Hotel26

"Top of the class, SZ!" It wasn't the SpaceX boosters, I was joking about, either...

Of course, what is crossing my mind right now, regarding this ongoing discussion, is that it may be time for full disclosure by all parties engaged, about stock holdings IRL. Just, you know... to know. Yeah? @Exoscientist?

Yes, I have never gotten the Going AND Green style syntax to work either. Why the Invision default is OR is completely inexplicable. Sturgeon's Law, quite possibly...

Please try the following and it would be very helpful if you would report the results here in this thread. Go to the top of any page in the forum and look for the search bar just under your avatar in the top right corner. If you hover over it, you might see "This Topic" appear in response. Ignore this and click the magnifying glass icon instead to take you to the search page. Type in your keywords 'Going Green' into the Search Term box, ensure you have "All Content" checked and also ensure you have the All my search term words radio button checked. Then scroll down and click Search Content. I predict this will work for you. If it does, please let us know, and then I will explain what the difficulty you encountered was. And even if it doen't, let us know. Good luck.

ILS Approach KSC R9: Minimum Enroute Altitude is 2000m. V-KSC9 holding course 090; outbound 270; tear drop entries to 240 or 300; or direct to 270; right-turn pattern, stay above 1000m. Leave the FAF at 1000m, descend at nominal 10:100 m/s (descent vs airspeed), but not below 130m MSL. Switch to the I-KSC9 marker and track it on course 090 inbound. Meanwhile keep the I-KSC9 Target on the navball between -10 degrees and -5 degrees. (Go Missed Approach if exceeding those bounds.) DH (Decision Height) is 130m MSL. Go visual when at DH or your own personal minimum. Missed approach is a climbing left-hand turn to 1000m MSL, tracking back to V-KSC9 for another attempt.

Q. What is the difference between NDB and VOR navaids? (I will also touch on DME navaids.) TL;DR: For our purposes in stock KSP, fundamentally none. I address this question only a) to avoid confusion as I 'intermix' the terms, and b) for interest's sake (see spoiler below). Navaids are fixed ground installations that provide a) enroute navigation facility and b) approach fixes for destinations. Whereas NDBs provide a heading to the station (relative to the nose of the aircraft), VORs inform a needle deflection from the intended course radial, dialed into the instrument. The immediately apparent difference is that the later VOR system simplifies the mental workload for the pilot over that required by the earlier NDB system. But the bigger difference is that the VOR systems provides compensation for wind drift -- something we do not have to contend with in stock KSP. Hence, the VOR system promotes more accurate, reliable adherence to IFR traffic-separation rules. In addition, a third system, DME navaids, are very commonly co-located with VOR installations (although not necessarily). DME additionally gives the slant range to the station. A. This last point is what will determine whether a navaid in this Simplified IFR Approach system is indicated as NDB or VOR: an NDB marker has no distance component and your approach should not use KSP target distance readouts [F4] in the approach. a VOR marker may be assumed to be VOR/DME, providing target distance information for use in one or more of the approaches made from it. Note: I may have some "tightening up" to perform on some of the earlier-published approaches to strictly comply with definitions here. That will happen very soon. For more information: Fly safely!

e.g. the Boring company; add to your list. (Although, I haven't read the details of this hyperloop. Maybe this will be a tube elevated above the surface? I'll go back and read.) Yeah: ignore the above.

I run a program to bring jetsam abandoned in deep space back [Mod-F12] to GKO (Geostationary Kerbin orbit). There are strict rules about disposal of this junk. The GKO gravity well is quite deep to deorbit junk back to Kerbin. (Offhand, I don't know the dV required.) So I thought I'd see what it costs to impact the Mun with the debris... 264 m/s. Sounds nice. And of course, another 264 m/s for the scavenger to recircularize within GKO. If you look in the center, you can see the Mun in focus, with a junk slingshot shown, but without Periapsis. "Bye bye, y'all." Time for some coffee! UPDATE: 443 m/s to reduce PE from GKO down to 50km Kerbin altitude. So, Mun impact is better (as long as the crew have been taken off, first!).

