Jakalth

Roflcopterkklol, that ATV is both hilarious and broken. Well done! }8^J>

You mean like this? Uses ADV SAS x3 modules with the medium truss pieces for each wheel. The bearings are the compact rotor bearing I submitted earlier with no modifications. And it has a top speed of 10.1 on flat ground. And yes, that IS with a tailwind. Climbs like a... beached whale... But it's silly enough to post and the bearings hold up with no trouble. Can't say the same for the rest of it...

Compact Rotary Bearing. This is the best little bearing I've been able to come up with. It's not the smoothest running, but it can handle some pretty strong forces. For example, having a 4 blade rotor attached to it, being spun by 4 basic jet engines, at high RPM. It is difficult to get the axle to separate completely under "normal" use. It also has a fairly low part count considering how much reinforcing I've done to it. The command pod MK1 is there for reference. Part count: 57 Weight: 4.1 tons It works fine as both a lifting rotor bearing and as a propeller bearing. I have done some testing using it as a turbine bearing and the results are promising. I've also been working on a coaxial bearing, it works most of the time... But not really as a flyable bearing... I keep getting strange collision box problems between the landing gear on the inner and outer bearing sets. If I can solve that issue, and strengthen the whole thing a bit, I'll have the core for a functioning Coaxial Rotorcraft. Part count: 143 weight: 11.4 tons

Ok, that's a cool weapons system Azimech.

Ok, that's a great experiment. For Science!

Basicly it is just a quirk in how the aerodynamics of the missiles work. When you have SAS turned on, it is also turned on for the missiles. And when they are fired, if SAS was turned on, it stays on for the missile as well. The SAS on the missile is enough to keep them from climbing. When the SAS is off, the short design of the missiles make them slightly unstable. And since they are fired off with a slight upward facing, they always end up flying upwards before tumbling slightly and going into a nose dive. Hence the top down attack. EXPLOSIONS! Strait fired shot at close range against a target dummy.. They have an effective range of about 2Km in strait fired mode, but only a little more then 700m in top down mode. To adjust the angle of fire, simply throttle down from full before firing the missiles. At about 1/2 throttle, they will hit a target no taller then the hood of the truck, at close range. At full throttle, they might clip the roof of the truck, but will reach out to 2.2Km where they have long since run out of fuel.

Surface to Surface Missile: How about this? The WOT(Wire Operated Trigger) missile system. Mounted on the back of a technical truck. It consists of a pair of anti-armor missiles that have two firing modes and a cloak system that disguises them as simple "Probes". Mode one. The missiles fly out strait and hit their target hard and fast. This mode is activated by turning on SAS before firing the missiles. Mode two: The top down, "hit them where their weakest" mode. This mode is enabled by turning off SAS before firing the missiles. The missiles fly out strait for about 500 meters, then go into a steep climb. They peak out at max height before turning into an almost vertical dive. From here it's a fast vertical plunge, hitting their target from above, where its armor is softest. The Kerbals love the "Hot Seat" firing position. Technical truck with WOT missile system.

Once again, another submission from the barely acceptable folks at Jak Airways. This time around, it seems someone made a mistake. An Aircraft that is actually practical? Prediction Duck is not amused... We present the Halaphax. This small aircraft weighs in at 11.8 tons and has it's engines mounted high on its back. Why could that be??? Because it's a float plane! This aircraft uses Hydro-Ski technology allowing it to skim across the water at high speeds. It's twin engines give it an "absurdly more then necessary" thrust to weight ratio. This simple craft will happily lift off the ground, or water, at speeds below 60m/s with little drama. The tough construction of the hydro-skis also mean that it can cruise on the water at speeds in excess of 80m/s. Speeds above 90m/s, on water, are not recommended and Prediction Duck will disavow any knowledge of a warranty. Turning at speeds above 60m/s, on water, is highly recommended and our R&D group termed it's water turning stability as "Why is this not even trying to blow up? Bored now..." In all seriousness. This aircraft is stable on the water. It turns nicely at speeds on the water. And it's only real quirk is that it wants to nose dive at times, but doing so only digs the skis into the water causing it to slow down. You have to really try to get the cockpit to actually touch the water or for it to actually take any damage at all. SAS, for the most part, stops this from happening. The wing floats do a very nice job of preventing the wings from touching the water as well. In the air, there is little drama. It likes to drop its nose due to the elevated position of the engines, but with SAS engaged, this is completely negated. It is not an acrobatic aircraft, but it does turn nicely. It is simply easy to fly. On a side note: it is possible to taxi and lift off the ground with the landing gear raised. It has a low enough take off speed that the structural intakes, that make up the skis, are not damaged by being scraped along the ground. Landing with the gear raised, on the other hand, does not go well unless landing on water.

