Goddess Bhavani

Incoming pillows, evasive action!

It\'s getting more and more awesome, this story. Let\'s see if anyone else is participating today, or else I will write up a small essay in reply later.

Sailing would probably require greater time compression than 2x, if realistic ship speeds were used. I also wish ground effects would be modelled in future, enabling Ekranoplan type vehicles. Besides, Lun rhymes with Mun

Your name is strangely fitting for the scope of this simulation. Ever since I started kerbalism I have wrecked hundreds of vehicles of all shapes and sizes. Some even fall apart at the seams standing still. Truly, blowing things up is part of the fun

C ; they must not know of any organised Terran resistance yet, brazenly walking in the open like that. Make them pay for their arrogance, but be silent and quick about it!

All seems silent amid the sphere of packing foam, but via the station intercom connected to your helmet\'s iPhone you can hear evidence of activity from the command centre... '... armed, interlocks engaged' 'should make some pretty good fireworks, this charge' 'Uploading solution from TDC now. Set tubes 1 to 3 for full peanut butter spread, 4 milirads dispersal' 'Red alert, shields up' Before you could even think about the obvious television references, you hear Jeb\'s excited yelling over the command circuit' 'FIRE PHOTON TORPEDOES!' You must have passed out for a while, because before you loomed the vast grey expanse of the Munar surface...

That and jettisoned objects or stages do not give a position marker. Impact craters would be somewhat nice for future releases actually, especially where there\'s persistence.

Hmm why would I head for C? - Strategic target, probably hit by artillery or aerospace strikes as part of efforts to cripple local C4I - The very fact that it\'s \'probably destroyed\' means it might be an overlooked refuge. - Its importance means that after the dust clears, its likely friendly troops would seek to occupy the locale and mount salvage/recovery efforts, or even attempt to restore some semblance of communication... that is, if the enemy hasn\'t flushed them out yet. Lets see what turns out next!

Unfazed by the sudden onset of what seemed like lavender perfume, you frantically stuff the tissue paper where it came from, or at least tried, all the while in zero gravity as the capsule continued to plummet towards the ocean and now began to flipp end over end following a horrendous metallic groan of the command capsule tearing itself free of the service module\'s decoupler. Suddenly your eyes spot an especially large red button, from which a soothing red pulsating glow emanated from it. It says 'Don\'t Panic'.

Definitely. This is subsonic drone Now that I got clearance to modify the engine thrust, the rest is simple. Hopefully we should have some semblance of a realistic slow Predator drone with at least 40km range by the end of my vacation tomorrow. For testing, your rule to launch the drone immediately after launch does give an accurate range representation. UPDATE: Using standard launch procedure (no flight controls until launch), new drone has surpassed 15km range. Altitude under 1500m. Launch data Angle 15 deg regulated by SAS (does not matter, drone flies itself now. Improper launch angle like straight up means drone just run out of fuel uselessly) Speed about 130m/s (since throttle was full all the way) Altitude about 500m Drone ascended to about 1200m on its own for more efficient cruise and self terminated at 15.1 km Next step: Now I must give drone different flight model for when engine is on, and engine is off (gliding). This is to separate the \'boost\' phase where drone climbs up above parent aircraft (regain lost altitude during launch), from the cruising phase (which must be as level as possible for realism). Also intend to give exactly just enough fuel for 50km flying range. Will prevent over eager test pilots from trying to launch drone like Space Shuttle, UPDATE 2 New flight model - now floating past 22km range. But something triggeed the self destruct autopilot although the fuel tanks were half full - and it dove down like a guided missile into a lake. Had enough ballistic range, I reckon, for the full 50km flight.

No wonder when I switched to multi-engine aircraft, all the drone behaviour is altered! Good news though, the new flight model is universal. We probably need to separate the low altitude drone development from the contest already. I will be happy to conduct further testing and perfection of the 2nd batch of the new airfoils. They are showing a lot of promise. Unlike the first generation drones, the new ones are self-stabilising and are affected less by the parent ship\'s attitude.

