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SR-71 Blackbird by Eorin and Exothermos


eorin

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Hi guys, my personal dream of building the best SR-71 replica now is real.

I wanted to do it since 2013 when i started to play KSP, but parts and my personal skills weren't enough, so after I saw Exothermos sr-71 with those beautiful nacelles made of fairings, i decided to ask him a collaboration to recreate the most possibly realistic sr-71 we could. Gladly he accepted my request of help. He really added on this project what i couldn't do alone, so, many many many thanks to him!

My primary goal was to achieve a perfect silhouette of the real plane, and in this im good at, but i have been always lacking in ideas to make my crafts more realistics and Exothermos had so many cool ideas instead!

The shape of the whole craft was done by me using overlay of blueprints and more important, real photos.I can't deny it was a really boring and long process because im too much a perfectionist and almost crazy probably; the whole craft took about 50 hours to me (without counting Exo hours). I made the basic plane with few words, nose and neck shape, custom cockpit,  wings, rudders.

Exothermos made the wonderful nacelle using fairings and he focused on making things looking better: using winglets to recreate an edge on the whole craft and reworking the tail, and he recreated a nice transition to the mk2 fuselage to wings and chines using control surfaces.

Well this is the results of our efforts, let the pics speak for themselves.

some collage with overlays of real blackbird (old pics the craft is the finished one on the second pic)

yZkAFcL.png

finished craft

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Some realistic shots taken by Exothermos

Spoiler

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                                                                                                                                               WARNING

 1  Before fly click "control from here" on the probodobodyne HECS (unmanned core) clipped inside the fairing nose like in these screens

 2  Please be gentle with YAW imputs because the plane can stall if using too much imputs and enter on a almost fatal deathspiral.

Spoiler

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And now the DOWNLOAD 306 parts, game could be laggy.

I want to thanks again exothermos

P.S. let me know what you think about it and if there are bugs or glitches, and sorry for my bad english!

Edited by eorin
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This is a pretty parts-intensive build as the goal was fidelity over simplicity, but we're super happy with the result!  Those overlays speak for themselves.  Performance is right inline with the real thing (with some extra margin on the Mach number).  This was super fun and I highly recommend creating craft with a like-minded builder.  Cheers Eorin!

fixKu0s.png

 

Edited by Exothermos
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Man you guys did a fantastic job on this! The shape gives me that happy gooey feeling in my tummy. :D

 I can see all the love that went into this build and I salute you both, you do us replica builders proud with master works like this.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 8 months later...

Sorry for reviving this old thread, but im glad to tell you the craft works perfectly fine again now!

Patch 1.3 broke the craft, but 1.3.1 just revived it with no modifications at all.

Download links still available.

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Eorin and Exothermos, this is an absolutely stunning replica. I've sunk many hours on my own replica of the SR-71, but it doesn't hold a candle to this beautiful level of obsession with detail. How did you do your blueprint overlays in the SPH? I feel like that would make the replica design process so much easier for me, even though I know I'll just become that more obsessed with getting every little detail right. But hey, that's what your work was meant to inspire, right? Magnificent job!

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3 hours ago, SkunkTwerks said:

Eorin and Exothermos, this is an absolutely stunning replica. I've sunk many hours on my own replica of the SR-71, but it doesn't hold a candle to this beautiful level of obsession with detail. How did you do your blueprint overlays in the SPH? I feel like that would make the replica design process so much easier for me, even though I know I'll just become that more obsessed with getting every little detail right. But hey, that's what your work was meant to inspire, right? Magnificent job!

First of all, thank you :)

Well for the blueprint overlay i used a very simple and light program called: Image overlay utility, nothing special.

Overlay surely makes the design process faster only in first place, because as you already said, you just can't ignore some details and you can always notice something new on the plane that you dont even know it existed before.

Keep in mind even with overlay the measures of the craft and proportions could be wrong, because you are using a 2D blueprint over a 3D image (Ksp), so the game tries to simulate prospective based on your point of view. For example you are overlaying  a top view blueprint of a sr 71 on your replica in ksp, could happen the center section of the craft (middle neck fuselage, wings attack, airintakes nosecone) matches perfectly with the blueprint, but nose, rudders, engines and wings end looks a  bit smaller than the blueprint even if in reality your replica is perfect.

So my advice is to do like me, base your craft on a affidable blueprint, but then try to overlay real photos of the plane in different point of view, to your replica for replicate the perfect measures.

Sorry for my bad english, i hope you get what i mean.

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On 10/14/2017 at 2:29 PM, eorin said:

Sorry for reviving this old thread, but im glad to tell you the craft works perfectly fine again now!

Patch 1.3 broke the craft, but 1.3.1 just revived it with no modifications at all.

Download links still available.

Good to hear it's working again! Any idea which changes between 1.3 and 1.3.1 caused/resolved these issues?

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  • 4 weeks later...

Nice replica, but can I make a couple of suggestions?

If you go to the action groups, you can add the 'control from here' function of the Probodyne to something like the SAS or Stage function.  That way as soon as you turn on SAS or stage the engines on the runway, it automatically sets the 'control from' to the right component without having to try and scroll inside the nose to find it.

Also if you right click on all the fairings and hardpoints in the 2nd stage, you can disable them from staging at all.  This will prevent the plane from falling apart if someone hits the stage button twice by mistake.

Good job, I look forward to seeing your next offering.

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  • 3 weeks later...
This thread is quite old. Please consider starting a new thread rather than reviving this one.

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