Hotel26

This is Vitesse undergoing initial speed trials: She is inspired by my current (but long-running) Pacemaker round-Kerbin rover trip (which began in about March 2019, inspired by the illustrious @Triop). I have discovered that I can run fast with Pacemaker when the refuel tanker is out ahead and I set SAS to Target the tanker. If and when Pacemaker goes airborne, the RW paraphernalia will attempt to track the target ahead (maybe up to 150 km distant) and that seems sufficient to land a high-speed jump. My plan, therefore, is to set up a high-speed overland route with legs marked by flags. Vitesse will go fast on each leg until it approaches the next flag; then slow and turn to target the next flag. With experience, the engineer will learn what the fastest permissible speed on each leg is (and those can be marked into each flag). I've actually attempted this in the past with my Kannonball, but I think this craft, Vitesse, is. and looks. much less cumbersome. (My Victor II looks like an efficient machine to lay out a proposed route from the air...) In addition, I've found that driving jet-powered locomotives over hilly terrain is challenging because speed control is quite inexact. As a result, terrain knowledge guides the engineer, in advance, to how much power to apply in anticipation of what will be required to maintain a safe and expedient momentum. The chutes are for reserve and the rear brakeman is responsible for quickly repacking the chutes after an incident (which may have to be done "on the fly", as we like to say in the railroad business). But why? "Market surveys reveal that a surprising number of Kerbals are 'uncomfortable' with air travel."

We have to go with what the introducer of the word intended. (The "other rule" is local pronunciation, like the correct way to say, "Pier, South Dakota".) The real problem is Steve Whylight has misspelled the name he chose (would recommend a spell checker in future, Stephy.) So. "JIF". It is JIF. Pronounced like JIF. All GIF files should be renamed. And there might be some work to do in some applications. (Maybe more than Y2K, but this is an important problem to solve.) [Or we could all just jet along and say GIF to save the trouble. ]

"Let them think 'CAKE'!" Cogito cake, ergo sum.

A baobab tree, introduced with Breaking Ground.

Well, what a lot of fun!! St Moritz, my new ski chalet nestled in the Heavenly Alps. My first approach had to be a go-around. [click + arrows = slideshow] But the second pulled up to a full-stop with a little runway left. The runway is only just long enough for the Twin Otter to get out, descending into a ravine. It's also elevated just enough such that the Otter's props cannot clear the berm. The pilot must therefore reverse the craft back down the runway before the run-up and departure. I love it. I can't wait to go skiing! (Yes, there will be heli-skiing at St Moritz, too!)

(Hope your wife makes a good recovery and is out of the hospital soon, @Cavscout74) I wanted to put my new turboprops to use, so I built this, this evening: It's modeled on the Twin Otter. It does about 215 m/s at 3.5 km but it's VSTOL performance is utterly outstanding, particularly when you nudge the props into reverse just as it touches down. It has a full rack of independent flaps, just like the Real McCoy. The turbo-props are 3-bladed with a 400-kallon tank, a nacelle and a Juno (for the racket as it doesn't add very much thrust.) I added the 400-kallon tanks for better range, but it's only about 500km.