The PidgeonHawk. Now with 33.7% more "That part looks good there."

These two craft are from the Future Craft Extradition project. I present the HDV-132 NullHammer. This SSTO reconnaissance craft is equally at home in space and in the atmosphere. It's engine nacelles are designed to provide lift as well as thrust, reducing its reliance on "wings". This gives the craft excellent durability, making it ideal for wreckage salvage and asteroid mining. Jak Airways is in no way responsible for damaged received while performing such activities or damage caused from small objects. This craft is not rated for water landings. Here you can clearly see the thrust vectoring on the engine nacelles and the 9 point rocket assist system. A profile view showing the lifting body design of the engine nacelles. Next entry is the PigeonHawk medium gun fighter. This Body-in-Wing designed aircraft has full tail vectoring to improve control at higher angles of attack. It features a front mounted engine with rear exhaust nozzle giving it a much lower heat signature then conventional craft of its type. This type of fighter should be seeing full use within the next 50 years, or so our reliable Prediction Duck says.

I suddenly have a picture of Beaker from the Muppets doing an open mouthed stair into the stars from behind it. "Meep"

Download for the ST-080 "LUG" : HERE The ST-080 "LUG" is now available for download. Be warned, it is not the most pleasant craft to fly. But, if it's flown gently(aka go full throttle and hang on) it can get into orbit, but only just. The challenge of flying it is finding the right angle of ascent so that you do not burn through too much fuel using the Turbojet engines, yet still have enough speed so that the rockets simply have to raise it's altitude. There is about 1200 liters of liquid fuel more then is needed for a direct to orbit flight so you do have some wiggle room. The cargo can be adjusted slightly, like adding a docking port for refueling orbital craft, but adding too much weight might make the LUG unable to reach altitude. It currently has a Jumbo 64 fuel tank in its cargo bay with some RCS tanks, a probe core, and RCS thrusters to move it around. The challenge here: get the LUG into orbit and deploy the fuel tank for refueling other craft. Specs on the LUG: 40 turbo jet engines 2 Kerbodyne KR-2L advanced engines 8 Rockomax Mark 55 Radial engines 2 RT-10 SRB(used as RATO pods) about 25000 liters of liquid fuel and oxidizer. gross take off weight = 438.1 tons part count = 531 amount of lag it generates = moderate to high... cargo capacity = at least 36 tons, probably no more then 38-40 Everything comes back with the LUG other then the 2 RT-10, which are discarded during liftoff. And of course the cargo it left in orbit. Action groups: 1: jet engines on, rockets off 2: rockets on, jet engines off 3: KR-2L's off, Mark 55's on 4: Deploy/Retract solar panels 0: close/open air intakes. Liftoff is achieved by dropping the engines to 0% thrust and activating the first stage(all the engines). Then using action group 1 to turn off the rocket engines. Now simply give it a little throttle, by slamming the engines to fully power. Once near the end of the runway, at about the last 25 meters of the runway, activate the second stage to kick in the RATO pods. Hold climb at this point until the nose starts to lift(when it leaves the end of the runway), and keep holding climb until the nose has pitched up to about 20 degrees. Activate the third stage, when the nose reaches 20 degrees up, and send those RATO pods flying off into the wild blue yonder. Be sure to thank them for their help, and for not taking out the nose of the LUG. At this point, you'll want to start nosing down to prevent the LUG from pitching up too far. Keep it below 35 degree angle for now, 30 works the best. Pitching up too quickly here will cause it to tumble out of control. Let it stabilize at this angle and climb up to an altitude of at least 800m. At, or above, 800m, start to slowly bring the nose up again until its nosed up at a 45 degree angle. The LUG does not respond real quickly so you'll need to control the lift until it has stabilized at this new angle. Now just let the LUG sit at this angle until you reach about 12000m. There are two options here, the safe route and the risky route. The risky route gives you a better chance of going orbital. Safe route: at 12000m, use action group 2 to switch from jets to rockets and use the rockets to get you into an extended sub-orbit before deploying the tank. Risky route: at 12000m, start watching the air intake levels very closely. The intake levels can drop to 0 and the engines will keep running at full throttle for several seconds. This will happen between 12300m and 12600m. Don't panic just yet. keep holding onto full jet throttle until you get the first engine flame out. At this point, immediatly use action group 2 to switch to rockets before the LUG can deviate off course, which will not happen quickly, but it is not easy to correct course once it does. Now use the rockets to get you Orbital. If you can judge acceleration and burn rate correctly, you'll be able to just reach orbit. If you can get it orbital, there may be a little issue. The LUG does not currently have any other means of DE-orbiting its self. You might end up needing a rescue tug to nudge it out of orbit. But, you should still have some liquid fuel left for attempting a landing.

