purpleivan

Bob and Val took a couple of tourists out from Woomerang to the DSN station on Nye Island. Val parked the Flaming Flamingo at one end of the island, letting loose Bob and a paying passenger to drive to the other end. Some fun was had on the way. Then after arriving at the station Bob had his hands full keeping his nosey passenger out of those "danger - no admittance" areas.

The tangy odour of barbecued kerbal flesh is all part of the learning experience.

Another trip in Bob's Travels, this time to Nye Island.

Trip 3 (part 1) - Terror in Tornado Alley With the rover's wheels fixed after Bob's trip to the Arctic, it was time to take more paying customers to little visited locations. This trip would take Tihat and Nellgar Kerman to the location of one of the DSN stations on Nye Island. Riding up front with Val, Tihat had quite a view of the mountains to the South of the Woomerang launch site. Takeoff was a little bumpy, but all the better to get into the air with. The Flaming Flamingo is sluggish to leave the ground on the flat, needing to reach about 140m/s to leave the ground, but on this kind of terrain it barely needs 100. After hopping over the mountains Val piloted the plane out over the sea, heading South. Tihat is not the best of flyers, so she was a little nervous at the thought of spending so much time over the sea. Navigating to Nye island isn't the easiest thing to do, even for a pilot of Val's caliber, basically it was a case of heading South until hitting the coast... ... then swinging round the the West. At last their destination came into view, the might dish just visible at the far end of the island. Val wanted to take a pass over the island to identify a good landing site. After which she lined up for an approach from the South West, aiming for a fairly flat area of sand. The Flam Flam can glide a long way even with the engines cut, so Val overshot the sand a little. With the landing made, Val rolled the Flam Flam back down the gentle slope towards a shallow body of water... somewhere to dunk the brakes after the heat from landing. Realising that deploying Bob in the rover would result in it becoming an unpowered boat, Val nudged the plane out of the water. Ok... time to get going and time for Nellgar to finally get a view of something other than the cargo bay interior. Bob and his paying companion on this trip said goodbye to Val and Tihat before heading North towards the great dish. It's not the most dramatic of scenery on the way to the DSN dish, so Nellgar spend most of his time staring at the snack lockers. One marked "Deep fried marzipan - Bob's stash - Hands off" gained particular attention. The pair's first sighting from the ground of the dish. Rather than keep on top of the ridge that runs roughly along the center of the island, Bob opted to take the scenic route and rolled down to a cresent shaped beach. Having climbed back up from the shoreline to the ridge again, the dish was back in view. Finally there was something for Nellgar to get excited about. Bob was keen to show off the capability of the rover and more than once got a little overeager, coming off the top of a slope. Almost there, with just over half charge left in the batteries. As the rover headed closer to the mighty dish, its size became ever more apparent. Finally Bob drew the rover up to the side of the dish and the pair left it to take a closer look at the marvel of kerbal engineering. Nellgar is especially proud of this, as it was uncle Tinsom "Nye" Kerman who designed it. The famous engineer picked up the nickname "Nye" from his thick Northern accent and the frequency with which he used the word in discussions with KSC accountants. His famed quote of "Nye... you pencil pushin dream stealers ain't cuttin' my budget by a single bolt", is affixed to the wall above the entrance to the KSC's engineering dept. Riveted into place with the finest rivet guns, 50,000 funds could buy. Suddenly Nellgar's excitement got the better of him and he dashed across the base of the dish to the huge tracking mechanism. Although there aren't any "Danger - Keep Out - Risk of Crushing" signs, Bob clearly felt there should have been, if only to keep out the tourists. On joining Nellgar, Bob let him know that the tour company's insurance did not cover "slow death by dish moving mechanism." "Ok... I'll be careful. BTW... what's that grass doing there in the tracking mechanism" "Budget cuts." Then the dish rotated, one of it's hefty supports covering the small patch of lawn, growing on its base. The pair stood at the base of the great dish, watching its frequent rotations, as it locked onto distant spacecraft, beaming their valuable data home to sweaty palmed scientist. In the next thrilling episode, the rover goes downhil, the plane gains altitude... then loses it again.

Recently bought a Switch, so have been puttings some time in on Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Monster Boy. Really should look at the stack (physical or Steam) of a dozen games or so that I've not installed yet too.

Hmmm... let me see. Clearly there is some room to improve on, in the area of navigation computers. Then none of that "ease it out space dock Mr (insert name of favourite pilot)" would be necessary, leaving more time to be down in the holodeck getting freaked out by the latest malfunction. Coming up with reliable holodeck technology, at least to the point where it doesn't try to kill it's user, or the ship it's in every few weeks. Maybe the big bucks just aren't in it though. Personal weaponry could do with a prod, to avoid those "oh no, we're stuck behind this rock with only a handheld phaser to fight our way out" moments. Possibly something along the lines of grenades (stun, or well... not stun), as well as drones/rockets allowing for a little "death from above". If Starfleet Security was really on the ball, they'd be throwing all the Holdeck credits they could muster at research into anti transporter tech. I mean it's bad enough that your bridge gets seized every now and then, by some (known or unknown) species of space bad doods, but how long until those guys figure out what they can really do. You're going to need some protection from moments like "oh no... the borg cube just transported a Chevy Malibu into the space previously occupied by the Captain". Alternatively "Oh no... that species of apparently harmless first contact types just transported the heads of all the deck crew into a large jar of picked fish". Not science really (well... not at all) but some endeavours in the field of music wouldn't go amiss. The Federation types seem to have a block for anything later than the 1960's and not much that isn't classical or jazz.

