Mountain Lake Landing Challenge PART II-Underwater exploration

[Klapaucius]

You know the LAKE. Steep descent in, steep ascent out, unforgiving, subject of the first Mountain Lake Landing Challenge.

Now for PART II

Explore the lake itself! 

The Challenge:  Go to the lake and dive down as far as you can.  That's all. 

 

You may:

a. build a sub and fly it to the lake

b. build a submersible plane

c. transport a submersible rover and drive it to the bottom

d. something else very cool I did not think of that is in keeping with the spirit of the challenge

 

 

RULES:

 

1. You may use Mission Builder or Hyperedit to travel to the location BUT you must start your mission outside the red circle (see picture below).  The lake is located at (30 degrees 29' 42" N, 42 degrees 27' 11" W). 

 

2. After your explorations, you must leave the lake and land yourself somewhere outside the red circle. 

3. Due to ecological concerns, you may not leave anything behind: no fuel or ore tanks, submersibles, debris, nothing.  Your rover or sub or whatever must be flown out.  If  even an antenna breaks off your craft you will be fined. 

4. You craft must have at least one crew member.  No drones for any part of this (though you can leave a craft unmanned floating on the surface if you wish, as long as it is not being operated.)

5.  Otherwise: VTOL okay, chutes okay, helicopters okay, MODs are fine. Kudos of course if you manage without.

6. Post cool photos and--even better--video if you can!

 

The lake narrows considerably as you go down, so more glory the deeper you explore.  UPDATE NOTE:  The depth of this lake seems to vary depending on your terrain detail settings.  If you get to the absolute bottom and your reading is less than 350 metres, you still get the gold.  Just take a screenshot.

BRONZE: Explore to a depth of 100 metres

SILVER: Explore to a depth of 200 metres

@Klapaucius  341 metres

GOLD: Explore beyond 350 metres: 

@Rocket In My Pocket  403 metres

@sturmhauke 403 metres

@Ozelui 402 metres

As with all my challenges, the spirit of the competition is important. I cannot come up with rules for everything, so don't go looking for loopholes.  As always, major brownie points for not using reaction wheels or fly-by-wire. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 3, 2019 by Klapaucius

[The Minmus Derp]

Cool! Can I use a ship that has ore tanks clipped inside as to have just enough weight to have neutral buoyancy? or BDArmory armor panels? If so, I will use a mk2 cockpit with everything clipped inside, with the jet engine sticking out slightly. Dropped out of a plane, which will fly back to KSC. but. The jet engine will also have separatron boosters to get out of the lake and back to the KSC. or rather, a KK built base just outside the red circle, next to the river. 

[Klapaucius]

7 hours ago, The Minmus Derp said:

Cool! Can I use a ship that has ore tanks clipped inside as to have just enough weight to have neutral buoyancy? or BDArmory armor panels? If so, I will use a mk2 cockpit with everything clipped inside, with the jet engine sticking out slightly. Dropped out of a plane, which will fly back to KSC. but. The jet engine will also have separatron boosters to get out of the lake and back to the KSC. or rather, a KK built base just outside the red circle, next to the river. 

You can do whatever you like. The only stipulation is you can't leave anything behind in the lake or the red circle area.

[Triop]

I still need to do the lake landing, tried it once but failed.

I'll get back to this as soon™ as I've reached the Southpole.

[Klapaucius]

Just now, Triop said:

I still need to do the lake landing, tried it once but failed.

I'll get back to this as soon™ as I've reached the Southpole.

I've been enjoying following the journey!

[sturmhauke]

4 hours ago, Triop said:

I still need to do the lake landing, tried it once but failed.

If you make a cargo plane to carry a sub, you can do both at once.

[Klapaucius]

14 minutes ago, sturmhauke said:

If you make a cargo plane to carry a sub, you can do both at once.

Yes and no. In the original challenge, you may not use VTOL or chutes, so if he would have to land without any of those aids, which are allowed in this challenge. @Triop will garner massive style points if he manages that!

[Triop]

12 hours ago, Klapaucius said:

Yes and no. In the original challenge, you may not use VTOL or chutes, so if he would have to land without any of those aids, which are allowed in this challenge. @Triop will garner massive style points if he manages that!

Also, is taking off from the lake again not a objective aswell ? (1st challenge)

[Klapaucius]

1 hour ago, Triop said:

Also, is taking off from the lake again not a objective aswell ? (1st challenge)

Yes, in both cases you need to take off.  The rules have been clarified to reflect that.

