VincentLaw

High Speed Long Range Heavy Rescue Hydrofoil has successfully completed its mission. One of the crew fell overboard during a tight turn though. I couldn't get them to stand up and grab the safety rails. It is fully stock. You have to enter the water under 10 m/s or the floats will fall off. Don't press stage 0. It's basically a self destruct button and not intended for use. Also, parts start falling off at around 90 m/s.

I think now is a good time to turn this into a thread about magic turbines. Max altitude: 261334 m Fully stock, and craft file included. Just trim roll controls left as far as they can go, spool up the jet engine, and release clamps.

Well I have tried just about every conceivable hub redesign for the rotors and all of them result in spontaneous explosions after some period of cruising. The thing that is strange about the weakening idea, which makes the most sense given the time period, is that then I would expect the same thing to occur while hovering. Perhaps this is related to the Kraken, which has generally less noticeable effects at low speeds. I have given up trying to solve the problem for now, but it will be interesting to see if it persists after the next patch when Krakensbane is implemented.

It's a little heavy starting out, but full throttle should be enough. It is for me anyway. If that isn't good enough, you could try releasing the external drop tanks (stage 3). I'll check to make sure that is the correct version though. Also, I am interested to know if it explodes after 3 minutes of flight for anyone else. I am still working on a solution for that. Edit: I just checked and that is the correct version. It does lift off the ground after about 6 seconds of full throttle starting out fully loaded. Just consider the drop tanks optional. If it still won't lift off the ground for you let me know. Edit: As far as I can tell, the explosion problem is just associated with cruising in forward flight. I just tried hovering for 5 minutes and never exploded. There is probably some maximum speed you can fly forward without having to worry, but hopefully there is a way to raise that speed limit. The strange thing is that you can go fast for short periods of time. I just reached about 72 m/s in a dive before the forward motion caused the blades to intersect and destroy each other (which is not what is happening with the cruising explosion).

I have now achieved stable controlled flight. Basically I had to change the pod orientation so that the controls were on the same axis as the rotor. As discussed previously, the controls buttons are switched, so you pitch up with yaw left, and down with yaw right; roll left with pitch down, and right with pitch up. Remapping the keys is highly recommended. Unlike with the flying tops though, you can't trim the roll controls to increase thrust because the contra-rotating blades cancel each other out. So the only way to climb or descend is by altering the throttle instead. There is no effective yaw control, but the aerodynamics of the design cause the tail to try to point opposite the direction of motion, which is sufficient to steer anywhere you want to go. There is a quirk, at least on my computer, where this helicopter spontaneously explodes after about 3 minutes of cruising, so I will probably do a complete rebuild if I can't eliminate that. (still stock) Also, in my testing, RCS was not nearly strong enough to control a helicopter.

Here is a smaller more stable version of my coaxial helicopter. I have not come up with a way to steer it, so it just hovers up and down (or crashes if you don't deploy the stabilization parachutes). I did calibrate it so that the fuselage does not rotate as much. As RedDwarfIV guessed, I did most of my building in the VAB. Also, if anyone is curious, I use decouplers in some places like the engine mounts because they are magic glue. Without them, the engines would fly off at regular RPM.

To Appease RedDwarfIV, I have made a completely stock real helicopter with coaxial rotors that spin in opposite directions and independently of the fuselage. It took a lot of trial and error but is far from optimized. Also no canard or control surface "cheats" are used. Pictures and included craft file below:

I noticed no one had done a 3 man helicopter yet, so I decided to do one. It also turns out that parachutes work very well as an auto stabilization system to keep the helicopter from tipping over in flight. I have included the craft file for anyone that is interested. It has far more fuel than you could ever possibly want. (also no control surfaces)

So I noticed something fishy going on in the fuel consumption between some slightly different designs, and I am pretty sure that I discovered a magic fuel line bug that allows this ship to get to 1653969 m even at 100% throttle. I have again included the ship file for anyone that wants it. Edit: and if you move all of the engines other than the large liquid rocket out of the main stage, it is capable of kerbin escape, and possibly kerbol escape... Edit: updated the attached file to reflect this and added a missing part.

