fulgur

The competition is now closed. I have launched. Panels will be made tomorrow. Watch this space.

This system looks amazing! It seems like a perfect place to get Space Madness. And 'Minisculus' made me Laugh And Look Silly In A Public Place. I'd try Beyond Home if I hadn't started a Mission Report.

Dun... dun.... dunnnnnnnn! An amazing chapter, as per usual.

I repped too many people and now I have no rep to give you.

I think it very cool. It's a shame I have no more rep today.

I would like some Quality of Life mods to be included. TWP, KAC and (navball) Docking Port Alignment Indicator.

Here is an explanation of the Lyra II. Not much, it's just a standard nuclear lander. Albeit with an interesting design. I am debating with myself whether to Get Mods (SSPXr and Kerbal Atomics to be precise) or to stay stock. On balance, I think all of Starwind's ships will stay stock.

Banned for obscure Discworld references.

This is probably a stupid question, but did you biome-hop at Ike? Also, if you get a visual mod like SciFiVE (which barely slows down my computer) then the sky is not always butterscotch. Link. I used to use SciFiVE, it gives really cool screenshots. Currently I use SVE as it's more realistic.

This guide is based around the propeller parts - specifically, variable pitch propellers. In @Brikoleur's guide to helicopters, he recommended using servos to change the pitch of the rotors, therefore changing the lift and allowing the helicopter to change vertical speed. The new propellers have built in servos. However I have found them a little hard to understand, so I created this guide. Here is the craft we will be using: The Lux aircraft is not a very good plane, but it is simple. It has 2 counter-rotating propellers. You can make planes with 1 propeller, but the torque from the propeller will cause the aircraft to roll, which makes it hard to control and also sometimes causes the wings to hit the ground and explode. Either you can use two rotors as I have done, which allows this plane to get up to 200m/s, or you can use a freewheeling servo as described in Brikoleur's guide. My craft has been set up so that [ I ] and [ K ] change the authority limiter of the propellers, changing their pitch. Now let's look at the craft pre-launch. Here you can see the propeller blades. The blade is deployed, but the Authority Limiter is at 0. This means that the blade will be at the limiter I set. At the moment, it is 0 - the propeller is perpendicular to how it will rotate. It will therefore cause no lift, but lots of drag. The throttle is also at 0. As I used Axis Groups to tie the turboshaft engines to the throttle, the propellers are not rotating. You can see that as the propellers rotate, they are producing only drag. This is because they are perpendicular to rotation. However, when I press [K]... While the propellers are not yet in the optimum position, they have rotated a lot. They are producing little drag, and the yellow and purple lines (representing lift) are long. (You cannot see the yellow lines from the rear propellers as they are inside the body). This lift moves the plane forwards. The plane is accelerating slowly as the propellers are not in the optimum position, however it can get up to 100m/s in around ten seconds as this particular plane is very light for the number of engines. I have now rotated the propellors into (currently) optimum position. There is little drag and a lot of lift. You can see here that the lift has decreased. This always happens - I think it is because we are reaching the limit of the props deployed as they are. You can also see that the red drag lines have increased in length as I rotate the blades. There is a balance to be struck between lift and drag, which determines the speed of the aircraft. Often (but not always) decreasing the Authority Limiter will increase speed and drag. There are a few different (and annoying) things which can happen with your aircraft when flying. Firstly, the propellers can rotate past 90 degrees, and cause increased drag (like at authority 0) or even for the plane to start flying backwards. Secondly, the lift from different rotors can cancel each other out if you set the axis groups wrong. Finally, it is very difficult to set the propellers exactly and this can mean that your plane has some unwanted behaviour. However, there are advantages to propeller planes. Without a specialised engine like the Wheesley, you can reverse thrust and land quickly. As well as this, the engines are very efficient, and even the electric motors do not draw much power. Finally, they are the fastest (if not the cheapest) option for exploring Eve, Duna and any other modded planets (such as Tekto in OPM) with a non-oxygen atmosphere. I hope this guide is useful and allows some more people to build their own propeller aircraft. Please do not copy the above aircraft, as it is not very stable and a pain to land. Copy this much better aircraft instead! Link to KerbalX.

Thanks @demon_313, I like your idea of a ground based comms tower. It will fit into my idea of a long term Eki Base well. The competition (well, it isn't really a competition - everyone who has entered so far has Won) has one more place. If someone (@Kerballing (Got Dunked On) I'm looking at you) doesn't submit anything by tomorrow, well I'm launching the Hastae Multi II tomorrow and so I will make my own payload.

Okay, I thought hasta was 2nd declension neuter (nom. pl.) but it's 1st declension feminine (nom. sg.). So it's the Hastae Multi II. More importantly, do you have any ideas for the payload?

I do not think EVA struts exist any more. :-( I will be away from my computer this weekend, so no more panels.

You can just tell me about it. Be warned, I may not be able to make it the same as you have, as I am in Moderate mode and have fewer parts unlocked than you. In other news, I have made the @Geschosskopf Base and have tested landing it on Eki. I had to move the engines further out, but it works. The only problem was that the base wobbled around a lot, as it was designed for lighter payloads. Nothing autostrut can't fix though!

