White Owl

Personally, I like trying to get it below 30 m/s for landing. The slower, the better. The plane will set down okay at higher speeds, but the faster you go the higher the chance of something breaking. Yeah, how much tailfin you want is kind of a personal taste deal. I hate seeing the tail slip and skid around whenever I start a turn, and since flying with the keyboard instead of my usual joystick and rudder pedals means fine rudder control isn\'t possible, I added more vertical stabilizer until the tail naturally follows the nose without any rudder input at all. Edit: ah, rebelcommando posted while I was typing. I\'m really hoping some other airplane guys around here will chime in with advice about people\'s various designs. I\'m far from the most experienced and/or knowledgeable spaceplane designer in these parts. I\'m just the guy who knows how to make videos and ain\'t microphone shy! Yeah, I like the idea of featuring other people\'s planes... BUT I already have four unfinished video series in progress. It would be a mistake to add a fifth. At least until some of the others reach natural conclusions.

I had one plane that broke apart on landing for no readily apparent reason. Drove me crazy for a while. Then I accidentally fixed it by slightly adjusting the distance between the landing gear. I figure KSP\'s physics engine was modelling some kind of resonance effect, and moving the landing gear a little bit de-tuned the vehicle. Give that a shot, maybe.

So I think the challenge is to fly a parabolic arc so that the kerbal crew would be in a sustained state of weightlessness throughout the maneuver? Is that the challenge? If so... this isn\'t difficult at all to verify. There\'s a G-meter right next to the navball. Record a video of the maneuver. I bet this will be difficult to fly.

Aw, shucks.

I have a design that I think will do this. Now I just need to budget the time. Maybe this weekend I\'ll load all the LOTR movies into the DVD player and sit down for a marathon flight.

Ha! I bet you attached the nose wheel to the ASAS, right? If so, I made the same mistake and C7 straightened me out. Most parts outside this particular mod pack aren\'t strong enough to attach landing gear.

Ah, right, balancing center of lift with the center of gravity. If it\'s nose heavy, the lift is too far back or the weight is too far forward. It either needs more lift up front, or less weight up front, or more weight in back. Adding canards up front is a simple solution.

I actually expect it won\'t take anywhere near as long as people think... My very first airplane in this game made it halfway across Kerfrica - with the throttle barely cracked open, so moving slow - in something like twenty minutes. Think I might try this one. Edit: would it really hurt anything to allow time compression, though? At the altitude you\'ve specified, you can\'t go past x2 anyway.

I know exactly what you mean. Not even the IE tab for Firefox seems to work anymore.

Get C7\'s Flight Pack here: link Hello there. C7 studios asked me if I\'d consider producing a series of tutorial videos, to teach people how to use the parts in his Flight Pack. I immediately agreed, because I\'m a big fan of his work, and because spaceplanes are the feature of KSP I\'m most excited about. Here\'s a link to the first video in the series, building the first airplane: Here\'s part two, flying and landing the plane: Part three, using the mk2 fuselage: Part four, flying the mk2 hull: Part five, vertical takeoff and landing: Part six, building the orbiter and mothership: And finally, part seven, flying the orbiter and mothership: My goal in producing these is to give some guidance to people who might be having trouble getting started with spaceplanes in this game. Maybe you\'ve built a couple planes already, but they wouldn\'t fly. Maybe you just picked up the Flight Pack and aren\'t sure quite what to do next. This series is for you. I assume the viewer has a working knowledge of building and flying rockets in KSP, but no experience with aircraft. Questions? Problems? Comments? Leaving comments on the videos might work... but I really think asking your questions here on this thread would be better. Ask away, and I or some other more experienced virtual pilot will try to help you out. Spaceplanes are so much fun, everybody needs at least one in the hangar. I\'ll include .craft files for the planes in the videos for reference. But I believe you\'ll learn better by putting them together yourself first. Thank you for reading and watching.

That\'s a cool looking turbojet you have there. I like! Just needs air inlets somewhere.

Okay... that\'s funny, right there.

I\'m frankly surprised that the over 30 crowd appears to be a minority around here. This is the opposite of what you usually see on sim-type gaming forums.

that\'S A cooL lookinG shuttlE yoU havE therE... buT wE alreadY havE A designateD spaceplanE threaD herE: C7 Spaceplane Exchange

What is this 'too much rocket' you speak of?

Thumbs up for Juniper. That\'s a better name than Juturn was. Is Rutherford any relation to Rupert?

Is that a strip of duct tape!?

I want to learn how to create new parts, specifically to add more stuff to this pack. This is great.

With a name like that, I hope you\'re still here and active when the game hits BETA.

I want to check out that restaurant now.

I remember hearing about this plan years and years ago, using the space shuttle\'s fuel tank as a space station module. Didn\'t they conclude that converting the tank in orbit would be more difficult than just building the module on the ground and launching it with a conventional rocket?

You might take a look at MSI Afterburner beta. It records video. It\'s free, easy to setup, uses less system resources than Fraps, and most importantly of all, is free. I love it.

I\'m assuming all combatants are at the physical prime of their youth, and not old men? I think we can immediately eliminate everybody but Abe and both Alexanders. Yeah, Shaq is big too, but he ain\'t no killer.

For anybody having trouble getting started with aircraft, here is OXCART-1. This plane is small and extremely simple. It\'s very stable and easy to control, even without a joystick. I\'ve successfully landed it at less than 30 m/s using the keyboard. (Although you really should get a joystick. Even a cheapo basic stick is usually less than $20 at Best Buy.) OXCART-1 will not stall at any airspeed, as long as the wings are level with horizon. It has a range of approximately 110 km at 1/3 throttle. It responds beautifully to controls below 5000 m, but gets very squirelly above that altitude. I think this design might be a pretty good basic trainer for beginning atmospheric pilots. See it in action here:

Yeeha! Here I go to give you some money right now! 8) Edit: It wants me to log in to an account. My forum login doesn\'t work. How do I get an account? Edit again: Ah, now I see instructions for those of us without accounts. Aaaand... it works! Nice job.