I have been playing around with your bearing design, Majorjim. I must say, it is quite robust even as is. I did do some tweaking of the design a bit to modify it for use as a rotor-craft bearing. Swapped out the wheels you've used for landing gear so that the bearing can handle the much higher rotational stresses of being spun at speed by jet engines. I also added standard nosecones to the inside of the bearing so I can increase its lateral hold strength. It holds up quite well even using wheels only at the 4 corners. No clue yet how much stress it'll be able to handle with an 8 point gear setup, yet. Very good design you have! I had been struggling to make a bearing that can handle the loads of a high speed spinning rotor for some time. As for the Rotor-craft... Well, it's ugly looking, even for being just a test bed. I also still have a LOT to learn about Kerbaling together a rotor-craft for the current design is barely flyable... There is something I am missing when it comes to making it stable and fully controllable. But as for the bearing. This is a closeup of one of the modified bearing sets. You can see where I added the nosecone to allow the wheels to hold it better at high speeds. This setup holds up to having the two engines running at 75% thrust, any faster and the rotors fly apart, even with the reinforcing struts.

Yeah, it is the infiniglide glitch. Made a test rig to figure out what was going on and it ended up going airborne, and then staying there, floating, slowly, diagonally. Was a true "physics, you drunk" moment when it happened, but it explained how the canards were making the truck go faster. So by accident, the truck was my first infiniglider, all be it a very bad one.

