Juno-Style Gravity Assist in Stock

[Tiberius K]

With the current excitement around the Juno mission approaching Jupiter after its earth-gravity-assist journey there'll be a lot of people playing around in KSP with similar goals.  One thing that always holds me back in my interplanetary craft design is an efficient transfer as I always feel it is something akin to blind luck whether a planned assist will actually be useful or not since it is very difficult to set-up with options we have.  Before launch we can use an orbital satellite say to set-up a practice node, and we can even edit the set-up files to show a couple more SOI changes in the patched conics but how do we set-up an encounter with Kerbin from within the Kerbin SOI?

For reference this is the Juno gravity assist

& an awesome video filmed from Juno of the earth fly-by

Two years after launching and heading out beyond the orbit of Mars Juno returns to encounter earth again giving it the extra Kinetic Energy required to reach Jupiter.  I know that there are a lot of complexities in achieving this, and KSP is just a game after-all, but so much has already been achieved with the 'Map' screen in making previously impossible concepts easily visualized and achievable that I wonder if there is some way I don't know.  I've seen some videos of people setting up elaborate gravity assists that take 10's of years and minimal burns using precise node and Mechjeb ... but what can we do in stock (or near-stock)?  Are there any tricks I don't know about?  

Improbable 34 stage wobbling skyscraper rockets screaming their way obnoxiously through atmosphere are fun and all ... but a trim efficient design can be much more satisfying.

 

[Starstrider42]

Could you maybe explain what you mean by "near-stock"? From your example, I take it that having two mods installed is already too far from stock...

I think doing any kind of interplanetary gravity assist in pure stock is difficult, if not impossible, because the timing of the launch window can be pretty unintuitive. If I wanted to run a mission like this, I'd use Trajectory Optimization Tool (a standalone program, not a mod) to plan it. I'm not aware of any other orbit aids that have support for gravity assists.

[Tiberius K]

I use KER to save having to hand comp deltaV and I use visual and part add-ons but nothing that automates burns.  I tell myself this is near-stock ... or not cheaty

[PLAD]

@Mad_Maelstrom made a little primer on flying a Juno-style mission in stock KSP. It is here. This way is less precise than TOT, but simpler to set up.

[Tiberius K]

Thanks PLAD.  My new mission is to make a kerballed Juno mission and re-supply it as it passes kerbin