Spike 3.5

[Darkeldar]

I just seen the "Blackbird" thread, but here is my interpretation using B9 parts. Since getting the full KSP, last week the Spike series is my first aerospace craft. I have pictures of Spike 3 here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/threads/52828-How-to-do-this-with-Action-Groups?p=699547

Here's Spike 3.5

I made a few modifications to help me get her off the ground by adding a pylon to the nose gear to raise the nose. Now I don't use the entire runway. I also added some radial air intakes to give me more air to delay the engines flaming out.

And since you all like blazing aircraft:

Next step is to make Spike 4 a real spaceplane, I'll try for an SSTO, but I need to see what the next build does.

[Darkeldar]

And with getting .22 all settled and the necessary mods installed, I finally got back to getting Spike 4 flying. With one of the other landing gear options now available I was able to bring the nose up for a shorter takeoff run, without needing the pylon. I added a tail gear to limit my initial nose up, and to keep from scraping the tail cone off. As the wings are now crossfuel capable, I got rid of the LFO fuel lines. I added an RCS system, and added some batteries, as I still using electric while in orbit. I found out that in addition to changing the Sabre mode from air-breather to rocket, I had to also shut off the air intake. Before I added the intakes to the mode switch action group, at about 30km I'd get a flame-out and then the engines would never act in sync. And unlike before, I couldn't recover as the Sabres would start up at different times and put Spike into a flat spin.

So I've taken off and got into orbit, now I got to land the spaceplane.