Edited September 9, 2018 by Klapaucius

[sturmhauke]

BRB, making an insane cargo seaplane...

[The Minmus Derp]

Making a teeny submarine with a jet engine and all the neccesary stuff clipped inside a mk1-2 adapter. which would be mounted inside a mk3 kargobay, which would be on a small mk3 plane.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Mission accomplished! What a blast too, had great fun with this one. Pics under spoiler. 

403 Meters!

Like, a lot of pics lol.

Spoiler

Kestrel1 ready for take off! (I always wanted to make a Goliath VTOL...don't ask why. Lol.)

The descent towards the river, one Hyperedit later.

Cockpit view, you'll notice we don't have much speed as we're VTOLing in like a heli courtesy of our two reversed Goliaths.

The lake awaits us.

Safety first, lights on!

One splash later and our feet are wet.

Jeb prepares to enter his sub, it took some convincing to make him put his helmet on lol. (TRR)

French accent: "The ocean enveloped me like a mothers womb, the sea was a symphony of color.."

Was getting a bit spooked at at this point tbh. I don't like water irl.

Jeb seems oddly at peace with the murky horrors of the deep.

The money shot! 403 meters. I'm guessing 405 would be possible if you had a smaller sub lol.

*Ominous music plays*

It's a ways off!

Now we just have to park it!

...Upside down. (Who the heck designed this thing anyways?!)

Dry feet, finally!

Let's get the F out of Dodge before something eats us.

Just barely scraping by on the way out, I did not consider the exit in my planning lol. TWR is very low.

I've built weirder planes...but she's an odd duckling to be sure, lol.

As per aforementioned power issues, this is the moment I decide I'm not escaping the canyon and need to land her downriver.

After one rather harrowing short field landing, we look back and admire the sunset!

 

Edited September 11, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket

[The Minmus Derp]

I need time to do dis ting

[Rocket In My Pocket]

12 minutes ago, The Minmus Derp said:

I need time to do dis ting

By all means, take your time. It's not a race.

I actually built my plane and did the mission yesterday, but didn't get around to uploading pics till today.

Looking forward to seeing some other entries!

[Klapaucius]

5 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Mission accomplished! What a blast too, had great fun with this one. Pics under spoiler. 

403 Meters!

Like, a lot of pics lol.

 

Wow! Just, wow!

[Klapaucius]

Here is my run.  I chickened out at 341 meters; I was really afraid I was going to knock off a canard and disqualify myself.  The aircraft is a modified version of my Squire submersible plane.  I swapped the ramjets for panthers and added a few more.  The original plane is faster and more efficient, but it does not have the maneuverability underwater.  This plane is a bit twitchy to fly; usually I turn gimbaling off but its necessary here. 

 

I had to do an underwater three point turn to get myself reoriented.  Just like parking at the local mall...

 

I should probably add that after the video fades out, I tried to put it down on the grass, but  I messed up the landing. However, I decided I had already done what I supposed to do.  

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 12, 2018 by Klapaucius

[KerikBalm]

I have a craft design sitting around that can probably already do this. They weren't meant for Kerbin, but rather 3x Rald and a fairly significantly modified "3x" laythe (3x in quotations because laythe was first reduced in size)

This was the Rald lander, being tested on modified laythe (which had thin air and low gravity, about 0.36 G and  0.27 atmospheres)

It could be emptied of a lot of fuel for the challenge, it doesn't need to SSTO after all

And a smaller laythe seaplane:

Fully fueled, those two vectors only give less than a 0.5 TWR on kerbin, but it doesn't need full fuel for the challenge does it.

Basically, any plane that can get a mk3 long cargobay and ramp there will work, because I've got a mk3 cargobay deployable manned submarine:

It recovers just fine in the cargobay... so...

Really all I need is a plane that can come in, pop chutes, and then take off again (RATO for extra cool points, but also easier).

I'm pretty sure either one of those designs will do it with a reduced fuel load

[sturmhauke]

I have a couple of questions.

Which lake are we supposed to land in? There's "East Lake", larger and closer to the river, and "West Lake", smaller and farther from the river. I did a test run all the way to the bottom of West Lake, but it only seems to be maybe 350 meters deep at the lowest point. I was able to get to 310 with my sub; it was too big to go deeper but it didn't look like the bottom was that much further down.