This time around I'm showing you a project Bill and Bob have been tinkering with. You see, Bill found this old 4x4 pickup in Jeb's junkyard and decided to fix it up. Him and Bob have been working on it a little at a time between rocket tests and space exploration. They both find working on this old simple truck relaxing after a long days work. They finally got the old gal fixed up and running like a clock. Little do they know, Jeb also has been tinkering on it when the two of them were not looking... Who knows what mischief Jeb has planned for these two. Here you see Bill and Bob, parked out front of the astronaut center. Those two have no idea what is in store for them. Is that a Rocket packed into the rear of their truck? So that's your plan Jeb... While doing speed tests of the truck, on the runway, Bill finds this odd green button and presses it. Hang on guys! Yep, it's a rocket boosted old pickup. It uses a combination of RoverMax model M1 for driving and Small Gear Bay for added durability on rough terrain. It has a lot of SAS control allowing it to turn fairly hard at up to 19m/s as well as making it easier to right the truck if/when it flips over. The truck is quite durable. It can take a fair amount of a beating before breaking, but it is not indestructible... On it's own wheel power, it is capable of topping out at 21m/s. But, when you kick on the little Rockomax 48-7S it can push the truck to speeds over 61m/s. Be warned though, at speeds over 50m/s, it becomes hard to control and can blow out the RoverMax tires. The Rockomax 48-7S has another use though. If the truck tips over onto its roof, it is hard to right it again, even with the excessive SAS control. Using the rocket engine to push the truck onto its hood makes it far easier to right the truck again. Specs: total part count = 263(clean version) weight = 11.5 tons(kinda heavy....) top speed = 21/61(tires/rocket)m/s crew capacity = 2(easily modified) range = nearly unlimited(limited rocket fuel, nearly unlimited electric) download = Utility Truck.zip This truck is just for fun. Enjoy. - - - Updated - - - Found an odd glitch when playing around with this truck. If you add Canards to the front and back of the truck, the truck is able to accelerate to speeds of at least 40 m/s, without using the rocket engine. All you have to do is attach front and rear Canards to the truck, and simply drive forwards. Normally, the truck runs out of steam at about 21m/s. But with the canards, it keeps accelerating to speeds over 40m/s, although it becomes nearly impossibly to control. The center wings are not needed for the glitch, but it is funny to simply drive the truck until it's moving fast enough to actually lift off the ground. Anyone else seen this glitch before?