Septimus Operation Guide Controls [1] Junos [2] R121 turboshaft [3] rotor brake [4] VERT ref [5] ladder [6] RW boost (15% -> 115%) [T/F] HORZ ref [H/N] rotor thrust [K/I] collective Vertical Departure engage brakes start Junos [1] engage rotors [2] disengage rotor brake [3] engage SAS [T] select VERT ref [4] retract ladder [5] run up rotor to 460 rpm [H] reduce rotor thrust to 15% [N] ladder up? ready to lift-off? add collective [K] to begin a slow but steady ascent [WASD] for joystick controls with [EQ] providing opposite yaw retract gear [G] tap SAS Hold [F] to reselect HORZ ref (revert to normal QWASDE control) lower the nose and fly away lower the collective as flying speed builds "wing" lift >40 m/s, use [N] to zero the rotor thrust and hit [3] to brake the rotors when rotor speed stops (0), you may engage autopilot [P] if you have Atmospheric Autopilot You may elect to fly without SAS below about 38 m/s, but you will certainly require it exceeding that speed. Note: if you wish to fly Septimus well, please consider that adverse roll is applied to the aircraft whenever the rotor is being torqued to accelerate the rotor speed. Therefore, applying heavy power to the R121 is standard when a) the aircraft is parked on the ground, or b) the aircraft has flying speed >= 70 m/s. Risky at all other times. The trick (and test of pilot with true grit) comes when approaching the vertical landing. You must time the approach such that you attain at least 100-150 rpm whilst still moving faster than 70 m/s. This will likely require 100% torque due to drag. As you decelerate below this speed, you will be obliged to reduce thrust as close as you can to 15%, understanding that 15% is nominal and not sufficient to keep accelerating the rotor speed while moving quickly through the air. If you do this right, you will slow through a threshold with a goodly number of turns and be able to still lower rote thrust (to the nominal 15%) and enjoy still steady increasing revolutions due to decreased drag. Expect to use plenty of port roll input and some assiduous jockeying of pitch, roll & yaw (yup, all three)to precipitously slow the aircraft to take enter into full advantage of still air. You shouldn't have to use [6] RW boost (15% -> 115%) but it's there to bail you out if you do need it... Vertical Landing Well, the note above covers the tricky part. Assuming you've nailed all that finalizing the initial approach: engage SAS [T] disengage autopilot [P] if Atmospheric Autopilot you'll have the Junos idled; rotations >= 200 rpm and heading for 460; rotor thrust at ~15% use the collective [K] to take up the lift deficit as your flying speed diminishes raise the nose above the horizon to bleed off forward speed, controlling your approach over the target it's good to increase the collective as you bring the nose up to "brake" and be ready to let it off as you quickly lower the nose pro-actively expect to be a full three-fingered busy on the left-hand side of the keyboard controlling the final approach to the hover point if your nerves are fraying, hit [4] for VERT ref and then punch the SAS Radial Out button to let the auto help you settle once over the target and close to stationary, patience and a very gentle touch with QWASDE will be your guide to a sweet touch-down with Mother Terra Firma Good luck and enjoy!! Note to designers: I found that a terrible "wobble" incurred during hover was due to having Pitch, Yaw & Roll set on the blades. Canceling that magically smoothed the hover. (This doesn't seem to be a problem with contra-rotating blades which must cancel each other out...) Enquiries welcome and advice freely given. Please use this topic to post questions or experiences, if you so desire!

This is Septimus, a single-rotor express helicopter based on RuBisCO's eminent Compound Speed 2. First off: all credit to RuBisCO for the original, very beautiful Compound Speed 2, a stock helicopter in which RuBisCO invested countless hours tuning to be the perfect machine, incorporating a state-of-the-art KAL controller. The reasons for the "fork" are several but the notable quality of this work is that it can be flown with a single rotary wing plane and no counter-balancing agency other then airflow over the control surfaces and the Reaction Wheels (only 15% of one of those is required usually).

Call me old-fashioned but electric props don't cut the mustard for me. That eery silence, apart from the whistling wind... and I find myself heading for the EXIT door, strapping my chute on... (I reckon it's the training from my service days, still kicking in.) I published Alpine 2 this evening. I loved the result: a black-and-white movie Grand Old Dame of the Skies relic but her climb performance is not great. So I won't be the first Kerbal to have invented this: The turbo-prop. An R121 turboshaft on the front (super-quiet) and a Wheesley on the back (racket!: just what the doctor ordered!!). Haven't tried this, but In cruise, the props can be feathered and then just enough electric power applied to keep them turning. Conversely, the props can be driven with the Whistles on idle for some good ole down-home barn-stormin'.

