dangerhamster

A few of the Ukrainian Flanker display at RIAT. Even scored a very nice mug and some stickers off the crew. Top chaps.

The scanner and lander arrived at Eve. After a spot of semi frantic craft switching they achieved their working orbits. Control were forced to wait a while to get some information more useful than "it's purple" to pick a likely target area. The detection of an anomaly settled the question and the Deli class lander was plunged into the fiery maelstrom. The lack of detailed information about Eve had prevented any simulations being carried out before the lander was despatched so there followed a period of attempting to direct the lander with crossed fingers. The majority of the Deli arrived losing only the minor items one of the engines, the atmospheric sampler and one of the landing legs. Notes were taken. It also managed to land a mere 75km from the anomaly, unprecedented accuracy for this program... The loss of one of the legs did not hinder deployment of the Giggity Rover, one of the things that had actually been planned for (for once) and it was soon majestically trundling towards it's objective. Which turned out to be a boring strange and mysterious monolith. Back at home the Duna Investigator Probe package was launched tasked with orbiting Duna and returning. No doubt the crew of the Duna Globetrotter will wave as it hurtles past them as they plod their lonely way around Big Red. And will no doubt shake their fists at it when they realise there still isn't any actual support coming their way. Plans are in hand to provide them with a return option. Honest.

It's a photo of me. Honest.

It would only be able to turn left.

The Duna Globetrotter made the 250km jaunt to the first anomaly. Crossing 3 new biomes on the way allowed Jeb to practice his backflip demount technique. After an uneventful trip the crew finally reached the anomaly. Which lead to arguments about their future route being replaced with who it looked most like. Jeb claiming it reminded him most of his uncle Osric... With the resemblage question sorted by Jeb playing the badass card they returned to the route question. Noting that their travels so far had only covered 0.3% of the surface the crew wanted to pick a route that covered all the known anomalies and all the biomes for the least distance travelled. It was decided to head Southeastish for the next anomaly, tick off a couple of biomes and re-evaluate. Informing Mission Control of this they received the encouraging response "don't worry, there no time limit on you". Little did they know this was because no-one had even started designing their return method yet.

Blimey, an Ekranoplan exceeding deign parameters.

The Deliverance 2 with Jeb and 2 nobodies aboard finally reached Duna. Not having to swerve to avoid Ike caused a brain fade episode so it wasn't until orbit had been achieved that the idea of doing a lap of Ike occurred. Luckily the "slightly" overspec DV available allowed a quick excursion and some bonus experience for the crew. A touch and go was briefly contemplated but wussiness won the day. Landing was uneventful and even hit the target area. However just before deploying the Globetrotter a slight fly in the ointment occurred. Jeb found himself unable to transfer into the rover or EVA. "No problem" piped the nobody engineer, "I'll just park the rover and lop off that silly parachute..... And this was the point where everybody realised the toolbox fitted to all Globetrotters had somehow been removed. So no screwdriver. Ooops. After some soul searching and with a limited snack supply in the capsule mission control cast aside their scruples and lobbed a supply probe into Duna orbit using the forbidden magik of alt+F12. But they did make it more expensive than needed to try and appease everybody's conscience. The nobodies managed to trundle out to the loot crate and pick up the holy screwdriver and once back at the Deliverance it was a simple matter to remove the offending chute and free the Jebmeister. With the problems behind them and safely landed on an alien world with no support and no way to return the crew settled down to systems checks and a little light mining to satisfy a contract. There may or may not have been questions asked to control as to the parentage of whoever certified the Globetrotter as mission ready. Ok, there definitely were. Lessons were learned, blame apportioned let us never speak of it again.

Would changing the craft name in the save work?

Stop that you lot. It's my birthday. it's also the Royal Air Force's 100th.

We were listening in on the Duxford tower whilst a police helicopter was transiting the ATZ. Tower called the helo to warn him of two Me109's overtaking him on his starboard side. Cue much "wish I'd brought my camera" and "are they yellow nosed b******ds".

Guilty as charged M'Lud. The rover will fit in a standard Mk3 as standard but this version has a wider track wheels. The two base modules on the right fit in a standard bay whilst the exploration rover on the left needs the "enhanced" bay. The rovers have been landed with standard bays and rejigged in the field but this version is meant for uncrewed deployment so needed wide track from the get go.

If you keep the contact tab up on the right side open you can check that all the contract requirements are being ticked off.

SMART : Stuff Making A Rocket Takeoff.

A few Warbirds.

It's the JX2 Antenna.