Wanderfound

The swept elevons always appear off angle and flipped, they need to be rotated in two dimensions before attaching. Part Angle Display is very good for getting them right; I can usually get them close with 90°/5° rotations, but getting them perfect requires some 1° fine tuning. As for being slightly off plane...that's just a matter of mousefiddling. Pulling them away from the wing a bit might help. And always attach control surfaces with the wing flat and add dihedral afterwards.

Old habits die hard. I do the plane-flip thing for VTOLs, but I usually don't bother for landing gear. It is a good trick.

Yes, they're offline, and it's a nuisance. The best solution is to eyeball it, but it helps a lot if you can get your view into the angle you need. And that's where Raster Prop Monitor comes in: All docking ports have an RPM camera by default, aimed right down the barrel of the port. And the RPM displays give you all of the information you need. IVA docking is easy.

In that case, you may want something like this with the VTOL jets replaced with Aerospikes for Duna use: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1529447&viewfull=1#post1529447 Although you may prefer to swap the VTOL for enhanced fuel capacity, as in this one: http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/craigmotbey/slideshow/Kerbal/Tutorials/Hangar%20to%20Landing

It depends on what you're moving. On a lightweight probe (Fine Print satellites etc) the LV-N's efficiency is outweighed by its bulk and weight. On anything bigger, the LV-N is the clear winner, but on really big stuff it may be painfully slow. In that case, you may take the efficiency hit in favour of speed and go for a KR-2L or similar. On landers, where bulk is a factor, LV-909's do very well, as do the little Rockomax engines. One engine is always more fuel efficient than two or more of the same. If you're sending something big, it'll be a lot easier to launch if you refuel it in orbit. If you're just sending a probe, consider using a spaceplane to give it low-cost headstart; launch the spaceplane into a massively elliptical orbit, drop the probe when you're nearly out of fuel, keeping just enough to drop your periapsis down to 30km for aerobraking. Set it up so that the probe does its interplanetary burn at periapsis for maximum Oberth. If you land the spaceplane at KSC, it'll only cost about √3,000 to do this. Ions are efficient, but they're unpleasant to use. Much too slow, even at 4x time.

NEAR design is fairly similar to FAR design. If you have a poke through the designer's guides in post #3 of the Kerbodyne thread, you should find some things of use. It'd be good if you could post a screenshot with CoM/CoL/CoT markers visible, with fuel tanks full and empty. But, going on what you've shown in that pic: Not too bad, could work, but needs some polish. You probably need more vertical stabiliser (AKA tailfin) and you've got more intakes than you need. I'd consider swapping the inline cockpit and forward intakes for a standard Mk2 cockpit. Your cargo bay is probably well forward of CoM, so your weight is going to shift after you release the payload. It may be worthwhile swapping the positions of the cargo bay and one of the rear tanks. You have more wing than you need; you could cut the size of that delta by 30-50% with no trouble. The lack of dihedral may give you a bit of roll instability. I'd be inclined to use a proper inline port rather than building it into the cargo bay (unless that is one? Hard to see). I can't see what the central engines are; LV-N's?

Endorsed; annoying as all hell.

Okay folks; I've put together a little slideshow tutorial. It goes all the way through the construction of a spaceplane, to taking it to orbit, bringing it through reentry and landing back at KSC. There are just under 200 slides, but they're all JPEGs so it shouldn't be too bandwidth hungry. I deliberately left the mistakes and revisions in the sequence in order to give people an idea of how the process works. The link is to a slideshow, that should have captions visible if I've done it right. Let me know if I haven't. http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/craigmotbey/Kerbal/Tutorials/Hangar%20to%20Landing/story (edited to fix caption visibility)

That new utility bay looks very nice. Any update on FAR compatability?

BTW, what you've got looks okay, although we'd need to see CoL to judge. In stock, you want CoL overlapping CoM but not in front of it. The pure Aerospike propulsion would make it difficult to reach orbit before running short of fuel. RAPIERs would make it a lot easier. I'd recommend adding a docking port for orbital refuelling (unless that piece behind the passenger cabin is one?).

The KSC runway paddock is a special case; because it's part of KSC rather than the surrounding terrain, it's billiard-table flat. Anywhere else will have at least some bumps.

No, control surfaces look at their alignment and adjust, e.g. forward surfaces deflecting opposite to rear. As mentioned, you can hack around it with flap/spoiler combos, but it's a nuisance.

Small feature request: The max deflection on spoilers and flaps can be negative, which is good: it allows you to set opposed spoilers as airbrakes. But the maximum negative is only -30, while max positive is 50 or so. This means that you can't do maximum-strength airbrakes unless you do the lower half as flaps instead of spoilers, which consumes two action groups and complicates deployment. Could we get the maximum negative deflection stretched to the same as maximum positive?

Cool, will give it a try.

Whatever you build is going to want to rotate to put CoL behind CoM. Mass at the front, drag at the back; think about feathers and arrows. Not a problem on the way up, just put some fins on the tail...but then, come reentry, you want it to fly backwards... There are a few ways around it. 1) Reenter with a bare capsule. That's what they're for. There is no need to return goo pods or Science Jr's to the surface; go EVA, collect their data, and store it all in the capsule. 2) Spend ages fiddling around to get a design that is aerodynamically stable both ways, and strut it enough so that it can cope with the pressure and g-forces. Usually not worth the bother. 3) Come back down the same way you came up, spaceplane style. Streamline your nose, and have enough control authority and lift on the reentry vehicle that you have full control of your altitude. Use the lift to control your descent as you slow, and don't drop deploy parachutes until you've slowed enough to survive the deployment shock (i.e. < 300 m/s). Use struts etc to reinforce the structure of the parachute mounting points, and consider deploying chutes in stages to ease the impact and provide failure redundancy.