Progress report: 1. New carrier aircraft - multi engine craft no longer required for chase, since low altitude drone variant is subsonic 2. Launch procedure fixed - Upon vertical takeoff, carrier aircraft automatically pitches down to 15 degrees, whereupon SAS locks the pitch for drone deployment. Stress free drone deployment! No longer requires WW2 torpedo bomber launching skills! 3. Improved pylon separation - prevents drone from \'riding up\' into parent aircraft Setback: Issues with airfoil quality caused some drone prototypes to not hold a steady course so I am re-doing the airfoils from scratch. Should not be hard, just that fine tuning takes a while. New idea I think I know way of stopping the thing from flying off into the stratosphere. The new submarine mod has the ability to make fuel tanks heavier as fuel is used. That means I can definitely make the drone climb gently after dropping off from the carrier, cruise at a medium altitude, then commit suicide properly. Do not want a soft landing for these things as it\'s better the drone be crashed and destroyed, than fall into enemy hands after use.

Noted - with the ejector pylon set to 6 instead of 2 I am able to launch from sustained flight. Previously some of the more stable lift settings for the drone were causing it to ride up into the mothership once released, thus influencing the 'negative G maneuver' to throw off the drone.

If you take a look at my youtube video, notice I deploy the drone while the plane is pitching down after vertical takeoff. I throttle back for a moment while pitching down to let the drone fly. The fins touching the nacelles have no bearing on the performance really. Plane just exists to launch drone and follow it. Second youtube video is up! This one is the 48km flight http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hek09pRCwY4&feature=youtu.be It does go into the stratosphere by itself and comes back down... eventually, 40km away Ballistic missile! Need fast plane to follow it all the way up. If you want slow drone - I\'m working on the thing right now. Not easy to re-balance thrust/lift/drag against gravity all over again. On other carrier planes the separation is now no problem because I set the ejector value to 3x than your original. Stress free deployments now.

OK new ejector rack working splendidly, no fear of drone flying up into plane now. Also made a duplicate set of drone parts for low altitude version. I actually had a 40km range < 1500m setting earlier but did not save a copy of it. Time to reverse engineer. As for editing craft file ... lol, I realised single engine plane could not chase the drone, once I tweaked airfoil values for more efficient flight. I allowed myself to think not drone but cruise missile afterwards LOL

Jelly - nope, you are allowed to use your own craft I think. New wing angle technically, does make a new aircraft p.s. Video of my 41km aeroballistic profile. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hek09pRCwY4 Video of 48km one coming up in half an hour.

I will PM you shortly a link to the high-altitude configuration. Feel free to test it out. Just be warned with this \'competition\' airfoil setting the only safe time to launch the drone is when pitching down right after takeoff. Try an angle of 20 degrees first, then 30, and lastly 40 degrees. Anything above does not work as drone currently has unlimited fuel and will go straight to orbit. Notice how I balance the fin lift, wing lift, and manually offset the thrust vector of the engine to give something like a \'self compensating\' flight model that automatically climbs, levels, then dives into the ground just for this competition. If you can adopt anything from the competition settings I\'m sending, feel free to include them in your next update. Same goes for the upcoming low altitude flight profile - I\'m more or less making them to make your drone somewhat realistically functional You did the hard work modelling and texturing the Predator drone after all

Give the others some time, I\'m sure they\'ll respond

LOL everything? okay you said it lol. Gonna take my time tho - I want to release quality tested product, not duct-taped mission plan. For record keeping purposes - I do play fair with the competition statistics for today\'s flights. Repeated my earlier 40+ km launch to prove it was repeatable, this time almost hitting 48km. Was a smooth flight. This flight used your engine parameters, but I changed all airfoil drag and lift values as directed in original post earlier today. No other modification. Pictures below:

