hoioh

It's beyond me to fly without SAS control in the first place, so I wouldn't even know where to begin. I mean I build pretty stable planes, but I can't be arsed to constantly correct them in flight, I'm more of a fire and forget kind of guy, so SAS is a must. I also regurlay fly with mechjeb controls for precise direction and pitch control and to have the ability to go get a cup of coffee while it flies itsself over to wherever I wanted to go for my acrobatic stunts. If I had to guess though, I would recommend to raise the braking power on the rear wheels and lower it on the front wheels so that the collective of rear wheels has more braking force than the collective of front wheels. Particularly with a craft that has only a single tail wheel, I would turn that up to 200 and drop the force on the front wheel to below 150 collectively and see if that helped. It's like really hard braking on the front wheel of a bicycle, I mean, just don't.

Yeah that' why I blamed it on the Kerbal from the admin building because it didn't seem right, but the LIP10 measure is a higher = better measure, but most others are lower = better, so I messed that up didn't I? I made a correction at the bottom of the review

Test pilot review: @Overlonder's Lorings Aerospace LJ-30-100 The figures as tested: Passenger cap: 28 Part count: 47 Price: 29,545,000 Measured at recommended altitude and speed: Cruise altitude: 5500 m Cruise speed: 175 m/s Fuel capacity: 350 Kallons Fuel burn rate: 0.08919 K/s Range: 350/.08919*175/1000 = 687km Takeoff speed: 40 m/s Measured at ceiling altitude and pitch 0 degrees, full throttle: Ceiling altitude: 7875 m Ceiling speed: 202.8 m/s Fuel capacity: 350 Kallons Fuel burn rate: 0.08724 K/s Max range: 350/.08724*202.8/1000 = 814km Test pilot notes: To Jeb's delight when you put the LJ-30-100 on the tarmac and fuel it up, the mid-plane gear happens to be positioned just a little too far forwards. Resulting in the plane tipping over backwards in rest position. This will be an issue for KEA as that means you cannot fuel the plane prior to boarding. It also means that the plane needs to be under some acceleration at all times (again to Jeb's relentless entertainment) once boarded and fueled up in order to keep the nose wheel on the ground. This may cause a severe problem for the (not Jebediah) pilots KEA employs. It does make for an awesome take-off run though as Jeb just SAS-fixed the nose at 10 degrees into the air and hit full throttle untill the rear wheels also came off the runway at a measely 38m/s, it truly is a sight to behold (much like a Jackass movie). Meanwhile the passengers will be screaming their lungs out, because it feels like being launched on a rollercoaster ride more than an airplane which is very disconcerting! It also makes landing without a tail strike next to impossible. The first thing our test kerbals noticed is that allthough this plane is advertised as having 32 seats, the back half of the rearmost compartment is obstructed by a fuel tank. This meant we had to hold back some angry and very dissapointed test passengers at first, but after watching take-off they were much relieved. Since it means KEA can't sell seating in half of this cabin we will consider this a 28 seat plane instead. This causes the price per seat to be significatly higher than many competitor's aircraft. Climbing is slow and cumbersome; at first a 15 degree pitch is managable, but at just 2km up the pitch needs to be reduced to 10 degrees in order to maintain some acceleration and at 4km up this needs to be reduced a further 5 degrees to maintain speed and lift. At the recommended cruise altitude some speed can be gained after which a further climb up to the ceiling altitude can be achieved at 5 degrees of pitch where the plane will need some time to obtain enough speed for level flight. Jeb was not very amused by this and to his dismay he didn't bring his vape with him because we do not allow smoking of ANY kind on ANY airplane, even the test samples. When attempting to fly at the altitude and speed specified by the manufacturer Jeb found that even with reduced throttle to maintain the recommended speed the plane still wants to climb at pitch 0 and and needs to be pitched down almost a full degree to maintain its recommended cruising altitude. When keeping the specified speed he found the range to be a bit lackluster at a mere 690km and because the plane still wanted to climb we decided to see how high it would go. Just getting to the recommended altitude for cruise flight takes almost 6 minutes. It takes a LOT more time to get to ceiling altitude (on the lines of 15 minutes from take-off), but when it stops gaining altitude with pitch at 0, a little under 8km up with the tanks still half full, it does not prove to be fuel efficient either, but is quite fast for its class requirement. At ceiling altitude the plane tops out at 202.8m/s at an altitude of 7875m. Not very efficient still, also per passenger-mile, but the lifetime cost per seat mile proves to be reasonably competitive and is in the bottom 20% cheapest planes to fly over time, or so we are told by Mortimer Kerman at the admin building. The LJ-30-100 barely fits the bill for a turboprop range at just over 800km, but fits the bill nevertheless. Because of the low climb speed though, this range is hard to manage, not to mention we are pushing the plane beyond the limits specified by the manufacturer to get these results. Much to Jeb's entertainment we found that the steering wheel has a lot of redundancy built in, as promised by the manufacturer. In this case that means that any input will move all deflectors at all times. This gives the plane some awesome stunt flight capabilities, but considering the high advised turn speed, not for very long. It also makes the passengers experience newly found levels of motion sickness and can cause dangerous spins, especially when flying at high altitudes. These spins are fairly easy to recover from though because of the good authority on the control surfaces. The whole experience from take-off to landing is very akin to a rollercoaster ride with a side of DEATH TERRIFYNG. The verdict: Overall we find this plane is actualy rather expensive and though we trust Mortimer with our finances, there is just so much more in the market that outperforms the LJ-30-100 at lower investment, with more efficiency and fever caveats. We do not recommend KEA buys any of these and get some more stingy's instead. Jeb wants to keep the prototype though, if that's okay? He is so fond of doing wheelies with it that we've had to move it to the island runway to get him out of the way for normal operations. Correction: Due to a misunderstanding of Mortimer's explanation, I mean, admin, right? We messed up something. This plane is not economical either, it's not in the top 20% performers, it's in the top 20% most costly to fly! Lucky we didn't advise to buy any...