We really need a better Kerbpaint replacement. Maybe not quite as much as the sort of thing that comes with car games these days, but something of that ilk. I'd been thinking about doing some vid streams demonstrating the build process from start to finish, but I haven't had any luck finding free vidcap software that my computer can handle. Might try to do it with just static screenshots and a post here instead.

What I'd like is for my iPad to be able to rapidly and easily flick between full-screens displays of all of the Raster Prop Monitor MFDs. But the map mode alone would be cool, too. Or external view when you're in IVA and vice-versa.

Because a lot of us don't have two PC monitors, but do have a PC and a tablet. Using my iPad as an MFD would be handy.

Okay; here y'go. https://www.dropbox.com/s/l8aqlmcae21kxl8/Kerbodyne%20Delta%20Glider.craft?dl=0 I could probably make a pure rocket one work, but it would be very limited in capability and be the sort of thing that has to be flown exactly right to work. But I made what I did do as rocketish as possible: Warm up the RAPIERs (action group 2) first. The airbrakes are tied to the normal brakes; they come on and off together. Keep the shock cones closed (action group 5) for the initial ascent. Action group 6 for cockpit lights. The airbrakes will automatically retract when you release the wheel brakes. Which means it's time to start the party. Action group 1 for the Aerospikes. Not hard to get up to speed with this much power. Throttle back a touch to keep the engines cool at low altitude. You've got plenty of thrust to spare. Easy to get a good climb going. Open the shock cones (action group 5 again) once the air starts to thin. Not bothered by time acceleration. Once the RAPIERs kick over, close the intakes (action groups 4 and 5) and flatten out. If the handling starts to get squirrely in the thin air, turn on RCS to engage the Vernors. Use action group 0 to disable the Vernors during docking. You can obviously save a huge amount of fuel if you turn off the Aerospikes immediately after takeoff and rely on the RAPIERs in air breathing mode as much as possible. Even if you use the Aerospikes to rapidly climb to 20,000m, switching to jets and flattening out there, flying with a normal effort to delay the switch to closed cycle until maximum jet mode speed is reached will save a huge amount of fuel. I'm deliberately flying as inefficiently as possible in this demonstration flight, just to show that it can be done when desired. Up to speed quickly when you've got 700kN pushing you. Tiny circularisation burn. Open up in orbit (action groups 7 and 8). The cockpit battery is locked off as emergency reserve; right click to reactivate it. Just enough cargo capacity for a minimalist Fine Print satellite. Toggle airbrakes during reentry with the normal brake controls (. And fire up the RAPIERs in jet mode when it's time to fly home. Lovely and stable until the air runs out. Kick in the stabilising Vernors when it does. BTW, if you don't like the four-engine thing, the same basic airframe would work with the lateral tanks and engines removed and the central Aerospikes replaced with RAPIERs.

It is for me, it may or may not be for you. It makes planes fly like planes.

Thanks for the reviews. Some notes: all of the ships have the cockpit batteries locked off as emergency reserve, and deployable solar stashed away somewhere. And some have Vernors set up as landing retro thrusters. The VTOLs should be opening the doors with the same action group as toggles the engines. If they aren't, there's an action group bug in play. None of them are designed to use staging at any time. The basic trick to piloting the more fragile lightweight stuff is to be very careful at low altitude. Nearly all of your blowups were around 1,000m or below, and you were usually above or close to supersonic. Low altitude supersonic can be done (see the entry post screenshots for the Scapa), but if you're having aero failure trouble, get a few thousand metres of altitude before you try to go supersonic. You can either throttle back until you've climbed a bit, or just climb steeply enough that all of your thrust goes into fighting gravity instead of acceleration. When you're manouevring, watch the g-meter as much as the navball. If it gets above five, back off (unless you're messing about with something like the Scapa at moderate altitude). If the g's constantly spike up and down to higher than five, you need to be less rough with the control inputs. If flying by keyboard, tap the controls, don't hold them down. In extreme situations, use fine controls or trim. All of them except the Invasion can be pulled into a vertical climb immediately post takeoff if done gently enough. And they do need a PID tuner if SAS is going to be on at low altitude; if you haven't already got one, there's one included in this rapidly developing mod - http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/100073-0-25-Pilot-Assistant-0-6-Nov-20-Atmospheric-piloting-aids

Here's one: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/100073-0-25-Pilot-Assistant-0-6-Nov-20-Atmospheric-piloting-aids

Happy to help, but it looks like you're flying in stock aero. I'm much more useful for FAR.

Are these set up to work with FAR?

You may be talking about landing (in which case, reduce your sink rate), but I suspect you're talking about SAS wobbles. In that case, get a mod that includes a PID tuner (this lets you de-wobble an SAS) or turn off the SAS and turn on the flight assistance toggles provided by FAR, and be prepared to fly with a bit more active involvement unless you tune them super-tight.