Thanks for your reply Tosh, I was using your engine parameter all day and I figured out if you wanted me to use a rocket motor, I decided high altitude aero-ballistic trajectory like some early Russian antiship missiles was the way to go. I managed to get reliable hits to 40-50km, 30km is easy (just aim using the angle) and 100km with the rocket is totally impossible because you and the drone will be literally, in hot pursuit at the edge of space! I managed to get 70km twice after lofting to an altitude of over 13km, achieved 116km ONCE but the drone was too fast and the chase jet could not handle the thin air, and condluded super high altitude drone airfoil configs are very unreliable. Sometimes the drone will make a 90 degree turn as it breaks Mach 1, other times despite accurately specifying launch speed and angle, the drone just refuses to adopt the stratospheric climb profile. That 116km was possibly a fluke, I may have hit the drone momentarily with my jet wash during launch. I was happy with 40km because it was repeatable and the trajectory is just awesome. Uploading a video now which should be up in an hour! I will also post my high altitude research craft (Dassault Mirage IV replica) and all my configurations for the recon drone, labelled by range, launch angle and reliability. With your blessing I will now create a low altitude drone but be warned, I will probably make the low and slow drone to have limited fuel. Constant thrust actually allows my low altitude configuration to eventually reach orbit on its very own! Whereas limited fuel will allow me to get future drone operators to select the desired atltitude and the drone simply adopts whatever height the launch aircraft was at and what angle was it flying. Limited fuel is pretty much compulsory for this second application otherwise my airfoils are so stable, it will not ever crash P.s. - also realised on the drone hardpoint - ejector force needs to be higher. Otherwise drone may be hard to separate from mothership. Quite interesting when shit happens and you get a midair collision lol.

Update - I\'m up to 40km range. Drone does not exceed low altitude flight. I set the trim on the drone\'s airfoils for it to act as a cruise missile, so all you have to do is launch it straight and level and the aerodynamics does the rest. Unlike other games I can\'t McGyver up a \'natural autopilot\' for a self correcting , self-levelling unguided vehicle because KSP\'s current flight model does not take into consideration speed vs lift, ground effects, etc. So my drone can actually fly pretty much forever in theory. Problem is the rocket on the drone has way too much thrust and so it can fly to orbit by itself! Not good. Limited fuel would definitely be required. I\'m not posting any pictures/video yet because I\'m aiming for 100km. Now the airfoil settings are so accurate I am dealing with 4 decimal places and soon to be more.

Test report 1: Firstly, I re-done the lift and drag values as suggested for the \'engineering\' part of the challenge. Instead of the drone being a ballistic missile I want it to fly straight and level at subsonic speed like an actual drone. A ballistic 'missile' flight path is not very usefull for loitering to monitor an area (and unrealistic for this drone design), it must hold a straight and level attitude automatically at a very low speed just like the real life one. Second, the solid fuel rocket is way too powerful. With the right airfoil settings for \'straight and level\' I could reach orbit. So now as I am unable to edit the rocket thrust and fuel use, I am re-doing the drag factor of the drone to create a more realistic \'boost up and glide level\' flight plan.

This drone makes a perfect force multiplier for my EB-116 'Megafortress' type bomber. Imagine lasing targets with the drone then railgunning them from standoff range. Terrorists won\'t know what hit them! Challenge accepted :3

The Tu-16 replica series is complete. From this: Becomes this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_IEWN-s-is The \'realistic\' configuration of the Tu16 barely flies in KSP, so gradual improvements were made to the engines, fuel tanks and planform. The 'Sturmovik' configuration, although loaded down with ordnance and enough fuel to cross a continent, flies like a dream.

'... why don\'t you just sit back and enjoy the ride; Ol\' Harv was working on that newfangled \'autopilot\' of his the whole night, it\'s set to take you to a stable 100 kilometer orbit, just as the forum guy insisted!' You could only grunt in reply, mashed down against your rattling seat, eyes affixed like glue to the G-force meter as it exceeded 6, 7.... Outside, the almost comical sapphire blue sky had given way to a blanket of darkness. '... have no idea if you\'re familiar with the new 'NASA' rations but there\'s some freeze dried neapolitan ice cream....' You wonder what made Jeb so cheerful today, perhaps, that autopilot of Harv\'s left him with naught to do but transmit nonsense as always. '... what\'s that? Smoke trail from oxidizer tank No. 2...' You struggle to hear what was that which caused cheerful Jeb to squeak like a mouse, and then the soft lighting of the instrument panels give way to an angry crimson hue as entire master caution panels blushed with news of impending faliure. The all too familiar sense of helpless dread shivers up your spine as a jarring vibration shakes the capsule, then the acceleration abruptly stops. In a few moments, the massive rocket had halted its triumphant ascent into the heavens, and was now plummeting rapidly towards the ocean. Your breakfast cruelly churned by the onset of positive, negative and all sorts of Gs, all you could do was mash down the XMIT button to recite these familar words well known in the Space Cadet program, 'KERBAL, WE HAVE A PROBLEM!'