I've explored this with spaceplanes Geist and Poltergeist pictured below. Geist features a center-line NERV with a low-slung Whiplash. Atmospheric flight control has to compensate for the Whip on the ascent. Poltergeist took the opposite approach by centering the Whiplash thrust and mounting a canted NERV underneath. The NERV is aimed directly in the general direction of the CoM and has its own aligned probe controller for control reference. (See the comments about its flight in vacuum resembling a crab 'scuttling'.) It's quite doable and the benefit was LETO ("less engines to orbit"). Take note of the RW count in each. It is true, though, that I made some effort to get the engine thrust centered through the CoM. (Fuel balance becomes important.) I recently collaborated with two others on an SSTO that had low-slung engines (mainly for appearance). First observation is that, for the price of some drag, the asymmetry can be managed. The resolution was to top-mount the engines on the wing, which is unconventional but looked even cooler. Still asymmetric (since wing incidence was a main driver in the design), but within limits. I guess the simple tl;dr is "yes, it's a factor and will cause rotation if unchecked". Don't let that stop you experimenting and do have fun!

My feeling is that it is so utterly irrelevant.

Team effort working under the Chief Architect, Caerfinon. (Fun was had by all.)

This brings back memories of Christmas, 2014, when my son gave me KSP. He had been playing it with my grandson (Calvin) who was about 3 at the time, and Calvin's sole, gleeful duty was to hit the space bar at the end of the countdown. I bet the SPH & VAB could feel pretty much like Lego to a youngster! (Just need some guidance diagnosing what happens outside after leaving the runway or launchpad.) Well, I'm going to give the Dad a quick demo of KSP on a laptop sometime soon.

Riddle: "What's the difference between a divorce and a house fire?" "A house fire doesn't take half your salary..." OK, OK, sorry. (And congratulations to all the January TOTM award members!) I'm here researching the new(?) Lego ISS because a non-KSP colleague (yes, we all are blighted with them), has presented his six year-old with this Lego kit (even though it's rated 16+) and I'm trying to engineer a way for aforesaid colleague to get aforesaid six year-old hooked on KSP. Hmm.... Too early?

19 hours ago, KSC Command was quite jubilant about having found a super-secret mountain-top location on Eve (right on the equator), at an altitude of 6,439 meters. It is a pretty flat site and quite large. Easy to land a rocket glider on reliably. Mauve Mountain, we've proudly called it. Since then, we've noticed that heavy/expensive equipment (rocket-powered interplanetary vessels), parked atop the aforesaid location tend to "drift" at rates measured up to 5 cm/s. We weren't happy. We all Trust in Squad as they say, but on this occasion, we felt that Squad had let us down. A few hours in a bulldozer and we flattened the site. Brought in a few makeshift buildings to make it seem a little less barren and a little more businesslike. [click + arrows] (Imagine our surprise, though, when the KSC grass we imported turned a funny hue of purple within a few minutes! Oh well, it did look out of place.) So, problem solved. But inasmuch as this has been a costly affair for the long-suffering taxpayer, we've successfully sued for a Rule Change. In brief, "since KSP (1.7.3) vehicles have this magical power to overcome friction at any time of most inconvenience, we have now command of a crawler-way tractor to position rockets landed on the mountain-top to the launch pad". It's only fair!! We have dubbed this machina ex Squad: Vessel Mover. [And yeah, we know about grip strips, but our principal vehicle sports a Papa dock for base and we're not gonna deface it...]