UPDATE: The LUG is now Orbit, but only just. A few little adjustments made it capable of lifting cargo to orbit now. I've only been able to get it to orbit once though. It's quite the challenge to get it up there without burning through all the fuel. More info and Craft file available in third post. I've been trying my hand at making a SSTO heavy lifter. The goal is to simply lift a 36 ton orange fuel tank to orbit using a Space Plane, without having any discarded boosters. I've done all the work using no mods at all, making all the adjustments in my head using only the center of mass and center of lift baubles as a guide. So far I've only been having mixed results. It is a lot harder then it sounds. What follows is a set of pictures showing the changes I made to the design all in an attempt to reach orbit. It's not the prettiest craft, but it'll do, eventually, hopefully... I present the ST-080 "LUG" My first attempt was to make a shuttle type craft that can at least get it's self into high altitude, and possibly sub-orbit, without carrying any payload. I had some success at this on my first try. This is the initial design... The craft has a MK3 central fuselage with a nearly full length section of MK2 fuselage on each side of it. The wings are unbraced other then 2 vertical sections of wing panels that link the top and bottom wings together, adding some rigidness to the design. The wings are fully doubled with a large open space between them. It uses a single Kerbodyne KR-2L liquid fuel engine for high altitude and 10 Turbojet engines for climbing. The craft flew decent enough, but it became immediately apparent that it majorly lacked power. So I began a series of modifications that eventually led too this... The craft now has a pair of orange fuel tanks on each side, along with 3 liquid fuel tanks capped with ram air intakes and a cluster of extra engines. I also had to add a pair of RATO pods(RT-10s) to the front to help lift the nose up. The craft at this point was quite heavy, topping 400 tons in weight, not including the 36 ton orange fuel tank in the cargo bay. The engine arrangement was getting out of control as well. It is still using a single KR-2L engine, but the number of turbojet engines has gone up to 18 engines. The whole craft is getting bulky and a bit unstable to fly at this point due to all the extra tanks packed under the wings. It is still suffering from a power shortage so once again, I tackled the lack of power in a different way, clipping the engines together to clean up aerodynamics. The results became this... The cleaned up aerodynamics, achieved by clipping the engines together into just 4 mounting points made a dramatic improvement. The Lug was a lot quicker to climb and seemed, at first, like it was going to be orbit achieved. But that is when the instability and lack of power creaped in yet again. This time with BOTH the jet engines and the liquid fuel engine. I was also getting a lot of side slip when transitioning from air breathing flight into rocket flight. So once again, I needed to make some changes. I added extra vertical tail fins to the ends of the wings to help a bit with side slip and tucked a few more advanced sas modules inside the belly of the craft. The single KR-2L engine was no longer enough to fill the high altitude roll, so I tested using 2 KR-2L engines, 2 Rockomax Mainsail engines, and even an S3 KS25x4 engine cluster. The Mainsail pair ended up being the best fit. I also added 6 Mark-55 Radials to the back for extra thrust and for orbital maneuvering. For the Turbojet engines, I kept adding more until I finally reached a number that allowed the craft to actually fly to altitude with some kind of speed. 32 Turbojet engines all clipped into 4 mounting points. The final results of all this editing was a craft that could gain altitude fairly quickly, for its size. It even had enough fuel that it could actually reach a fairly extended sub-orbit, without touching the fuel in the carbo bay. I finally gave it 1 last all or nothing, I added 2 more orange fuel tanks to the sides of the craft and clipped them into the existing orange tanks. I then went throughout the craft and tied every loose object together using strut connectors and went for the launch. Everything was proceeding well. It was gaining altitude well, had loads of fuel, and was stable. Reaching 12,000m, the jet engines ran out of air and I switched to the liquid fuel engines. The craft was still mostly stable and climbing well(for a brick, I guess) with only a tiny shudder in the now turned off jet engines. It looked like I was going to reach orbit after all... BOOM! It all went to pieces... The tiny shudder in the jet engines turned into a big oscillation that transferred into the wings and set them a fluttering, untill the stresses were too much and it all flew to pieces in a very dramatic spray of parts and lag. Re-trying the launch resulted in the same thing. And no matter how I tried modifying it from this point, I always got the same result. Stable flight, if slow, up too 12,000m. Smooth transition to liquid fuel engines. Then complete diss-assembly at just over 15,000m with all hands lost. Only way left to fix this was to pretty much rebuild the whole thing. So I did. This new and improved version has a slightly longer main fuselage, to hold more fuel. A longer section of MK2 fuselage on each side, for more fuel. A pair of orange fuel tanks with X200-16 tanks on each end, for more fuel, and C7 2.5m - 1.25m adapters on each end instead of nose cones, for more fuel. There is a pair of X200-32 tanks nested inside the orange tanks, at the center of mass as well. The tanks are all properly piped too the center fuselage so all possible fuel can be accessed by the liquid fuel engines. It has 7 ram air intakes and 10 structural intakes for air. There is both a KR-2L and a a Mainsail engine nested together on the back with 8 Mark 55 radials, and a total of 36 Turbojet engines split up between 6 mounting points. The craft is now topping 450 tons in weight with the orange fuel tank(jumbo-64) in it's cargo bay. But it has more then enough thrust to lift its massive bulk. After doing some test flights, which are a slow process due to frame rate lag and the sheer bulk of the LUG, I am now able to get this craft into a good long sub-orbital flight. But, so far, I have not been able to extend its flight into full orbit... Adding more fuel does not fix the problem, it only means I have to increase the thrust of the engines, by adding more. The results of doing this are that I now need more fuel to get into sub-orbit once again. So for now, this is it. I have succeeded at making a SSTO that can lift a 36 ton jumbo-64 orange tank. But, I have failed at making it orbital... *errggggg*

Never said I was a real, or even Kerbal, aeronautical engineer. heh But yeah, most of the craft are safe to fly. The Fat Bat can be a bit tricky to keep under control at altitude though. And the flying ring craft is not a practical aircraft in any way, but it is silly enough to mess around with, and most likely crash repeated for the fun of it. I have actually used the Fat Bat to launch satellites into Kerbin orbit. It is a very hands on process to get it up there. After about 30,000 m in height, it wants to pitch up, HARD. But manually controlling the pitch works, along with reducing thrust. Once it has deployed it's satellite, it flies much better on it's way back to the KSC. Thing to remember when using it, Try your best to minimize fuel usage. It only has enough to get you up there and break orbit. After that it's pretty much a glider.

That craft is beautifully Pseudo-balanced. You even got the cyclic oscillation of the seed right. Very nice.