This is the one I use @Jebediah-Kerman

In my first 10 months (back in 2014/15 before I stopped launching through Steam) I clocked up 1300 hours, so at about 30 hours a week it was like I had a 2nd job. The amount I played after that dropped of from insane, to merely "a lot". Don't know exactly how much though, but it must be somewhere North of 3000 hours by now. Just the one project I finished recently, the Kerbin Sorta Circumnavigation, will have taken over 200 hours.

Got to say I was so pleased when I finally discovered the existence of Hyperedit... saved sooooo much time.

I'd been playing the game for months before I installed any mods. You think a Mun landing is time consuming without Hyperedit et al, try designing an Eve return mission when you have to fly out prototypes each time to test them.

This usualy goes something like this. Lovely day to be rovering around on the (insert celestial body). Ooo... is that a crater wall... yep. Yahoooo... aiiirrrbooourne. Ahhh, it's tumbling, must... get... under... control. Phew... back under control, nothing to see here, let's head back to the lande... ah no, no, it's not under control. Okay, just a bit more time to staighten it out and everythings fin... KERSLAM! Ok, I can go with just 7 wheels. KERUNCH! Hmmm... ok, 5 wheels, I can still make it back to the lander. SKRAPE! A 3 wheeler huh, well we'll see how this goes. BAM! Bicycle... with one battery and no solar panels... this could be challenging. DING! Unicycle... well if clowns can ride em. THUMP! So... no wheels or power, but at least the cabin's intact, plus we stopped moving. "Errr, KSC... someone call me a cab."

I grabbed a few pics with my new mods collection, which now has the latest Scatterer working with KS3P.

With some help I I've now got the latest Scatterer, with shadows on water and refractions, working with KS3P. Of course I had to get the Coastal Cruiser out of storage to take a pic with the new mods. Jeb and Val look wibbly wobbly.

Here's a follow up from my previous post. I've now got everything working as I want it with the new KS3P and Scatterer packs supplied by @jrodriguez . The last issue I had with them any my pack of other mods (black sky beyond the clouds) was down to an out of date Stock Visual Enhancements. So here's a few pics of it all running. Nice to see it all together now... bloom, ambient occlusion, depth of field, water refractions, shadows on water etc.

Note: You may want to ignore the info below for now, as I've found I have the "blue tint" issue described in it now, even with my original set of mods. This wasn't happening the previous day for me, so I'll need to look into this more thoroughly. Hope to do that this evening. Note 2: Just found out the blue tint in the parts menu is an issue that's been reported with running KSP in DX11, so if that is the case, it looks like the Scatter and KS3P are working correctly in 1.7.1... so basically ignore all the stuff below that I posted earlier. I gave your currated set (well all parts except those for RSS) a try in 1.7 and there's an issue with the rendering of the parts in the parts menu in the VAB. As you can see there's a blue tint to all of them. Other than that it looked like the currated set worked fine outside of the VAB. One thing though... I did get an error on loading, saying that Kopernicus was incompatible with that version of KSP and not to load existing craft, so I removed Kopernicus and reloaded. I then tried your KS3P and Scatterer with my set of mods, which didn't go so well inside or outside the VAB. It does look though that KS3P is rendering properly though. if I remember correctly, the problem I'd had earlier with the main release of KS3P with the build of Scatterer for v1.7 not playing well correctly, it was this same black sky and sea issue. BTW... here's a pic of your KS3P and Scatter in 1.7, with all othe mods removed (just to take them out of the equation). So clearly it seems like one of the other mods I have as part of my normal set is conflicting with this version of Scatterer. I'll take a crack at finding out which tomorrow. BTW... with this slim set of mods used in the last pic, the blue tint in the VAB menus is still present. If any of this is a bit unclear, it's because it's getting late here.

When Scatterer was updated for 1.7 (I think) there were some changes to it that added amongst other things water refractions. However that resulted in KS3P and Scatterer not playing nicely together, so I reverted to the earlier version of Scatterer, so I could keep my KS3P goodness. Firstly is this a known issue that would have been fixed in the update to KS3P and secondly is the version below from @jrodriguez via @gh7531 compatible with the lastest Scatterer. Not pushing for updates that haven't happened, I'd just like to know what the current state of play is with what's been released.