I see it clearly in the Kerbal-X picture, great build! No time to test atm though, busy reviewing something else on the KEA topic

Love the landing style, circling into the hole like that! A very cever maneuver if your plane can turn quick enough Also really like the ekranoplan design of plane number 2! Where did you get that engine though?

I made them smaller in photoshop and uploaded them as 1 image to imgur What @neistridlar said I found very useful in my own designs. To get to the menu he refers to just hit Alt+F12 and click earo in the menu. These readouts give you exact measurements. The wings you've made are composite, so they will be a little more work to change around to get a good angle on them. For precise measurements I recommend using the part-angle-display mod because it gives you values when you change the angles on parts. So what he means is that you angle the wing so that it faces the airstream a little, lift the tip basically. That way they don't add much drag, but they will produce lift even when just going forwards. Also, your current COL/COM (center of lift/center of mass) balance is in favor of tipping the plane forwards at low speeds, you might want to try getting them a little closer together by putting the wings a little bit forward to enable level flight at even lower speeds and may give you a better take-off speed as well combined with the angle of incidence on the wings. Though you want to keep the rear gear in exactly the same location seeing how close it is to hitting the ground at low speed liftoff already, but that's something to just tinker with once you've got the wing setup tuned to perfection. It's already a great plane, it's a real joy to fly, but it could be even better with some minor tweaks

