Gnullbegg

Hahah, well you can list it as just 'GAD M-21a' if you want but yeah I quite like the nickname! It's reminiscent of some of the NATO reporting names for 4th Gen Soviet fighters, which I took some inspiration from. It's also synonymous with Nightjar (the dev version's name) according to wikipedia. I will neither deny nor confirm any intentions of hilarious slightly self-depreciating innuendo of any kind.

I edited the craft file. I usually keep the hell away from those, but with this challenge I initially thought I'd need every little bit of thrust I could get. Yet I didn't want to 'cheat' by going 50.5 thrust. Turns out each engine's "ThrustPercentage" is pretty easy to find in the file. So, I took your suggestions and went from there. I really like how the intakes turned out! I kept the original tailsection for the 'final version' (yeah, right) of the plane. Managed to bring drag area down to .5 eventually with a tail like you suggested, a little more wing sweep and a different nose. But that design needs so much more work that I will branch it out into another X plane for now. Anyway, time to collect some points: That's a nice 44 points! I actually think I could even score a little higher with better piloting but who cares? I passed the challenge with my very first FAR plane, that's what counts for me. Many thanks again FourGreenFields for showing me how to optimize Area rule! EDIT: Right, forgot to add that I'd really like some honest opinions on how good (or bad^^) this thing flies now. Since my first post, I've tweaked the elevon settings and part strengths a bit and the plane doesn't break apart nearly as much anymore. It has lost some of it's maneuverability, but too not much I think. Try it out if you like! craftfile https://www.dropbox.com/s/h3xvx088invrh1o/GAD%20M21a%20Goatsucker%20%28%2BDroptank%29.craft?dl=0

Hey thanks for answering! Yeah I think I already have the "standard" config as in: roll control at the wingtips, pitch with control surfaces near the center of the craft + it's elevators and set the rudder as yaw-only. The problems mainly occur at pretty low and very high speeds. I guess it's kind of to be expected? It's just that when I combine a yaw and roll input that it goes into a spin very quickly. I have no idea if it's just supposed to be like that to the extend I am experiencing or if my control surface settings can be optimized still. Same with the minor pitch stalling and the oscillation of the nose, especially with SAS on. I watched this: video about the derivatives, it seemed to make some sense and I understood *some* of the terms, hah. I tried the same calculations at key speeds and heights as the youtuber did and saw mostly green, he also mentioned that a certain amount of red is to be expected. The vid was linked from somewhere in this post I believe. It's also fairly new, so I just assumed it is still accurate? Funny you mention that, with a few configs I had the situation occur that my wave drag was actually *lower* with the gear DOWN!? I totally didn't get that. How is that even possible? And thanks a lot for taking a look at my craft! EDIT1: Thanks for your hint with the intakes! My original design had a pair of structural intakes attached to the side of each radial intake, above and below the wings. It was just for looks, to hide the little bump the small deltawings make at the junction with the main wings. the first thing I'd do before take-off was to disable those 4 intakes to reduce drag. And the first thing I did after installing FAR was to take them off because I thought they were nothing but dead weight. I will re-add them and see if that actually miraculously solves the problem!

Allright, so when I stumbled upon this challenge a few days ago, it really made me want to try out FAR for the first time ever, and I've been having a great time! Thank you so much! What this also means is that I'm a total newb with this mod. To be perfectly honest I kind of still am one with KSP aircraft building in general, so pls be gentle. I had been tinkering around with a new jet in stock which looked promising, in fact I should say it was my new favourite original plane design and for something I made, it's been flying quite well with the new stock model. 5 seconds after maiden take-off in FAR, however, guess what happened (exactly, it exploded). A good laugh, some flights with way better planes from other people and about a dozen (ok more, many more) revisions later, I *think* I met all the criteria, except maybe one (TWR, see pics). Here goes: I won't bother counting score at this point as I'm not even sure if I did things right with this challenge. And there are of course many many problems with this design and I'll gladly appreciate any help from people with actual experience with FAR or aerodynamics in general to improve on it. Some of the more pressing ones are, roughly in order of importance: Transsonic design. Wave drag area is 1.07, which I have managed to bring down from 1.38 by doing the ape-on-a-typewriter dance with the offset tool but I will *not* pretend that I had *any* idea what I was doing. I just watched that one vid from earlier in this thread and then fiddled around trying to make the number go down. I *think* the undercarriage has the most potential for optimization, but I honestly have no idea how to get it below 1, let alone into the regions some of you have achieved (which I'm totally aware won't be possible with this design) Rudder settings, or actually control surface settings in general. Yaw is the biggest one though. I've already set it down to 5, but I still get the feeling that it might be too sensitive as the plane is hugely sensitive to combined yaw-roll maneuvers of any kind and will very quickly go into a spin. Pitching up also leads to minor stalling quite often, but that may be normal? I don't know General stability issues above mach 2. The thing likes to deviate to all kinds of sides and generally wobbles around quite a bit. Might be connected to my first problem, might even be somewhat inevitable with how the wings are shaped and placed? Structural integrity. The nose likes to come off first. After that it's the main wings. The tailsection is apparently made of hardened unobtainium and almost never breaks. I know I could up the strength of the parts but that would then again ruin the TWR and probably the COM as well. Maybe there are some magic tricks that I'm not aware of? This is probably least important because I get that everything breaks at some point. It would be nice if the plane could withstand a little more though. Here's the .craft-files: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ljj0ndw71c96axg/GAD%20X21-3%20Nightjar%20%28transsonicpls%29.craft?dl=0 This is the most current version, the one I did try the challenge with https://www.dropbox.com/s/o7ewojfy3skl7vx/GAD%20X21-2%20%20Nightjar.craft?dl=0 This is the plane as it was before my 'optimization' attempts, trying to 'area rule' this thing, lol and just for giggles, this is the latest original stock aero version; also still WIP: https://www.dropbox.com/s/og1cbmtejmxyvz8/GAD%20X21-1%20Nightjar%20%28stock%21%29.craft?dl=0 Thanks everyone!

I'm guessing you're using only 1 engine, a relatively low amount of fuel and loads of intakes? I just did a few quick tests of my current bi-coupler design switching the turbos with rapiers and it starts to either disintegrate at 16-18km or have flame-outs around 25-26km. This may be my flying ofc. Though I am probably carrying way too much fuel anyway. Current mass is ~22 tons.

Hi! Sorry if this has been asked before but I did a search and couldn't find anything recent enough. With the new aerodynamics I am back trying to build an efficient long-range turbojet plane. I know fuel consumption varies with throttle (duh), altitude, speed and intake air. Generally you want turbojets to fly at higher altitudes than basic jets. This much hasn't changed with the new model I believe. But I found this this old thread on the forums and if you look at the set of graphs the user tavert posted on page 2, I was wondering if these are still reasonably accurate? Also any other/new bit of information on this would be appreciated!

So something rather interesting happened to me yesterday... This was of course totally intentional. Luckily the probe is still 100% intact so I should be able to take off, right? Well, kind of. So at this point I notice my apoaps marker does all kinds of strange things, like jiggling wildly across space somewhere far off the mun (no screenshot though, unfortunately). I decide I'll try switching to the space center to maybe reset things. Ok.