deal, the second is just something to work on for next time.

If you're arriving too late, like in this case, what I usually do is to burn inward (towards the center of your orbit, the sun in this case), as that will usually cause the eccentricity of your orbit to rotate counter-clockwise in this case, which means you spend more time lower in orbit on the way to Duna, so you're travelling faster.

So try that, play around with your maneuver node and adjust it to see what happens. When you've improved the intercept as best you can, burn it, and then set up another maneuver node about a quarter of the way through the transfer and repeat the process. Repeat until you're happy with your intercept.

Using this technique, my last trip to Duna had me entering the SoI of both Duna and Kerbin so accurately that I had to raise my periapsis to avoid crashing directly into the planets, and I still spent a lot less delta-v correcting my course than my old way of doing it at the midpoint of the transfer. Earlier corrections tend to take less delta-V, and while they're not as accurate as later corrections, they allow the later corrections to be much smaller.

[Do the impossible.]

I'm pretty sure it takes less than 8000 dv to take off from Eve... Especially from one of the high points.

That 8K dv number agrees with the "smallest Eve ascent vehicle challenge" thread (that got lost in the great oops) when taking off from the highest mountain that currently exists on Eve if I remember correctly. It's about 11-12 K dv from sea level. So yes, I'd say the original statement of it taking at least 8K is accurate.

[0.20 Preparation]

I think the airship mod will be central to getting me off of eve

Very true, especially if you're trying to get any significant quantity of resources off Eve.

To be honest, while you might refine the fuel to lift off of Eve on Eve itself, I can only see the Blutonium being worth lifting to orbit, as everything else will probably be much easier to get somewhere else. For that matter, we don't know how common it will be elsewhere, as you don't need that much of it.

[[1.3.0] Kerbal Engineer Redux 1.1.3.0 (2017-05-28)]

While the forums were down, I found something that is either a bug or a misunderstanding on my part. I was doing a mission to Duna, and using KER to plan the transfers. Going from Kerbin to Duna worked as well as can be expected, since Duna has an elliptical orbit.

The Duna to Kerbin transfer, however, was bad. Rather than giving me a transfer orbit where the apoapsis is near Duna's orbit and the periapsis is near Kerbin's orbit, the apoapsis was well above Duna's orbit, and the periapsis was just a bit below Duna's orbit.

After checking KER against http://ksp.olex.biz/, I think I figured out where it went wrong. It seems that the ejection angle is getting measured in the wrong direction in the case of an anti-clockwise orbit transfer from Duna to Kerbin. It may affect all transfers to lower orbits, but I haven't had time to test it out.

Basically, if you follow KER the way I think you're supposed to, you'd place your maneuver node at about 123 degrees after Duna's retrograde, so you're still on the night side of the planet. However, the referenced web site shows the burn happening at 121 degrees before Duna's retrograde, so on the day side.

The 2 degree difference in ejection angle isn't an issue, but if I used (360-123) = 237 degrees as the ejection angle as measured by KER, I got the kind of transfer orbit I'd expect, with the apoapsis near Duna's orbit and the periapsis near Kerbin's orbit. The elliptical Duna orbit was still throwing off the intercept, but by a manageable amount provided you've got some fuel to spare.

And yes, some day I'd like a transfer planner that can compensate for elliptical source/destination orbits, but until I can show the math myself, I don't expect anyone else to try to solve that problem.