For those lacking a lot of funds, needing a small craft to perform those fairly early survey missions(tech level 100), we have an aircraft for you. The Drifter, light scout plane. This little craft is simple, uses lower tech equipment, is fairly cheap to make(about 13K), and has good ground clearance for those EVA missions. Plus, it makes a decent rover in a pinch. It's low take off/landing speed helps considerably with the ground excursions. Just don't expect the craft to handle hard landings in one piece. Suggested modifications include: :Replacing the two structural fuselage pieces with liquid fuel tanks for extended range. Be warned though, manual fuel balancing is required to keep it flyable when adding tanks... :Adding mounting points to the top for parachute tests. Handles these tests splendidly if you can keep the parachutes close to the fuselage. :Replacing the delta wing tip sections with basic wing pieces, removing the solar panels, and removing the thermometer, to save cost. Front view shows the tall and wide landing gear arrangement that makes it a good craft for survey missions. Download the Drifter here:

Finally we have a pair of atmospheric only craft. First off is a simple and small V tail aircraft. This one is fun to fly. It's fast and nimble as well as being quite stable. In fact, it is hard to get this craft to completely loose control. Even if you do, it auto stabilizes and rights its self making it easy to recover. This little craft can easily top 2100 m/s at altitudes of 29,000 m or higher. I have not found its speed and altitude limits yet. Who says you have to fly upright? Wait, is that a Mun - Minmus pairing I see in the background? Microdart download here: And this one is just for fun. A jet powered? Biplane. This version is armed to the teeth with 6 aerial rockets and 8 belly mounted dumb bombs. This craft may not be small, but it is extremely maneuverable. It is capably of making a turn within its own wing span. Normally it can take off at speeds as low as 35 m/s, but the added weight of the armament means it has to claw its way into the air using the entire runway. This craft flies best at speeds below 100 m/s so limiting the engines to only 16% works quite well. On an attack run. Those darn kigeons keep building nests in the vehicle assembly building. Have some Rockets! Twin engine biplane download, both armed and unarmed:

Next we have the "Fat Bat". It is a small SSTO space plane capable of lifting a single satellite into orbit. It flies surprisingly well at lower altitudes, despite the drag of the piggybacked satellite. But it becomes a handful when leaving the atmosphere and attempting orbit. Fat Bat download here: And going from ugly to sublime, I present the Mockingbird FS2. This SSTO aircraft is much more versitle. She is capable of reaching orbit with ease and is a dream to fly. The MK2 cargo bays allow for many differing types of missions to be completed, from survey to satellite launch, and refueling of orbital craft. The Mockingbird can reach orbit with at least 1/2 of her jet fuel remaining and around 1/3 of her rocket fuel, even when lifting her max payload weight of 4 tons. This means she could potentially be used for Kerbin to Mun, direct freight transfers. Isn't she elegant even with her solar panels extended? Carrying a complement of 3 small satellites destined for kerbin orbit. Nearing her capacity with a single Mun orbiter/lander weighing in at 3.4 tons. There is room for more but it would require adding ballast weight to the rear of the Mockingbird to keep her enjoyable to fly. Mockingbird download here:

Ok, I should start out by saying... All these craft use only stock parts. Enjoy. Lets start out with this oddity. It's a flying ring aircraft that has a tendency to refuse to land. It's been on final approach for the last hour and is still flying. The landing strip is miles behind it now. If that's not enough, it is capable of sustained flight, at over 100 m/s, using just the aileron thrust glitch. All I can say is: "Physics, your drunk..." Yeah, that's right. 24.1 m/s and it's only dropping 1 M for every 2 seconds at this point. Plus it is completely out of fuel. I think I broke something here... Download craft here:

The DillyBird AS4. Took me 4 remakes of it to get it to even fly strait. It's vertically asymmetric with uneven engine placement(to balance out thrust vs drag). Uses both jet engines for atmospheric flight and rockets for orbital flight. Flight characteristics: Laughable at best Maneuverable: Not really Orbital: Just barely Payload: Just its own bulk Reason for building: Because Best feature: Re-entry effects It's capable of reaching Orbit, but only just. And don't even think about trying to make sharp, or even noticeable, turns with this craft...