woot

Anyone want to do a brief rundown of vertical stabilizer function? When is two better than one? If using two, how does their lateral distance from each other and relative angle affect their performance?

Always. It's been giving me a bit of oscillation but nothing too bad.

I'm aware that any real-life pilot would be dead, but that doesn't seem relevant. As mentioned above, the horizontal stabilizers have 12degree RoM.

Well it seems a lot worse. I get stall oscillations in pitch, it seems generally sluggish, and I haven't been able to pull even 20Gs. And since I removed most of the armaments, it's actually lighter than it was before, so it seems that the extra fuselage length is likely to blame. Any other ideas?

I figured out that the proximal set of AMRAAMs were causing the simulation issues. I also added 1m to the fuselage length: Is that long enough? I'm trying to find the length that maximizes stability but doesn't sacrifice any maneuverability.

The cockpit is quiztech aero, the wings are b9 procedural, the missiles and whatnot are obviously BDArmory. It also uses adjustable landing gear and has an ejection module from Vanguard Tech. I've used this cockpit before and it seems to voxelize properly: Here are the stability derivative simulations (let me know if I did these wrong; I don't know how to interpret these ones)

So I have a little jet fighter that I really enjoy flying -- it pulls 30+ Gs regularly without issue (although it flies apart on demand if I roll during one of those turns). The problem is that it doesn't handle as precisely as I'd like. It suffers from a bit of roll instability, particularly when combined with pitch, and just in general isn't quite as responsive as I'd like FYI, the horizontal stabilizers pitch at 12, the elevons are non-functional, the ailerons roll at 20, and the vertical stabilizers yaw at 9. Anybody have any advice? If this were your craft how would you fix it up? I tend to keep it subsonic and between 0 and 3km altitude, mostly looping around KSC and shooting missiles (inaccurately) at some tanks. As a secondary issue, if anyone knows why the transonic area ruling analysis in FAR isn't oriented correctly it'd be nice to get that fixed. I can post the craft file on request, although it requires several mods.

What was the reference on the Cobra cockpit?

I activated some control surfaces as flaps for the first time last night and ran into similar problems. As I understand it, the point of flaps is to increase the camber of the wings and increase lift more than drag, making take-off possible at lower speeds. All that happened for me was reducing runway speed to a level making take-off impossible, suggesting that they increased drag far more than lift, which isn't supposed to be true of flaps (i.e., they were acting more like spoilers in their L/D ratio). So I'm probably done trying to use flaps as my jets don't require a shorter runway anyway. Their ability to make slower landings possible is more intriguing, but I'm guessing that wouldn't go well either. What's the recommended angle? I tried everything from 20 to 50 and nothing made it easier to take off. I'm also not clear on how to setup different flap settings. Are action groups the only way to do it? There seems to be some automation included in FAR, as my flaps seem to be start deployed on the runway, but I haven't found any documentation to confirm.

This shield is a nice fit for a proposed Mars architecture published last month. The publication includes this figure: The only problem is that the proposed heatshield is 12m, putting a kerbalized version somewhere around 7.5m. I gave the 3.75m one a shot though, and while it's minimalist (9.3tons vs 73tons) it's vaguely similar: Any plans for larger sizes?

That's... not what happened.

Any chance of adding the same functionality to RealChutes as contained in the stockbugfixes? It'd be great to get some separation between deployed radial parachutes instead of having them clipping through each other.

You know that Orion exists IRL right? Its first test mission happened last year. Check the pics from EFT-1

I very frequently experience that as well. The thrust adapter plate does it most every time (possibly 100%) for me, and the fairing base and fairing ring maybe half the time.

I've got the same thing going. Not sure if it's causing my issue, since I'm also getting a bunch of "input is null" errors, but it probably doesn't help.

I'm reminded of the climate change denial crowd. How many extremely smart people have spent their whole careers thinking about aerodynamics, building on the knowledge of those that came before? Do you suppose, Jared, that you've discovered some fatal flaw in the science that invalidates all of that? Is it not possible that you simply lack the knowledge to understand how badly you misunderstand the topic? Unless you can thoroughly explain the established theory, you have no basis to disagree with it. Edit: In other words:

Has anyone hacked together a slightly wider procedural decoupler? I think I used the KW model to do that back in .23 but lost all my configs. I'd really like to get an easier-to-connect decoupler going forward.

Do your 4 sats all have the same name? I could imagine that being a problem for a contract that seems to use sat names in its evaluation.

Yeah I'm most of the way done making an MM patch to let every fairing switch between every fairing texture I can find. Should be cool. Regarding the insignias, I wonder if keeping the texture constant and then switching the insignias by prying into the flag system would work. Just thinking out loud.

Ok I took a look at all the downloads on that page, and the last one does include a fairing with a texture switching module, although at the moment it only allows a couple different logos to be added. So I just took that module, added to it all the fairing textures on that page along with all the ones on Gryphon's page http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/123951-1-0-2-Gryphon-Corp-textures-for-Procedural-Fairings-v1-01 and pasted it into one of the regular PF config files -- works perfectly. I might end up keeping a few different fairing shapes and just adding this module to all of them. Once I get the kinks worked out I'll probably do it as a MM patch so I can keep it all in one place.

Ah yes indeed! That likely explains it. Thanks.

I used that mod back in .23 or so, but it as I recall it only added a couple additional fairings rather than allowing the regular PF textures to be tweakable. It also seems that only one fairing has been updated for 1.0. Am I misunderstanding the OP and he's added tweakable textures?

I would like to be able to choose different textures for Procedural Fairings in the same manner that it's possible to choose among various textures for Procedural Parts. It seems that it's not as simple as copying some code from the Procedural Parts, since fairings are obviously shaped differently, but it also doesn't seem like it should be too hard for someone who knows what they're doing (i.e., not me). I am aware of some additional fairings beyond the cone and egg that come with PF, but in each case each has a single shape and a single texture. Ideally, both shape and texture could be tweakable, necessitating only a single part in the VAB menu; however, just the ability to tweak textures on the available fairing shapes would be sufficient and probably a lot easier to code.

I use the Lightbulb engine on most of my missions lately, and have noticed a small issue with it: it gimbals in response to control input before it has been activated, often clipping through its fairing even in the early stages of a launch. Is there a way to arrange so it doesn't start gimballing until the rest of the stack below it has been staged?

I'm wondering about creating a module manager patch to allow texture switching on the regular procedural fairings. Obviously it only comes with 2 shape options, but being able to choose from the same textures on fairings as for procedural tanks and whatnot would be great, and would potentially allow this mod's additional shapes to also use the texture best suited for the situation. Has anyone tried to do something like this?