I have flown a prototype of an Eve SSTRV called Eagle. The first three images below [click + arrows] show Eagle: a) crossing 90 km upward into space, b) apoapsis at 121km and a sub-orbital speed of 1,665 m/s and c) passing back down through 90 km after 2m 51s in space. An SSTRV is a Single-Stage To Rendez-Vous and you probably haven't heard the term very often[1]. It's a Krakpot notion. The next phase of the project is to design a companion RV Interceptor. It will wait in a 120 km2 Eve orbit, traveling at 3,156 m/s. Eagle launches from a mountain-top on Eve[2] as Interceptor approaches and sets up a close rendez-vous before entering "coast", fuel exhausted. The Interceptor immediately begins maneuvering to reduce speed from 3,156 to 1,665, dock with Eagle[3] and then reboost speed sufficiently to raise periapsis above 90km. That's a total speed change of at least 3 km/s with the stopwatch ticking off something under 3 minutes to get the job done[4]. Don't worry: we have our best guy working on this. He's from Krakpotistan. A fun part of this project (so far) has been to ensure Eagle can fairly well pinpoint its landing to a mountain-top. Eve's thick atmosphere certainly aids and abets this. After setting up the w&b for effective gliding, our first attempt landed about a kilometer distant: [1] We will not be the first team to succeed with SSTRV. I've seen a YouTube of some other desperado outfit achieving same. [2] We're using Mauve Mountain as a launch site. At 6,439 m, it's not the tallest mountain on Eve but, located at 0 31 15S / 167 30 49E, just south of the equator, it's certainly convenient. [3] like a "suicide burn" to land, "suicide docking" requires performing the job with extreme prejudice. This will NOT be "putt, putt". [4] the critical part of the interception is up until completion of the dock. Docking within the atmosphere, even at the highest altitude, is extremely squirrely. Once dock has been secured, however, even if the pair then fall back into the upper atmosphere, quick acceleration should arrest the fall before any fatal dose of drag has been administered. So the total window is probably better. Also, the preliminary maneuvering can begin as soon as Eagle goes into "coast", which is well before it reaches the Karman Line...

This is a false alarm and inspection of the code and some better testing have shown that the latest Haystack works fine. In debugging a similar problem in Kerbal Konstructs, I learned that one may change the CKAN "minimum version" setting and, as a result of doing so, the latest Haystack updated into my KSP 1.7.3 installation. This is what rectified the textures/icons problem in Haystack, I believe. Please ignore the report above.

A very warm welcome to you! I will look forward to your posts and read them with interest.

A new airport has opened at Heavenly Valley so I thought I'd fly in and take a look. Apparently a ski chalet will open in the mountains nearby for helicopter traffic with maybe a very short strip with a tricky approach for prop commuters. [click + arrows] And the first commercial arrival, an UltraPaxjet-W, arrives after a 27m flight from Kerbal Space Center.

A collection of rovers. Pacemaker I'm currently doing a Kerbin circumnavigation with this and, in the plains, it's easy to maintain 45-50 m/s. KW Jetta enormous fun on the Mun. Invader my stock standard with lots of aerial transports for it. Krew: 8 kerbals. AFF Scooter original idea from AFF, but his was mono-prop propelled but I discovered that it could be RW-propelled.

I think Caerfinon wrote this excellent guide (cited in his signature) almost immediately after @Kerbal-fan's post: Getting Started With Kerbal Konstructs It's excellent; please check it out.

Congratulations, SpacePixel!! That is one beautiful ship and it was, for me, love at first sight!

OK then. For other desperados, here's the method (Ubuntu, Mint): https://askubuntu.com/questions/50085/setting-the-working-directory I added this line to the launcher in ~/Desktop: You can get your own Path from the Exec line in the launcher and truncate it to just the path to the directory. In the case of Kerbal Konstructs, this is especially egregious because, not only does the mod not work, but you cannot deploy to the runway and you cannot exit KSP. Kaput. (I've reported it in that topic.)

tl;dr KSP mods -- including Haystack, Kerbal Konstructs -- seem to rely on the assumption that cwd is the KSP base directory (buildId.txt, GameData) in order to find their own assets, causing pointless problems. This is just exploratory. I've been running Haystack for three years under Linux and wondering why the appearance of the UI is so bad. (Under Windows, previously, it was quite pretty.) It appears that Haystack makes the assumption that the cwd is the KSP base directory (the one containing buildId.txt and GameData) and uses this to find its own assets (textures, icons). This isn't my case on Linux Mint using an App Launcher on the desktop. Kerbal Konstructs assumes the same and this one problem stopped me using it altogether also for three years. In my opinion, it's not enough that there is a work-around for this, since people don't know and aren't told about it; they just have to go without. It's possible this is a KSP Linux-only (or Steam environment) bug but I do regard it as a bug to be fixed, one way or another (e.g. AppContext.BaseDirectory.). Have I got this wrong? And is there anything that can be done? [keywords: Linux]

Name change! Name change! One time only. Tell them H6 sent you...