Kryten 2X4B 523P

A question if I may... Are those Mk1 fuel tanks youre using for fuselage full or empty? If theyre full thats an insane amount of fuel for that plane, and the mass of those alone is probably pushing those landing gear to breaking point if youre only using a pair of LY-01s and an LY-05. A single juno engined plane in the 3.5 ton range using a single mk0 fuel tank (50 units) will take the plane most of the way to the north pole on a one way trip. If youre dead set on using a mk1 fuel tank, only use 1 of them, empty it out and mount a couple of mk0 fuel tanks radially, with the junos and air intakes mounted on the Mk0s. Then use a tail connector A and mount the tail fin / rear control surfaces on that. Also, as a rough guide you want about 1.5 lift per ton of aircraft mass for an early plane (probably scales up tho) - so if youre plane weighs 3.5 tons without the wings, you want about 5.5 lift in total from the wings and control surfaces. Each wing part or control surface has an amount of lift if you right click on the part in the category screen it will tell you how much lift it has. The more lift you have, the lower the speed you will need for takeoff, the less lift you have, more speed needed. Something like this will see you through the early, nearby survey missions - the one on the left only comes in at 3.2 tons, has about 25 parts (from the first aircraft tier and below) and uses a single Juno engine.

Just messing about in 1.2 pre today, built this : and this :

If you havent already, take a look at this thread in the Tutorials forum, its really really useful in explaining all the concepts you need to build a plane successfully. Ironically, building early planes can actually be harder using the first aircraft tier parts, but one you get the hang of it its great.

This little monstrosity is the STV-1 (Space Tourism Vehicle - 1) - built in 1.2 prerelease (career) and designed to take 4 tourists on a suborbital flight. Basically I got fed up cobbling together capsule based tourist systems, and built a glider. Im at that point in the tech tree where I havent got decent wheels so bigger planes are currently out of the plan.. Then I added a droptank and some engines. Then was pleasantly surprised as it made a 90km suborbital hop. Basically its a glider strapped to a missile - very kerbal :-) No landing gear, intended for water landing - has a set of chutes just in case it comes over land. Just performed its first very successful commercial flight, taking 4 sightseers up on a jaunt. Kerching!

indeed - those wings in particular seem to hit that "sweet spot" that seems to screw it up...

Those outer control surfaces on the wings appear to be behind the centre of lift, which on those wings I think reverses the action (out at the moment, cant check in game - so in effect youre diving rather than climbing.) Im assuming theyre your pitch control surfaces. Try rotating those wings using the rotate tool so theyre not "swept", but rather at 90 degrees to the fuselage - just enough so that those control surfaces are ahead of the centre of lift. - and add a tailplane

Heh, I watched that movie again a few weeks ago - nice craft!

While testing the LY-01 and LY-05 landing gear in 1.2 prerelease I ended up putting together a series of light aircraft in various configurations. Some final tweaks to do but Im actually considering releasing these as packs, Im that happy with them. Design constraints were for a single pilot, with the Mk1 variants put together using only the Aviation node & below in the tech tree, and Mk 2 is largely cosmetic updates from other nearby nodes as things like struts become available, with part counts under 30. The Mk 1s have between 23 - 25 parts, and the Mk 2 between 25 - 28 parts. The 4 designs are as follows: Mk 1 on left, Mk 2 on right Gopher - a single engined (Juno), low wing aircraft (taildragger) Moth - a single engined (Juno), biplane (taildragger) Solo - a single engined (Juno), high wing aircraft (taildragger) Award - Twin Engined, high wing aircraft (tricycle) And finally, when you upgrade the SPH you get: Moth Mk 2a Stuntplane:

Not sure if anyone else has mentioned it, but the Mobile Processing Lab appears to have a "Level Crew" option now. And - all the crewed cockpit modules have lights now. The lander cans are especially nice as the doors also light up.

Had time for a very brief dabble before work this morning - bear in mind this was about 15 mins of playtime.. I Like what Im seeing so far - the new text system is really nice and clear, and the quick wheel test I did seems to be much improved (first tier, non retractable landing gear on a Cessna-a-Like). Didn't overstress on takeoff and didnt explode on landing too hard (which it did in the last version I used this plane, 1.1.2). Made a quick buggy with the ruggedised wheels as well, and that seemed fine - didnt slip and slide all over, downside was I couldnt pull donuts. Hoping to play about with landing legs later on :-)

So, I decided to take a manned mission to Dres - the furthest Ive ever taken a manned mission in my KSP career. I built a new ship capable of taking 15 kerbals to Dres. I also built a refinery, miner, tug and lander - all combined in 3 flights to Dres. Then I thought - I need to keep a record of this, could be interesting - so I decided to chronicle the whole thing over on my blog - you can find part one here : Kryten's Kerblog : The High Road Part 1 The aim of the mission - to see if I can do it, and maybe to snag a dresteroid into the bargain. Heres a shot of the Explorer 2, just to whet your appetites, hope you enjoy:

Quick update on my Explorer 2 Dres mission.. Test flight went great. Reverted and made a few tweaks, added a probe core and some lights - ended up with 6219 dV overall for the ship itself. Should be plenty :-) Time for the real thing.. The launcher was a bit of a monster, but she got off the pad.... And into orbit... Next stop, build a lander, isru & miner. Might also add a tug / klaw and try to snag a Dresteroid.