Yes, well, where to start. Home alone on the annual vacation has gotten the Good Doctor all nostalgic about e.g. NASA, and other long-defunct, boyhood memories. So with the help of my elvish(?) VAB helpers, we have assembled "das prototype vehicle for the CRG-100 style orbital delivery". What is it good for; well, we don't know: fiddly little stuff in lots of pieces, we suppose. A vacation lark, you might say, before we return to our real work of developing networks of autonomous, space-based weapons of suddenly-unleashed destruction that can be blamed on aliens/UFOs/comedy-writers... So this is Skylark. It has at least 16 standard baby docking points. It is mounted on a Twin-S3 Mammoth-propelled, recoverable booster. Plenty of fuel and grunt (TWR) on the pad, so very flexible about additional payload. Skylark is VLHR. In the demo version, it will be released with the cargo shown, which assembles in orbit into a cute, miniature -- and quite useless, I assure you -- space station. It's only selling point is it is our first use of the magneto boom sonic destructor ray gun... (Batteries and some assembly not supplied.) This cargo bay was a lot of fun to pack, I must say -- although I only want to do it this once -- as it really emphasized the power of the ancient, boreal Way of Lego. Hopefully, this first assembly in space will also go smoothly. UPDATE: well, that first effort turned into a calf-roping event (due to disorderly release of components). So, here's an artist's impression of what a "Mini-Me Station" should look like: (Probably shouldn't have that telescope pointed at the near-by solar panel, hey?)

Normally, I'd stay out of any conversation about "blocking people" on this forum since we should all be able to just get along... Just hover over the name tag of the offender in the top-left-hand corner of the offender's post found just above the offender's avatar and linger a moment or two until the menu with "Ignore [offender]" comes up. @Royalswissarmyknife I reckon you were just being rhetorical

ILS Approach Coney Is R27: Minimum Enroute Altitude is 1500m. N-CONEY holding course 090; outbound 270; tear drop entries to 240 or 30, or direct to 270; left-turn pattern, stay above 1500m. Leave the FAF at 1500m, speed 100 m/s precisely (or adjust 60 sec for 6 km). fly exactly 60 secs (6km), then make a left-hand procedure turn (30 sec legs, descending to 733m MSL. This is a good time to lower gear. Switch from N-CONEY to I-CONEY and track inbound on 270. Once established, begin a 10 m/s descent (or equivalent for speeds other than 100 m/s). DH (Decision Height) is 194 m MSL. Track the navaid on course 270 and keep Target declination between 5 and 10 degrees on the navball. Go visual when at DH or your own personal minimum. Missed approach is a climbing right-hand turn to 300 and 1500m MSL, switching back to the NDB navaid before turning inbound. Notes: we use a 1-in-10 glide slope which is about 5.7 degrees. (RL is more usually ~3 degrees.) descend 100m while traversing 1km. Use -10m/s for an airspeed of 100 m/s (which makes it mentally easy to scale for other speeds). when the ILS Target marker is left or right of course on the navball, compensate by over-steering left or right. when the ILS Target marker is lower or higher than desired in the range of 5-10 degrees, over-compensate by increasing or decreasing descent rate. the vertical deflection of the Target marker will get progressively more twitchy as you close proximity to the runway threshold. Get ready to bale! DO NOT BUST MINIMUMS, which is the DH (Decision Height, the precision MDA (Minimum Decision Altitude)) -- or your "personal minimum". Discussion: There are a set of legal "minima" or constraints for numerous operations within aviation. It is illegal, unsafe, suicidal (and homicidal) to "bust minimums". These are the limitations that are adjudged as the most that can be routinely expected from expert, professional pilots. As a budding pilot, you are impressed upon to understand that you and everyone else's actual proficiency will vary and initially be quite significantly less than that capable of the legal minimums. Thus, you are beholden to set your own "personal minimums", which will start substantially higher (more constrictive). You will tune these minimums according to your own experience, as it grows, and according to your own wisdom, what little your Maker has given you. A precision approach permits a descent to a Go/Abort decision to be made just prior to 200 feet AGL. You must not go lower than 200 feet (69m in KSP), unless you have made and confirmed visual contact (recognition) of the runway environment. (For a non-precision approach, visual recognition of the airport, or even nearby well-known landmarks, is sufficient, but that threshold is 800 feet AGL (244m in KSP)). The legal minimum is overridden by your (more constrictive "personal minimum"). Unless you are a fool, you will treat your personal minimum as a hard cut-off, not to be violated unless you are ready to risk losing your life (and those of your hapless passengers). As you do more and more successful descents to your own minima, you may and will progressively lower your own minimums. With good judgement, you will reach the professional level at which your personal minima just so happen to match the legal minima -- and not an inch lower. Less seriously now, I do advise that pilots aspiring to hone their flying skills set and maintain these personal minima. Do not attempt to fly the ILS to Coney Is R27 using the 194m DH. Set in advance an earlier cut-off. Plane to level off and take a look at your earlier vantage point. Very likely in KSP where we can artificially choose the "ceiling", you will be able to land successfully. Yay. If not, that's all you needed to know! More work... And the more successes you string together, the more truly proficient you will feel -- and that is a good basis under which to judiciously and sagaciously "lower your minima". Practice yields proficiency to conscientious pilots!

