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Mountain lake landing challenge


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16 hours ago, DaveTheFish said:

I made contact with the lake, at a vertical speed of under 10 m/s and overall speed under 20m/s, and suddenly the Kraken struck. I have attempted twice, and both times my plane parts flew everywhere and Jeb died. Is it my plane, poor instrumentation, bad piloting, or is it like the Mohole for me and just me? I'm confused, although I should probably note that my plane is 80% airbrakes, 20% wing, and a negligible amount of Jeb, fuselage, and gear.

Usually it is better to touch the water with a fuel tank or fuselage. Perhaps you could check if your wings are touching the water  which may not be a good idea. In my case I attached the aerodynamic surfaces higher in the fuselage and it worked pretty good. It helps taking off from the water as well.

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On 6/29/2018 at 2:14 PM, DaveTheFish said:

I made contact with the lake, at a vertical speed of under 10 m/s and overall speed under 20m/s, and suddenly the Kraken struck. I have attempted twice, and both times my plane parts flew everywhere and Jeb died. Is it my plane, poor instrumentation, bad piloting, or is it like the Mohole for me and just me? I'm confused, although I should probably note that my plane is 80% airbrakes, 20% wing, and a negligible amount of Jeb, fuselage, and gear.

Can you upload the craft file somewhere and we can have a play with it?  I've noticed with seaplanes that certain parts just seem to come off no matter what, and I have to rethink my design. It could also just be something a few struts could solve. 

Having said that, 10 meters per second (that over 20 mph or 36 kph) is actually a pretty fast descent, irregardless of your horizontal speed.  Since you are only going 20m/s, that's a very sharp angle of attack, and water is hard.  I just tried taking the same plane I used in the challenge and landing it in the water just past the runway.    I stalled it about 20 meters above the ground and hit the water with a vertical descent of just around 10 mps. I lost my engine and my intake. 

I flew a few different craft of mine, both sea and land, and Kerbal Engineers is telling me my vertical speed tends to be around 3-5 meters per second at most when the wheels hit the ground.

 

Edited by Klapaucius
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Im making progress. Currently my plane has small girders underneath that have 80ms impact tolerance.  Of course the rest of the plane doesnt have that much.

My next design will be a probe core so I can rescue the Kerbal I stranded in the lake.

Edited by Rus-Evo
Spellin wuz bad
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  • 2 weeks later...

OK, so I dial in the coordinates.  Check

Fly out there with my plane.  Check

Setup for approach.  Check

Land with no problem whatsoever!  CHECK!   

What kind of challenge is this???  Pffffft!!!

Prepare for takeoff.  Check

Departure and climb out.  Check  

And as we make our final turn for home...

Spoiler

I notice the second lake (puddle?) that I was supposed to land in.  DOH!!!

 

Edited by XLjedi
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I landed a 6ton craft in the smallest lake, but my panther engine broke off and I was unable to take off again.  Probably could have.  

Used aircraft mods and modified mk2 parts to splashdown.  Elevons as canards and tail planes enabled it to flip straight up to straight down in 50m with no minimum controllable speed.  

 

(having trouble with screenshots, its on my screen and quicksaved right now).

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There we go.  I added a wing type E and a strake below my engine to survive splashdown.  Works fine now.

 

 

 

 

 

screenshot9.png

 

It took a few tries to get this right.  Most of the MK2 parts will survive spashdown at 40m/s.  The pitch planes at 50% have enough authority to go nose up or nose down rapidly at extremely low airspeed.  

 

The aircraft parts mod has some MK2 parts with more height, very useful for water takeoff.

 

 

screenshot6.png

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  • 3 weeks later...
50 minutes ago, Vít Salava said:

Can I use propeller engines from AP+?

Yeah, go for it. This is not a win/lose challenge with a leaderboard. I'd be keen to see what you come up with.  Same rules apply, however: takeoffs and landings are horizontal, not VTOL, though of course, your landing my be a bit extreme on the approach angle :)

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1 hour ago, The Minmus Derp said:

I will land in the lake horizontally, build a base using KIS and other stuff, and leave! I AM YOUR GOD OF MOUNTAIN LAKE LANDING! Wait, where is this lake?

Check the first page. It is the lake at the end of the big river, northeast of the KSC. It is the same river used for the River Race Challenge; and @selfish_meme has created some good graphics.  He calls it "The Bowl" on his map.  

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I set forth to use proppelers, so I built a vague macchi fighter mashup. In the bigger lake, (which is easy mode) I managed to land and fly out of, with 45m/s v1  I had to stuff the plane into one end and nearly hit the wall on the other side. In the smaller hole I landed, but had no chance of getting out. Flatspin landings anyone? Rest of the images:https://imgur.com/a/MMAnxHa

Album pNaiMGH will appear when post is submitted
Edited by Vít Salava
Did I say I pulled 22G with this? :D
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38 minutes ago, Vít Salava said:

I set forth to use proppelers, so I built a vague macchi fighter mashup. In the bigger lake, (which is easy mode) I managed to land and fly out of, with 45m/s v1  I had to stuff the plane into one end and nearly hit the wall on the other side. In the smaller hole I landed, but had no chance of getting out. Flatspin landings anyone? Rest of the images:https://imgur.com/a/MMAnxHa

Album pNaiMGH will appear when post is submitted

Nice setup! How did you manage the off-center thrust combines with water drag?

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1 minute ago, dozerman said:

Nice setup! How did you manage the off-center thrust combines with water drag?

Honestly, I just took how the real planes look and made it in KSP, applied a bit of flying model aircraft builder's "magic"(just the adjusted thrust angle really). The torque isnt that fierce, I havent had any problems with it flippping. It works fine, but I may need to give it a bigger HTP or move the wings back a bit, its twitchy. Aerodynamicaly. If you are interested, I will share the plane tomorrow.

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