Test pilot review: @Agent Awesome's Unlimited Aerospace KB-90 "Slipstream" Figures as tested: Price: 49,735,000 Fuel: 1680 Kallons Cruise altitude: 18,000m Cruise speed: 1200 m/s Fuel burn rate: .55 K/s Cruising range: 3665km Test pilot notes: Another day, another testing agency running the backlog for KEA. At Skaled Komposites testing laboratories we only employ the finest of Kerbal test pilots and using their extreme flying skills we try to squeeze each test plane to the max. We put it through it's paces and then see what's needed to get it to perform adversely and see what's needed to stabilize the plane and not crash it. Sometimes we get rewarded with a pretty explosion! In the case of the KB-90 though, we did not get rewarded with any explosions whatsoever unfortunately, we could have forced it by flying into a building ofcourse, but where's the fun in that? Besides, it would be very unprofessional to crash such a beautiful plane that has been so expertly put together! The KB-90 is every pilots dream to fly. With a take off speed of a mere 60m/s and a stall speed of just 50m/s (which is hard to manage in a plane this fast) it just wants to fly! In order to preserve passenger comfort the pitch, roll and yaw authority have been a limited a bit so as to reduce the G-forces on the passengers and te result is a very comfortable ride. According to the supplied brochure the plane flies best at a reasonably slow speed and rather low ceiling altitude for a supersonic jet, but when the engineers saw the positively MASSIVE RAM engine mounted to the back of the fuselage they figured they could squeeze a little extra out of it. In comes Jebediah, coolly smoking his vaper, with his visor down to block out the sun, wearing his leather pilots jacket. Leasurely strolling towards the plane he notices that there is not 1, not 2, but 3 engines on this aircraft! He quickly turns around and returns in his flight suit, vaper safely stored in his locker and ready to go! While warned about the loud engine noise on the RAM, Jeb punches it to full throttle on the runway anyway. The engineers, prepared for this where safely hiding in the bunker and wearing ear protection, but we will have to change a couple windows on the SPH and the control tower. After a short run up the plane tilts skyward and Jeb hits the afterburners on the panthers for good measure. Pitching up to 80 degrees, Jeb pretty much takes the plane straight to the skies. At about 11km up the plane starts to decelerate and Jeb turns it forwards into cruise direction. The plane quickly builds up speed and after a while the pathers give in to the raw power of the RAM and shut down on their own. At the recommended cruise altitude and speed a little 5 degree pitch up is required and all three engines are on at about half throttle, this did not satisfy Jeb so he had to try something else. The KB-90 can do an impressive 1200m/s at an altitude of 18km at full throttle, we did find that the tail wire starts buzzing a bit, which can be a little unnerving to the passengers in the back, if there were any, because the back end is all fuel for the RAM. So you don't really notice that you're travelling at near warp speed to your destination. The testers in the back mentioned a lack of outdoor views, but lots of fun with the onboard wifi (sharing pictures of Valentina, no doubt). In the front three cabins the opinions ranged from "wow! what a view!" to "THE PLANE IS ON FIRE!!!!" Turns out that isn't the plane so much as the air surrounding it that's on fire, at these speeds the world literally turns pink for those in the front of this craft, so we are seriously considering using it to get to certain honeymoon destinations for those who can't wait to get there. The engines are mounted a nice way away from the cabins so there is minimal noise inside the plane, no matter what they say on the ground, we couldn't hear or feel a thing. Unfortunately that also means maintaining 3 engines and a whopping 74 parts. The three engine configuration was advertised as a safety feature, but we found that the plane flies just fine without any throttle and considering the speed and braking capabilities we're certain we could cruise it to any airport in the event of total engine failure. It sure is safe to the point of overkill almost. But what's worth more than Kerbal life? This plane as it turns out, considering the small amount of seats for the price tag. Even though it's not extremely fuel efficient with a KPPM just above the mid range, the lifetime cost per seat mile is somehow very reasonable, so we believe the financial side of things will balance out over time The verdict: An impressive, beautiful plane that flies anywhere fast on fumes if it has to and that handles beautifully. To put a cherry on top: it is very hard to crash, takes off and lands at low speeds using a short amount of runway (also without the RAM on full throttle). Skaled Komposites recommends KEA buys at least 10 of these, which they will have to use for a while to earn back the purchase price.