Currently designing a manned Dres mission, and building the next generation of my Explorer class vessel. This has the capacity for 15 kerbals, and includes 3 cargo bays which currently contain an MMU, science package, Narrowband Scanner Satellite and Resource Scanner Satellite. ISRU and lander will go in a separate package, and stay at Dres. Shielded docking port in the nose, and a large docking port at the rear. Weight wise its the biggest interplanetary ship Ive built yet, weighing in at just shy of 180 tons and using 12 NERVs for propulsion - and now Ive run the fuel lines the dV caps out at just a shade over 6000, which should be enough for a Dres round trip without refuelling. Still got a few things to sort, but its nearly ready to build the launcher and give it a test flight. Quite pleased with the look of it too.

Very enjoyable challenge, thanks :-)

Been working on my Arrow series spaceplane - this is the passenger variant, and now Im getting a little better at piloting Im getting a better orbital Dv remainder. In this case, made 80x80km orbit with almost 600 m/s left over after circularisation, despite this being slightly heavier than the loaded cargo variant. So plenty to take a crew transfer of 8 up to my station at 150km. However... noticed something really interesting with this one - it veers on the runway, where the cargo one doesn't. The only differences between the two are the rcs / monoprop and the passenger modules / clampotron. And on loading to the runway, this one body flexes a little, and the cargo one doesnt - at all (effectively, the bit behind the passengers is one sub assembly, including the wings, as is the bit in front of the probecore). So I did some experimenting. Pulled the passenger modules and clampotron, replaced with a couple of fuel tanks and drained fuel so the weight and com was the same. A tiny amount of flex on loading, and it still veered, but nowhere near as much as previously. Changed the fuel tanks to cargo bays, added a load to bring the weight the same- no flex or veering.Replaced the passenger stuff and added a couple of struts for testing purposes, and again, very slight flex and veering, but not as bad as before. And while the rear wheels look like theyre wing mounted, theyre not - theyre fuselage mounted and moved / rotated out to the wing positions - so its not wing flex. So, Im suspecting that body flexibility is also a contributing factor to people experiencing planes "fishtailing" and "veering" down the runway. Anyway, heres a quick screenie.

Some great stuff here, learning a lot as I go with this. Been developing a scaled up version of my Slingshot for cargo missions, using Mk2 parts (designated Arrow). This is a testbed design at the moment, weighing in at 29T (wet) including almost 4T of cargo (3 Satellites). Screenie is from a test flight, as this is only for LKO use and wont dock with anything Ive already removed all the RCS an monoprop, which has reduced the weight a little and upped the TWR a tad. Still working out the flight profile, but with this load on a test flight managed an 80 x 80 km with almost 400Dv left over.

Cheers, I'll give it a go - was using a 15 degree launch and letting it rise, so suspect Im getting drag losses. Also playing with keyboard / mouse which can be a little tricky at times.

Intakes are the little adjustable ramp intakes, mounted on the underside of the body. And the difference in Dv is probably down to the fact that Im an absolutely lousy aircraft pilot, and dont have much experience with spaceplanes :-) I can usually get about 500 Dv left in an 80x80 km orbit with this thing, but thats my best so far. Initial attempts got a 75x75 km with 250 ms left - so Im improving!

Ive been messing about with the Rapier, looking to build a small, singled engined, piloted vessel that can transport 2 crew and dock with my station at 150km. Ended up with this so far, as its using largely Mk 1 bits I called it the Slingshot - She's a little light on fuel (K prize attempt ended with about 14 units of LF & Ox each in the tanks on landing) A bigger, Mk 2 twin engined follow up which Im developing is the Arrow. Anyway, here's a screenshot of it in the VAB And heres one entering the glide phase after re-entry

Ive been meaning to have a go at this for a while - So I did! I've been playing with Rapier based spaceplanes, trying to work up a usable single engines crew transfer vehicle - and ended up with the Slingshot Mk 1 (below) I dont do imgur, but I've got a full write up & screenshots over at my blog here : http://krytenskerblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/k-prize-challenge-attempt-113.html

If i remember correctly, its one, two, many, lots (particularly for musicians that like music with rocks in) - but its been a while :-) And yep, this the inconsistency of fine tuning with a mouse wheel bugs the hell out of me too - lost count of the times Ive almost got a node where I want it, then blammo, its an orbit around Eeloo.

Yeah, I got my initial steer from the work Temstar did on his modular base stuff many, many moons ago, and that was a concept using the senior docking ports. Other than the current wheel issues, the biggest problem with landing leg designs is that the mass of the module affects the height it sits at, even if the suspension is locked - which means clearance for underside docking ports can vary, and radial mounted ports can be out of position pretty easily due to compression of landing leg suspension and sinking into the terrain. Just two reasons I generally only put my bases on very low grav locations, like minmus.

Thats pretty nice. Last one I did was in 1.0.4, havent attempted yet in 1.1 due to the wheel issues you mentioned. Looked like this when done: Rune has a pretty good "base in a box" as well.

its referring to the rotation tool in the VAB / SPH - select the rotation tool from the toolbar, select the part you want to rotate, then the F key toggles between the two modes.

Christ almighty, I remember that airing in the UK, one of my favourite shows as a kid!