Well, currently my plan is thus: Launch the Hasta Multi II ASAP and send it on its way to Eki, arriving before the KSS Whimsy. Launch the KSS Whimsy and the attached craft. Val et al. arrive at Weather Station with a load of Minmus science. Bill will stay behind as our most experienced engineer, to oversee the construction of a Munbase (with ISRU I am anticipating developing from Minmus and solar science). The crew will be 2 pilots, 2 scientists and 1 engineer. The KSS Whimsy leaves for Eki. I currently need to think about the craft yet to be designed. I made a small K&K base which I think the Volito can carry down to the surface of Eki (0.07g, remember). I think I will mount that to the side of the Hasta Multi II and the Ambulo II to the other side, balancing thrust with KER, and drag a fuel pod copied from Weather Station behind it. Speaking of the KSS Whimsy, here is a page about it!

Aside from my career mode (which I am not reporting here as I have a mission report), I messed around with the props and got this little craft to 200m/s. Actually, the one which went that fast had 6 blades per prop. I now feel I understand how to fly propellor planes well. It involves a lot of fiddling with deployment with CAPSLOCK on and having the [F12] view on all the time.

I have no ISRU or drills. But I can turn Fertiliser + Mulch into Supplies. Transfer Window Planner says 320 days. USI-LS says I have supplies for 62 days, plus fertiliser makes 4 years 250 days. It's more weight-efficient to have lots of fertiliser on a ship.

Well, I don't have ISRU but for some reason I do have K&K algae farms. I will include that but I warn you it will be small, it has to be attached to the Hasta Multi II and then the Volito I. Well actually I am taking 2 ships: one with the crewed landers attached and another with the probes attached.

1. Wow, I am honoured to have you as my 3rd reader! 2. Thank you for the list of surface features. I asked Kerik_Balm, the authour of the MIP mod, whether he could add surface features, and he said he was working on it. 3. Obviously, I stole the presentation from Kuzzter. But then I felt guilty, so I added the different ship's logs. 4. I think that the servos are the most useful in early career, as they allow you to change engine orientation. I thought up the piston when I was testing it and getting bored of balancing KER thrust angles by engine thrust, and thought it might be useful to balance the payload. EDIT: I have made a page about the Hastam Multus II (Many Spears 2) mothership, so-called because it carries several Hastam II comms probes. EDIT EDIT: Oops. It should be the Hasta Multi II, which actually means Many Spears 2. I'm not very good at writing in Latin. Now to go and fly prop powered planes while I wait for my 3 (hooray!) readers to come up with payloads.

Are you going to continue the strange animism of the famous OPMTC? Or will this be something new? (Or can you not tell us yet?) By which do you mean kerbals, or Pony People? Or something even stranger?

Here is a page of comic explaining the Volito I. To anyone who does not want to read the text above: I challenge you to design me a payload which this dropship can carry to the surface of Eki, an 0.07g vacuum world at Kerbin's L4 lagrange point. (For reference, Minmus is 0.05g).

1. Eki is a planet from MIP (link provided above) which is at the L4 lagrange point of Kerbin (which I stated above). In consequence, it is an early career destination, and TWP says it takes 1000m/s ΔV to get to Eki and another 500m/s ΔV to circularise. It isn't a stupid question, Eki is neither stock nor in one of the more popular planet packs. 2. ΔV readings are provided by the ΔV indicator which is included in KSP 1.6 and above (I think). I use Kerbal Engineer Redux because I prefer it, however it is a stock feature. They are white on blue and they are in the staging icons, above the icons for what will be staged but below the stage number. The overall dV of a craft is in orange at the bottom of the staging thing 3. As far as I understand it, if you burn 1m/s ΔV, your speed will change by 1m/s. So when you burn 800m/s ΔV in the right place, you accelerate enough to make your orbit cross the Mun. Then you burn 200m/s ΔV retrograde, and decelerate into Munar orbit. 4. Oops, I forgot that some people don't have the DLC. The Volito I uses BG and ReStock+ according to KerbalX. (It's on KerbalX now). 5. I am not asking for a rover, as I already have the Ambulo II. I want some ideas so I can justify sending a dropship with fancy robotic features and not a boring skycrane. Otherwise, I will send down some Supplies and a solar array, dump it on the ground, attach it to the dropship by KAS and let the Volito stay on the surface without worrying that they will starve. But that's boring, right? 6. Ok, so what I want is something novel and interesting which is under 1.5 tonnes and will fit on the Volito. For reference, the Ambulo II is 1.1t and is 1.3m tall, 2.1m long and 2.3m wide (including wheels). I don't mind what orientation the port needs to be in, it is on a hinge for a reason.

7/10 Robot detected.

Today, I have finished the Volito dropship. It awaits fiddling and dV-adding, though. The main points are: 1.8km/s with no payload. The engines can rotate 180 degrees. The payload is mounted on a hinge, for ease of docking. That Oscar-B tank the hinge is mounted on is mounted on a piston, to balance the payload. Therefore, I ask my readers (all 2 of them - @demon_313 and @Kerballing (Got Dunked On)) to submit some designs which I will launch to Eki and land using the Volito. Because I would like to see what you would take to a shiny rock 1500m/s away. The design must fit on the Volito, I am uploading it to KerbalX this afternoon.

THE GRATUITOUS EXPLOSIONS ARE BACK! And now I am arresting you for Making Me Laugh And Look Silly In A Public Place.