@neistridlar See the PM I've sent with a test review of the KB-90

I feel I should probably pitch in a couple reviews as well, since I'm also responsible for about 10 planes on the queue. I'll just pick the oldest plane on the list that's not marked as being reviewed and isn't mine

oh come on... 2.5 * 3 = 7.5 150 * 2 = 300 (this has WAY too much impact on the final score btw) A380 = -14 It's awesome, so = -11 score: 282.5

Built in about 2.5 hours It's exactly 150 parts Had to use KSP-stock gears because for some insane reason gears from mods lock up and behave otherwise terribly on this install and I can't figure out why for the life of me as it's a 1.3.1 install that's copied out of the steam folder so it doesn't auto-update or anything and it worked fine last week... I don't want to put this craft on my Kerbal-X because it flies like a brick

Did you see the flying wing @Klapaucius made? If that qualifies as a seaplane, anything goes. Just keep it in one piece on landing in the water basically From personal experience (watch my video) I can tell that you can't just land anything in that cavernous lake, it really is very steep getting in and I built this craft for this specific purpose because I couldn't manage to land the original craft that steeply. You can test the capabilities of your craft by landing vertically down with a pitch up maneuver in the last 50m before the water if you want to know if your craft can handle it Good luck!

Not perfect, but then, without modded parts that would be specific for the model, nothing would really do for this A380-800: Video of the maiden flight:

Here's my entry: Proof:

I'm guessing a quicksave issue, because in one of the screenshots the speed is obviously higher at over 670m/s

This links to the current challenge

@dundun93 I should've already finished that, but I've been launching a mun station and it's pretty big!

Put the first part up in orbit around the mun, not using mechjeb is a pain though... (too many parts!) will post video over the weekend

What's your view on the use of mechjeb for maneuver planning? I can do video to prove I'm not using mechjeb for the execution of maneuvers, but for planning and DV-design, etc. I'm expecting that would place me in the modded group, since I'll be using all sorts of other mods anyway. That's no issue for me, I proudly mod my KSP, but I really like the maneuver node editor which allows me to make far more precise transfers without having to do all the hard work of calculating and stuff (which is just busywork in my view, considering the highly imprecise method unmodded KSP uses) and I don't want to install yet another mod just for this purpose. Like the idea of the mission, though! If I'm not disqualified for using mechjeb to make maneuver nodes, I'll sure give it a try!

Thanks for the VERY shiny badge @Alpha 360 and thanks for the interesting challenge @kerbalstar!!!

It's from a mod, I'd have to check which one, but I'm guessing it's either from KAX or from Airplane plus. These particular flaps also reduce takeoff speed because they actualy change the airflow around the wing (or more likely around themselves to compensate for the lack of advanced aero in KSP) they're great! Thanks! Couldn't do it without those flaps! For the takeoff by the way, the trick is to have a TWR above 1 at surface level, allows you to just go straight up. As with all good aircraft: you will want to be able to turn upwards rather quickly, so you need to be able to do so. The trick is to move the hinging part forward as much as possible. On land this means moving your landing gear so it's just behind your center of gravity and on water you will want pontoons placed such that you can drop the tail without hitting the water

A little harder than I thought, had to build a plane for the occasion even though I thought I'd be able to land an existing one in there. The original didn't have enough reverse thrust and the flap authority didn't slow me down enough, but with a new plane, with insane flaps and a bigger engine, but similar in design to the original I managed after a couple of attempts (had to get the thrust right and pull up at the right time, much later than I originally thought). Fun little challenge!

Might I recommend you implement a little star system to the badge so after each mission you get an extra star? sort of similar to the way the STS badges currently work? It leaves some space in the signature while also showing how many you've completed

Micro challenges are challenges that you can basically perform in a matter of hours, instead of days. So they're small, fun things to do when you've got the hang of it. It took me, what, half an hour to build my ship after which I did a 45 minute mission to complete the easter egg on the Mün visit challenge, the first micro challenge in the thread

Went to the memorial with a Kapollo style mission, thought it'd be fitting: I'll also admit that in 4+ years of playing KSP for literally thousands of hours, I never visited any of the easter eggs either!