If I do that (Ctrl Shift V) then I get the same result plus an error "The link could not be embedded because of an unexpected error: error: undefined." Until just now I've just been using Ctrl-V to paste, but I've found out that pasting works correctly if I select Paste from the right click menu instead. Not a proper solution really as Ctrl-V should work fine. This is clearly an issue with my setup though, not an issue with the forum, so I'll keep looking for a solution. Update... the issues seems to be related to addons I have install in Firefox. If I disable all of them the Ctrl V behaviour is back to normal, as well as a completly different issue I've been looking into. The ones I have are the same as in my old Win 7 install (installed using Sync in Firefox) but one of them must be not playing nicely in the new OS. At least I have something to look into now. Updated update... found out what it was, it was Internet Download Manager. It was set to use Ctrl as a hotkey to force downloading of things clicked on with IDM. That's the same setup as I had in Win 7, which worked fine, but for some reason in the Win 10 install it breaks my use of Ctrl V in this specific way. Disables the feature now (didn't use it anyway) and the problem is now fixed.

Well Edge works as expected (i.e. pasting a link to an image results in the image being displayed), but I'd rather not switch browser just for this. All a bit wierd especially with this being a new install. At least I know it's not anything to do with the forum... just wonky FF beahaviour for some reason.

Now my turn. https://i.imgur.com/58kcKFf.png

Has the behaviour of the forum regarding posting images changes in the last week? The reason for asking is that a few days ago I put together a new PC and at the same time switched from Windows 7 to 10. After that I found that I could no longer just paste an image URL directly into a post (it now shows up as a clickable link rather than the image), as I'd done in the past. Now I have to use the "Insert image from URL" button, which takes an extra couple of clicks for each image. It's a bit of a coincidence that the behaviour changed when I switch OS, but as I'm using the same browser (Firefox), I'd be surprised if that made the difference. So I'm wondering if the simple pasting method for adding images happened to get pulled this last week.

Another safe return to base in Bob's Travels completed the excursion that started with a decent to the arctic ice. Before incurring some painful injuries. Then on to some low level flying.

Trip 2 (part 2) - Shootout at Rattler Gulch With the peak (almost) conquered and the obligatory photos taken, it was time fore Bob and Tedberry to head back down to the arctic ice. Tedberry wanted the "full explorer experience" including some kind of death defying decent. "How about this one Ted?" "Errr... maybe something a little less flaming wreckage and untimely death inducing". "How about this?" "That's is more like it... steady as you go Bob". After a few minutes the pair had made it down to the lower slopes of the mountain range, but with 13km still to go, they were in its shadow, so no more yummy photons for those solar panels. Almost 3km to go and the batteries are getting low and the sun has now set, so definitely no more power until dawn. But at last, with a little power in batteries to spare, they made it back to the Flam Flam. Bob guided the rover underneath the cargo bay and used the docking camera to get a good alignment with the piston and waited for Jeb to lower it to hook up and haul them onboard. Well that wasn't supposed to happen. That'll be the profit margin for the trip blown. Nothing for it but for Bob to go out onto the rear porch of the rover and work his magic on those wheels. But it's cold so why bother, let the guys back at the KSC fix 'em. With everyone finally onboard, they settled down to a few games of cards, while admiring the view of arctic night from the cockpit. In the morning Jeb wanted to inspect the plane for any damage that might occured in their slightly bumpy landing. "Everything looking good up front, now lets take a look back..." "... what the... Bob, why does the rover only have one working wheel?" Kamlin was curious to take a look at the damage, and as one of Kerbin's finest limbo dancers (rated 2nd in the world) she decided to take a crack at the lowest rung on the ladder. That might have been too low, even for Kamlin. "I'm in terrible pain here." But Jeb cheered her up by dancing a little jig, which also helped keep him warm out there on the ice. Satisfied that the plane was in safe condition to fly, Jeb led the way back up the ladder, before preparing for takeoff. Jeb hadn't had the chance to take one of the Juice Goose for a spin, but he was sure he could get the same kind of rapid takeoff from this bird. He lined it up with a large bump in the ground a short distance away and hit the afterburners. No sweat... this plane takes off a little more slowly than it's smaller cousin, but it still gets into the air in an impressively short distance. Once up to a couple of thousand metres, he decided to swing the plane to starboard so that Kamlin could take a closer look at where Bob and Tedberry had visited the day before. Up over the mountain range Jeb wondered why Bob bothers taking a rover up these things... just fly there, much quicker. With the sightseeing over the mountains done, Jeb swung Flam Flam to the South and headed for home. On the way though, more mountains were encountered. So Jeb went for a little barnstorming with this low pass. No control surfaces were harmed in the making of this episode. Minutes later the River Stux came into view, but Jeb kept it at cruising altitude for this pass. "Bob's definitely going to want to take a trip down that river... just need to find some fancy pants tourist with the cash to pay for the trip". At last the desert lay ahead of the Flam Flam and with a decent amount of fuel left in the tanks (Jeb had been running on two engines since a little after takeoff) there'd be no need to put down somewhere in it and wait for a helping tanker. Well, looks like this is it for this trip, just got to put this thing down nice and gentle... and she's down. Smooth touchdown Jeb.

With Bob now in the tourism game, he's been taking the well heeled out to tourist hotspots on Kerbin.

I'll be quickly scrolling through a thread like this one and an image like this catches my eye. "That's Triop isn't it... yup".

I did a "reenactment" a few years ago, with a vehicle that I lobbed by rocket to the Inland Launch Center, parachuted it in, then drove to the pad for its launch. https://imgur.com/a/TU3N7