Hotel26

"Any landing you can swim away from..." well, this one landed very gently but 887 meters below sea level, just off the coast of KSC where two fervid days of Mad Science have just been conducted. (This is starting to affect my paid job!!) This is Neptune and it's not a plane, although it does fly. It's not a boat, although it does float. It's not a submarine , although it does submerge. And it's not a submarine base until we Mad Scientists get it to work. But we are now very close. The hunt has been so long and arduous, we didn't bother to repack the chutes on the surface, before making the dive attempt. "Success, too long pursued, comes suddenly and with rude surprise". That's what we say every day in Mad Science Lab, anyway, never expecting it.

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You're an Incrementer... 32- And I'm a Decrementer... But what do you really know about Truman's Craftyard? ...and would you buy a pre-owned space vehicle from this Kerman? [link provided]

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Keep in mind that "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" and it's the original creations (like yours) that attract all the attention! Totally admire your style. (I've learned a thing or two already.)

It's a leisurely pursuit and not really so competitive: just a bit of chukka, I think that's the term. In this case, @fulgur posted a spot and gets 10 provisional until someone validates by actually going there. I went there, so he gets 10 and I get 5. The next 4 visitors get 4,3,2,1. A bit more like F1 and less like polo, perhaps. In the "point-scoring", as it were. Now, in this case, I can't really claim much credit for going to this place, made so well-known by your own Good Self, so I have already posted those 5 points to your own account. All Hail, @Klapaucius, Explorer Extraordinaire! And well done, Sir Fulgur, old bean! Now, chaps, on to the next chukka...

@fulgur excellent directions and a most beautiful place. If you deem the following to be the right location, and with everyone's kind approval, I'm gonna post the 5-point claim for my visitation to @Klapaucius, since this is the site of a rather famous challenge -- and I've been fully expecting him to mention such a worthy place sooner or later:

My directions were pretty flimsy!! So I added a fourth clue (see above). Meanwhile, thanks for your entry -- it looks pretty darned enticing!!

Yeah. Hey, you got me all excited that there might be a tweak on the stock part! I only do a handful of the Essential Mods. Mods are great but they have a cost. That's why too I am very selective about when I upgrade KSP. Stock is the lingua franca for KerbalX. I do do the DLCs because Squad (and Take Two) is worth supporting. I bought Making History but never used anything out of it. Maybe until recently. The Mk2 Lander Can. Maybe that's not even MH? Breaking Ground is much more appealing, but I haven't gone crazy with it. (Think I've used it just twice.) I see the MH doc refers to an SM-18 Service Module and I see also that I have an SEQ-9 Container Module part. However, the service bay with Victor III I am using pops its doors and extends antenna and solar panel on one key: can't beat that for simplicity of use!

No sooner had I published my Victor II aircraft for aerial deployment of navaids, I realized how to protect the fragile HG-5 relay antenna and jam five of them into a Victor... So, one can not only make a navaid network for Victor airways (so-called), but one can also make a ground-based relay network. ...and/or ocean-based! This version is Victor III.