Before I introduce the first ILS approach in this "Simplified IFR" thread, I had originally planned to only describe a kind of CAT-III approach for ILS for stock KSP. I had not, at that time, imagined how to do an ordinary ILS. Now I have. For background, (CAT-II and) CAT-III approaches require special equipment, including radar altimeter and a good autopilot that is capable of flying the airplane down the precision glide slope, through the landing flare and to touch-down on the runway. Airports like Heathrow outside of London, that are notorious for fog, are suitably equipped for these kinds of approaches. And, in good time, I will publish a CAT-III ILS for KSC R9. In the meantime, it turns out that I have "perfected"(Kerbalspeak) an ordinary ILS approach and I will publish the first of these -- Coney Island ILS R27 -- in the next post. Although the main focus of this thread is on "stock KSP", I view this thread as a jumping-off point for consideration of a) autopilots (which are enormously helpful during the IFR workload) and b) IFR navaid mods within KSP that support RL instrumentation. At later points in time, I do intend to start conversations about each of these areas and general discussion would be welcome. So now, here follows (next note) the ILS Approach for Coney Island R27. Enjoy!

NDB Approach Coney Is R9: Minimum Enroute Altitude is 1500m. N-CONEY holding course 270; outbound 090; tear drop entries to 060 or 120, direct to 090; right-turn pattern, stay above 1500m. Leave the FAF at 1500m, speed 100 m/s or less. fly 30 secs, then make a right-hand procedure turn (30 sec legs, descending no lower than 425m MSL. Track inbound on 090, MDA 425m MSL, ready to land. Go visual when Target marker is depressed between 5 and 10 degrees on the navball. Missed approach is a climbing left-hand turn to course 270. Retry after climbing above 1500m. One of the easier approaches! Notes: deploy the N-CONEY aid with Mod-F12: Cheats: Set Position: as usual, but specify an unusual altitude of 70m. you may be becoming familiar with the terminology: since departure from the HP is course 270, any westerly initial approach will use a direct entry; any easterly initial approach (typical from e.g. KSC) will use the nearest tear-drop heading, left or right, as closer. Right-turns in the pattern are marked, so no descent may be started in an initial left turn; and, once established, right turns are mandatory. The FAF crossing altitude is, anyway, 1500m, the same as the MEA.

Uh, probably important to have copied this context here: Check what is in GameData/KerbalKonstructs/NewInstances and delete it if it looks totally new (check dates). Roll it back. Then try the load. As usual, "Don't fork it up!"

You could try the following. rename your saves/<world>/persistent.sfs to saves/<world>/persistent.sfs.231225 (now you have a backup) copy your save/<world>/quicksave.sfs to saves/<world>/persistent.sfs (Now you've regressed to happier times) do not panic! (I should have mentioned that eariler) now try the startup... if it works, there's something wrong with the most persistent. Check its size and compare it with the quicksave: maybe it's significantly shorter? If so, it's toast: move on without it. if it doesn't work, you can copy your persistent.sfs.231225 back over persistent.sfs (but keep the Xmas (231225) version). Further diagnosis required. Let us know how these steps work out for you. Also, don't panic! But don't fork it up... (Pay particular attention to everything above that is underlined.)

With all the excitement about the upcoming launch of the next IRL X-37b, I recently built my OTV-37 "pseudo-replica". Then I added a small payload: an RA-2 cubesat (unpublished). Meanwhile, with the continuous launch of IRL Starlink missions, well, it lead me to thinking about using the stretch CRG-08 Mk2 cargo bay. However, I was tentative about making any change to OTV-37 since I am very fond of its aerodynamics. Therefore, I whipped up Kerblink, in two configurations: the first with 4x RA-2 cubesats (yet unpublished), and this one depicted, with 18x C-16 cubesats: It is so prototypically simple that it has been a huge surprize [sic] and bonus that its simple format works so well -- I regard it as 'final'. It's a recoverable, autonomous, Mk2 CRG-08 cargo bay mounted on top of a recoverable Twin Boar. A very sweet marriage! Conceivably [if I indeed know what that word means], a double-bay config could be used, possibly upgrading the Spark engine to a Terrier. Flexible for any compact payload. Even the Mk2 aerobody ("body lift") performance impressed (staggered) me, because I have never witnessed that phenomenon this dramatically (see below). I was very tempted to make it Horizontal Return-capable (you know, like an aeroplane). This is the recently-built Kobe Island airport, 50 clicks downrange from KSC, acting as impromptu target (after a full orbit since lift-off): But again, why stink things up? "Simple is beautiful!" Have a nice day.

