Wanderfound

Speaking of which...the second Rockomax adaptor in this pic is generating a lot of drag: Is having it there doing me any good at all, or would I be better off just running the 2.5m lab straight into the Mk2 parts with no attempt at smoothing the transition? Also curious as to why it appears that engines create more drag than intakes.

Re: bouncyness. Install a PID tuner and all your SAS wobble problems will go away. There's a link to one and clues on how to set it up in the second post of this thread.

Kerbin Station, Mun Station, Minmus Station, a high Kerbin orbit rescue tanker drone, a big nuke ship off to turn itself into a base on a Kerbol-orbiting E class asteroid, a wandering Scansat probe, an out-of-fuel spaceplane grounded on the Mun and whichever plane I'm flying at the time. Plus half a dozen Fine Print satellites in assorted orbits.

No, I hadn't. Ramps!

I prefer the Mk 2 aesthetic, actually. What I've been saying to you isn't that it's too big; it's that you could make something just that big fly better if you converted to a monoplane and stripped a bit of excess weight here and there. Same size, same parts, just done a smidgeon more efficiently. But, it's your plane, and whatever y'wanna do with it is all cool. There is no one true way.

Bringing back the classics: the Kerbodyne De Minimus XXV. Style and substance. Exceptional styling. Rapid acceleration. Easy takeoff. And a simple climb. Fine under time acceleration. This is a very streamlined design; low-drag, not a lot of wing. Give it a bit of speed before pulling too much AoA. Get up to speed before climbing too high; the low-drag design also implies minimal intakes, so you need to ram-air your engines. But if you do, she can climb to around 30,000m before switching over to oxidising mode... ...and accelerates very quickly after that. A shallow final ascent provides extra time to admire your ship. Comfortably carries a light satellite payload. Aim: Ignition: Shutdown. LKO to escape velocity in less than eight seconds. Plenty left in the mothership for deorbiting or rendezvous and refuelling. Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/u8zzlmsug7fqk9c/Kerbodyne%20De%20Minimus%20XXV.craft?dl=0

Got a pic?

Might be worth having another look at the second half of the tutorial, too: http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/craigmotbey/Kerbal/Tutorials/Hangar%20to%20Landing/story

It's no longer a supported mod, but the licence permits free redistribution. Pilot Assistant is certainly promising, but it may be a touch buggy at the moment. Soon to be fixed I expect; it's under rapid development.

I'm running short of design inspiration. What are folks interested in seeing? Long range, sporty, lab ships, VTOLs, budget trainers, cargo haulers, shuttle-style, space stations?

Works for me:

BTW, folks: there is a link to a PID tuner in this post: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1353890&viewfull=1#post1353890 If you install that mod and use these settings (in FAR, no idea about stock): ...then all of your SAS wobble problems should go away.

A new review: kcs123, Sporty Mk1. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/...=1#post1501186, under consideration for both Best Sporty Pleasure Craft and Best Non-space Aeroplane in the FAR categories. There's nothing offensive about the functional, broad-shouldered aesthetics, but they're not a selling point either. The undisguised struts could have been hidden, and it would definitely benefit from the Kerbpaint treatment. There are nice detail touches in place such as the automatically triggered flaps and spoilers, however. Plenty of grunt; so much, in fact, that the brakes can't hold it stationary at full throttle. Effortless liftoff, plenty of tail clearance. Agile at low airspeeds. Able to rapidly go supersonic in a true vertical climb. And easy to flick over into level flight. No trouble with high G-loads, positive or negative. Even when combined with high dynamic pressure. There's a tiny bit of pitch wobble at extreme pressure that might be tuned out with a slight alteration of control surface tweakables or PID adjustment, but nothing significant. Even in extreme conditions like these, you can hold the elevators at maximum deflection all day long. Although it is possible to tear the wings off this, it requires a vigorous and deliberate effort to do so. It can easily cope with anything short of deliberately suicidal flying. The choice to set the wing surfaces as elevons instead of ailerons is surprising. Although the plane has no notable handling flaws, it would be interesting to compare what effect this has on the handling vs a normal aileron setup. Easy and stable low-speed approach behaviour. And simple to land. Stable runway behaviour, rapid deceleration. All good. Thank you, Nedke. Overall: a very nice little ship, well designed and lots of fun to fly. The only real weaknesses are aesthetic (which is highly subjective anyway) and the relatively low flight ceiling imposed by the circular intakes. It's a definite contender for atmospheric aircraft, and will only be beaten in the sports category by a similarly enjoyable spaceplane. Give it a go yourself; worth the time.

Cool, thanks for that. I'll put a link to it in my tutorial post if you don't mind.