The most important thing I did today, thinking back, is discovering the mystery of why simply approaching a massive, complex space station may potentially cause the thing to explode in a most spectacular shower of fireballs and meteoric hot parts. Fortunately, I'm a stickler for following procedure and this is one of the many routine situations in which I always F5 as a preliminary precaution. Nobody got hurt. (Not in this universe, anyway.) I have long mused that it's a testament to how little we know about physics -- or about physics simulation, anyway. Kerbals of a mystic nature talk about the Kraken. But I know what happened today. Quite definitively. That's the easy part (altho it's taken years); now I just need to formulate a business model before publication in the scientific journals... But, more picture-worthy: I finished testing Victor: After a series of aviation misfortunes recently, during times of inclement weather, the KAA has mandated that civilian flights follow Victor airways, comprised of a network of navaids. Victor is a KAA network aircraft used for aerially deploying the ground-based navaids at something like 200km intervals. Under Instrument Flight Rules, one must not leave a 100km radius of the current navaid until the next navaid is also within 100km. To follow a Victor airway, one will track in to the next navaid; then turn to a known heading (always consult up-to-date KAA charts) for the next leg. Once the next navaid comes in range: again, track inbound. Instead of putting a flag at an airport, install one of these. Each navaid is comprised of a chute (obvious reasons), a battery, a small radio transmitter (not a relay), a battery and a solar panel. The navaid is designed to float on water with the solar panel facing up. It helps that Victor is fast and fun to fly. (I'm on a real Panther kick now, thanks to @purpleivan) And, ah, yeah, just teasing about the space station debacle... I'll tell you for free. I was splitting a space station into 4 parts. A Peregrine (SSTO) had just offloaded krew from a Nerfjet (space) and I undocked a Titan fuel tanker to let it drift away from the central Krux, a pretty old space station, now superseded by Nova and Pole Star. Rather than de-orbit the still-serviceable Krux, I'll be using a Mule to ferry it to my primary Pole Star. I sent the Peregrine down to a 70km orbit in prep for de-orbit. When I came back, I noticed that the Nerfjet had wandered about 4 km away from the station. I switched to it and brought it back. As soon as it entered physics range, the space station erupted in a long and spectacular fireworks display. (Got to love KSP!) I speculate that the Titan had drifted away at only very slow speed (as I didn't give it a push). And the vagaries of close orbit are that two craft in a similar orbit cross paths. It's likely the Titan had crossed swords with Krux, which does not matter either at a) warp speed or b) on rails. But as soon as you come into physics range, and the two craft are "molecularly super-imposed", as we (amateurish) physicists like to say.... BOOM!! I reloaded the save. Gave the Titan a proper MP push. Then repeated all. No hay problema ahora...

[continue the tour] (Fake) Victoria Falls: So called, because the first time I saw it was at high altitude and some optical illusion made it look like a KSP waterfall, which was an exciting phenomenon at the time, although every one now knows water is flat. (Which bears the heavy implication also that there are no winds on Kerbin, borne out by the fact that no Kerbalese Pilots Operating Handbook mentions anything about cross-wind landings.) I'll add a couple more shots so you can identify when you have arrived, but suffice it to say that: it's a part of the longest water feature on Kerbin you can see it's at a fork in the feature there's a convenient little landing strip shown (in case anybody is thinking about opening up a tourist resort at this very picturesque rafting/submarining site. somewhere Northward of Baikerbanur (just to identify the 'water feature', a.k.a. river) As discussed elsewhere in the topic, this location has become widely known as Fake Victoria Falls, due to an egregious error on the part of Hotel26. In the interest of Exploration, and just for reference, the True Victoria Falls (90 klicks west of the above), looks more impressively like this:

OK! How about this pretty place? This reminds me that I have a pseudo-Elcano Challenge attempt underway with a Pacemaker rover that is about 1/3rd of the way around Kerbin, going westward, but planning to take a very southerly dip down into this Lakes Region. Thanks for this one, @purpleivan!

For you Adventurers who have not yet heard about Kayak Club, here is an unsolved puzzle. This looks like the best B.A.S.E. jumping location on Kerbin! Can you find it?! No spoilers! Please post an entry in Kayak Club! (Rules are stated in the first post!)

Have you ever done something and then kicked yourself for not doing it much earlier? This is Fulcrum: (click the first and then use arrows for a slideshow) It works surprisingly well!

Lovely location. But I had given up on the directions! Just needed an existence proof from purpleivan to get there! Uhm, bit embarrassed about this and hope I don't get accused of cheating: Because I couldn't resist the mighty fine plane, either! I was amazed how fast your plane goes, @purpleivan!! It does Mach 2+ @2km on just normal aspiration: I did not know Panthers could go so fast without afterburners.

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...however, raising one's hands above one's head is the universal sign of surrender, potentially triggering the bear's Easy Meat Response... not advisable. [this is what happened to my cousin, R.I.P.]

An Engineering Change Order for Paxjet applies some long-overdue Tender Loving Care: Paxjet, operated conventionally, was prone to suffering intake air starvation with the result of the port engine spooling down to about half power. The asymmetric thrust created did not bother the aerodynamic stability of this jet, but it did hamper max performance. With the addition of a ventral Radial Air Intake plus two small circular intakes at the wing-tips, and with a careful climb to maintain acceleration (and thereby intake), Paxjet is now able to achieve cruise 1310@21/0.37

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10% speed of light in just over 4 days [making an assumption or two]