But, on the other hand, I can reveal our final destination of the journey we have embarked upon... Below is a CAT-III[1] "ILS" approach demonstration, flown in stock (aided in this case by Atmospheric Autopilot), filmed in May 2019: https://rumble.com/v42gfn1-cat-iii-r9.html Enjoy. (Don't miss the last 30 seconds.) [1] "bogeys on asphalt"

More than one VFR kerbal reader has now written in, asking, "what, exactly, do you mean: 'simplified'?"... Well, fair question, and I had been hoping it wouldn't get asked for a little while longer. It is certainly good to be cautious before flying into IMC. So, in this note, I will outline one simplification I have been making in KSP just to make things somewhat less real and thereby a bit more pleasurable. Hopefully, no kerbal lives will be lost by doing this -- quite the contrary! Let's just discuss Holding Patterns, since they've already come into usage in the Approaches above. IRL: So let's turn to the kind of Holding Patterns that kerbals use (in my vivdly fevered imagination, that is). We now present the KSP HP: Disclaimer: do not take any of this into real life. Everything written (by me) in this thread will be for edification, entertainment and pleasure. In particular: I do not now, nor ever have held Flight Instructor nor Instrument Rating Instructor qualifications; I presently have no fixed address (and "Hotel26" is not even my real name); the ultimate purpose of this thread is to let my imagination out for a hearty romp; no further disclaimers will be issued past this point: you are truly flying a) solo and b) blind (i.e. IMC).

The following are on sale: NAV-QBE. Pallettes of QBE navaid devices. I keep a pallette on the VAB rooftop, somewhere out of the way. When you need it, just decouple one and then Mod-F12: Cheats: Set Position: to deploy it wherever you want it. Check out also my NAV-NDB and NAV-VOR, if you want to "spend the parts to look the part".

Sometimes 'tis better to stifle oneself... <stifled> I take the opportunity, instead, to welcome @amaranthus; and good call on that excellent Guide.

NDB Approach Rembrandt R16: Minimum Enroute Altitude is 1200m. N-REMBR inbound radial is 156; outbound 336. On entry, if 336 is within 90 degrees of your heading, turn to either 306 or 006, whichever is closer, for a teardrop entry. Otherwise, turn directly outbound on 336. Right-turns in the holding pattern down to 900m and no more than 100 m/s, leaving the FAF. Track 156 and begin a 5 m/s descent for 100 m/s speed, or -1m/s for every 20m/s speed. MDA altitude is 460m MSL. Go no lower unless surface (visual) contact made. Go visual (or Missed Approach) when 9 km outbound from the fix (rear view F4).

Speaking about minorities in space, canines (Laika) actually beat simians into space, if I have my facts neatly marshaled? But about space-faring felines, I know next to nothing. Why not and, why, for example, has not a Bengal Tiger or, for that matter, a regular puddy-tat not entered orbit, hmm? Frankly, I am appalled. Our priorities are all kinked, it seems... Oh, wait! I might have taken a comment out of context...? This one, Commander Busby, has already done some capsule training:

The 8-nuke Crab in the middle is freighting 2x Zephyr boosters, recycled from Kerbin, down to LEO (Low Eve Orbit), where they will perform one last function as descent boosters (de-boosters?) for anything with a 2.5m dock bound for the Evian surface.

NDB Approach Cannes R32: Minimum Enroute Altitude is 1000m N-CANNS inbound radial is 120: 210-300, use 270 for teardrop entry, fly 30 secs, then right to track inbound on 120 300-30, use 330 for teardrop entry, fly 30 secs, then left to track inbound on 120 30-120, left turn to 300 direct entry to an initial left-turn holding pattern (30-second legs) 120-210, right turn to 330 direct to a right-turn pattern descend to 600m while executing right turns in the HP and slow to 100 m/s or less, before departing the FAF (Final Approach Fix) on course 120 fly 60 seconds, then execute a right-turn Procedure Turn (turn to 165, fly 30 secs, then left to 345 to intercept the N-CANNS 300 radial begin the descent to 257m, intercept and track the 300 radial go visual when the Target marker reaches the 10-degree declination line on the navball Notes: the Holding Pattern is composed of right-turns except for the initial tour which may be left-ward depending upon the direction of entry, as noted above. upon initial arrival at the fix, 030-210 is on the front-course and permits a direct entry. 210-030 is back-course requiring a tear-drop entry tracking a marker (in or outbound) on a radial that is not explicitly marked on the navball would involve some guesswork about its position on the navball. Given a long enough leg (you can extend any leg to 60s, including for or during a PT (Procedure Turn), will give you enough time to periodically turn to the desired heading and then check the position (left or right) of the Target. Then turn back to a heading which will compensate. You may have done this already leaving the FAF for KSC R9, but that example is on a heading (090) that is navball-convenient.