Is the depth affected by graphics settings somehow? Like maybe at lower settings the game uses a lower poly terrain mesh? I'm playing at lower settings due to potato laptop.

[Klapaucius]

3 minutes ago, sturmhauke said:

I have a couple of questions.

Which lake are we supposed to land in? There's "East Lake", larger and closer to the river, and "West Lake", smaller and farther from the river. I did a test run all the way to the bottom of West Lake, but it only seems to be maybe 350 meters deep at the lowest point. I was able to get to 310 with my sub; it was too big to go deeper but it didn't look like the bottom was that much further down.

Is the depth affected by graphics settings somehow? Like maybe at lower settings the game uses a lower poly terrain mesh? I'm playing at lower settings due to potato laptop.

It is the last lake at the end of the whole river/lake system.  It's the big hole where the red arrow is.  Have a look at the video of my run. I started west in the mountains (to be different) and at around 1:00 you can see me approaching the lake, turning and making my run in. It should give some context. The coordinates are 30 degrees 29' 42" N, 42 degrees 27' 11" W if that is helpful.    Also, have a look at the original Mountain Lake Landing Challenge. There are a lot of pictures in there, including on the initial post.  I hope that helps 

 

 

[Klapaucius]

On 9/9/2018 at 10:32 AM, Triop said:

I still need to do the lake landing, tried it once but failed.

I'll get back to this as soon™ as I've reached the Southpole.

You've reached the Southpole. Take a breather from your Temple drive and go swimming!

[Triop]

1 minute ago, Klapaucius said:

You've reached the Southpole. Take a breather from your Temple drive and go swimming!

You are so right, but I'm almost there.

This aquatic thing should have been a small and simple mission . . .

I'm taking a break when I parked my boat.

I admit that I do to much stuff in KSP...

How can people get bored with this game ?

[sturmhauke]

3 hours ago, Klapaucius said:

It is the last lake at the end of the whole river/lake system.  It's the big hole where the red arrow is.

Yeah that's what I thought, just wanted to make sure. Which leaves my second question. I don't see how it's possible to get down to 400 meters, unless my game is glitching out or something. Like I said, my test run came slightly short, but not nearly 100 meters short. 

[Klapaucius]

2 hours ago, sturmhauke said:

Yeah that's what I thought, just wanted to make sure. Which leaves my second question. I don't see how it's possible to get down to 400 meters, unless my game is glitching out or something. Like I said, my test run came slightly short, but not nearly 100 meters short. 

Yes you can. Watch @Rocket In My Pocket 's run above. You do need a very small sub to do it, however, as it narrows down to a point.

Edited September 20, 2018 by Klapaucius

[sturmhauke]

I was able to determine that the max depth of the lake is affected by the terrain detail setting in the graphics area. Check it:

This is my submarine as far down as I can go with terrain detail at default. The depth as read by the kerbal hanging on the side is 313 meters. (Cockpit depth reading is a bit less at 308 meters.)

Now, here is the same submarine, same lake, same kerbal outside the cockpit, but with terrain detail set to high. This time the depth is 404 meters for the kerbal, 399 in the cockpit.

Normally this sort of thing probably wouldn't matter, but for this specific challenge it actually makes a difference. I recommend noting this in the challenge rules. Don't take my screenshots as my official entry though - I haven't quite figured out how to get my plane to take off again. (Yeah, I went and made my cargo seaplane with submarine.)

[Klapaucius]

2 hours ago, sturmhauke said:

I was able to determine that the max depth of the lake is affected by the terrain detail setting in the graphics area. Check it:

This is my submarine as far down as I can go with terrain detail at default. The depth as read by the kerbal hanging on the side is 313 meters. (Cockpit depth reading is a bit less at 308 meters.)

Now, here is the same submarine, same lake, same kerbal outside the cockpit, but with terrain detail set to high. This time the depth is 404 meters for the kerbal, 399 in the cockpit.

Normally this sort of thing probably wouldn't matter, but for this specific challenge it actually makes a difference. I recommend noting this in the challenge rules. Don't take my screenshots as my official entry though - I haven't quite figured out how to get my plane to take off again. (Yeah, I went and made my cargo seaplane with submarine.)

Wow, that is really interesting. I'll make a note up top.

 The depth was kind of a bonus anyway, and the challenge of it was squeezing into the small space.  As far as I am  concerned, this gets top marks. I look forward to seeing your entry!