You really should give landing normally a try, though; it's not as hard as you'd think. If you want to, grab the ship from the tutorial (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1555545&viewfull=1#post1555545) and do a named quicksave (alt-F5) with yourself about 20km from the runway. Try to have it as close as you can manage to lined up, at about 500m altitude and 120m/s speed with minimal engines on minimal throttle and flaps (but not spoilers) deployed. From there, it's only a minute or so to landing, so you can quickly fly half a dozen practice runs in succession by quickloading. Grab yourself Kerbal Flight Indicators. This is a small, elegant and efficient mod that projects the navball indicators into the main view in a non-intrusive way (easy to toggle on and off, too). All you need to do is put the prograde marker just past the nearest end of the runway and keep it there as you come in, keeping your sink rate below 10m/s at impact. If you watch the prograde marker while you do your final approach manoeuvres, you'll get a really clear look at the effects of the controls on the trajectory of the ship. Shallower approach = easier to control sink rate. Lined up correctly earlier = easier to land with wings level and no sideslip. A little post-landing steering correction is better than a last second banking turn or rudder stomp. Then it's just brake brake brake and steer as gently as possible to keep it on the runway.

In any ship, to slow an aircraft you need to dissipate energy. S-turns (alternating left and right banking turns) are one good way of doing this; the efficacy will depend on how sharply your craft is capable of doing them. Deliberate sideslipping will wash off some speed through enhanced drag, but not as much as a good turn.

Agreed. Thanks, DaMichel.

I'm not sure how the behaviour of the tuner I've been using compares to this mod, but I get good and stable results at all altitudes from these PID settings:

The Kopernicus was all stock parts, BTW. FAR, DRE and the usual flight data/cruise control mods (Mechjeb, Kerbal Flight Data, Kerbal Flight Indicators, etc). Full tech tree; carries all instruments except for the atmospheric nosecone jobbie. Cost is √149,323 wet and √144,615 dry, so a maximum flight cost of √4,708. Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/kpf0bqunm0p1kct/Kerbodyne%20Kopernicus.craft?dl=0

The same issue happens with lander legs. But if you choke down to an 0.725m diameter (as with the lander a few posts up) there's just enough room. I usually use FL-R10 or Oskar-B tanks, but octagonal struts'll do too.

I build to minimise CoM/dCom offset, and use fuel lines or tank lockoffs to ensure that the frontmost fuel is not the first to drain. Works for me. I don't have a copy of the licence, and it's no longer on the release thread. Given the ambiguity, I prefer to err on the side of caution. I'm happy to promote other people's SAS fixes, though. This one is still developing but appears to be coming along nicely: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/100073-0-25-Pilot-Assistant-0-2-Nov-15-Altitude-and-heading-control-for-planes

Nothing posted here requires Goodspeed; I like to keep the public designs as stock as possible. I primarily use Goodspeed (and TAC-FB in the past) just to automate tedious things like orbital station fuel transfers. I also tend to use it for the RCS tanks of probe/rover payloads, to make sure that I don't accidentally undock them with half-empty tanks. I may have done that on OOPS Mk3K, but it does no harm to the design if the mod isn't there; it just means you need to refuel them manually. Using the ability to balance fuel within a ship makes fuel lines obsolete, so I tend not to use Goodspeed or TAC-FB for that purpose because it feels a tiny bit cheaty to me [1]; removes one of the challenges of design. I probably should stick a modlist up front. For now: Essential for me: FAR DRE Editor Extensions RCS Build Aid Part Angle Display Kerbal Flight Data Kerbal Flight Indicators Enhanced Navball Kerbal Alarm Clock Goodspeed Mechjeb (long LV-N interplanetary burns are tedious without it, and Smart A.S.S Surface mode is very handy for VTOL flight) Raster Prop Monitor (essential for IVA flying) Hyomoto's MFD (improves RPM) Chatterer (big improvement to immersion) Fine Print (makes career mode interesting) That PID tuner which I'm unfortunately unable to redistribute Things that I frequently use but am willing to ditch when my laptop keeps crashing all the time: Scansat (lotsa fun) TAC-LS (just to stop the eternally isolated space station factor) Kerbal Construction Time (adds an interesting extra challenge to career mode) Kerbpaint Hyperedit (not in career, but good for setting up challenges and cinematics) Part pack that I just use a single part from: Nil2Work's Retrofuture; it's got the best RPM cameras I've found, and the only ones that aren't excessively vulnerable to DRE [1] Which is not to say that there is anything wrong with anyone else using them for that.

Go catch some Charlie Kaufman flicks; Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich. Messing with your mind is their main schtick. Ditto for Waking Life, Cube, Memento, Gattaca, I ⤠Huckabee's, etc etc. There's plenty of intelligent film around; just don't expect it from the big budget blockbusters.

"Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book." - Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106BCE-43BCE. (supposedly; may be apocryphal)

What do you have your wing mass tweakables set to? And do you run into the same problem when you aren't flying that low, or if you back off the throttle until the high dynamic pressure warning goes away? 1,000km/h at 400m altitude is a fairly extreme situation.