The rules don't actually say anything about landing on Kerbin alive. Although that is certainly possible to do without technically boarding anything. I will be making an entry in this later today or tomorrow.

Here is my honest attempt. I didn't use any staging because I think where to draw the line on that is too subjective. I made sure every part stayed attached. Also, I managed to escape Kerbin with this ship in one piece by exploiting the fuel bug. So for the screenshot below, I used 100% full throttle the entire way to avoid that. I have also included a copy of the ship for anyone that wants it. Max Altitude: 32916 m

Have a look at the A-10, which has similar gear pods on the wings as those in KSP. All of the landing gear on this airplane retracts the wheels towards the front.

By that logic they would have to provide us with stock parts for landing on Jool too then. Some people have actually announced plans to mod parts for landing on the surface of Kerbol which I doubt will ever be stockable. I would expect to be able to land on the dark side of Moho, but only if the devs have implemented the ability to vary atmospheric temperature by longitude.

I will fix that for you. when Base building is introduced into the game, I will make a moon base around every planet in the solar system. It would be so much easier to launch intrasolar ships from Minmus than it is from Kerbin. Also, I am looking forward to the gas giants just because of their moon systems. I am hoping that there will be moon moons too at some point... Maybe even Moon moon moons. Of course I am looking forward to new planets because its more exciting to visit moons of far away planets.

Here is my version of the stock A-10. I included pylons on the wings where weapons would be mounted and flaps for lower minimum speed (The flaps actually work). I also included an ejection system for people on dangerous missions. It is stable in flight, but I have not tested emptying the fuel tanks. I might upload pictures later.

This is correct. In real airplanes the main gear are close to the center of mass and hold around 90% of the weight of the airplane. So if you are 'stuck' it just means your landing gear are too far back so too much weight is on the nose gear. If the landing gear were placed too far back in real life, the airplane would also be stuck and unable to raise its nose for takeoff (This may also indicate you need more elevators). If you have a problem with tail strikes I recommend either putting the gear on pylons to make them longer or raising the tail up.

I was going to post this yesterday but attachments were not working for some reason. Here is a new version designed specifically for conventional landings on the runway with stock parts, so it is not as pretty, and the solid rocket on the nose may seem weird (it is there for structure, not thrust). It still has infinite range using pitch controls to increase speed. It is mostly stable during launch so there is no advanced SAS. Just press space once and you are flying. Do not deploy the drag chute until you have touched down on the runway. I recommend landing under 70 m/s, and be gentle on the touchdown. It is not possible to takeoff again with the same ship once you come to a stop. Important notes: As long as you have not deployed the chute, you can abort landings (for touch-and-gos) even after you have touched down by pulling up and retracting the landing gear. This works down to 20 m/s. Slower than that and you make a runway crater. Also, make sure the landing gear are deployed before you land. Do not attempt to land this one on water. Picture:

Here, I might as well upload it anyway. This is for anyone that likes the idea but wants to go faster. This one has no parachute though! It can get around 320 m/s at sea level. the primary limitation on speed there is computer performance. I used a fixed rear horizontal stabilizer because it helps reduce the sudden pitch while maneuvering. I don\'t think anything can be done about the roll sensitivity. Its a good idea to wait a second after stage separation to help prevent stabilizer damage also. Another point, which is probably obvious, is that it will be easier to lose control at higher altitude since the air is thinner, so the stabilizers are not as effective. Expect this version to lag.

Air 7 is a stock airplane that is able to fly indefinitely and return its crew safely to the ground at their destination. It relies on two bug exploits to fly effectively. The first is the ability to place stabilizers inside each other, which greatly increases the lift ratio. The second is the ability for a properly balanced AV-R8 in canard configuration to generate thrust. For this reason, no fuel is needed after the first stage takeoff. Flight instructions: it is important to note that the airplane is carefully balanced, so it will not be statically stable until after the fuel tank is empty and the launch stage has been separated. 1: Turn on Advanced SAS 2: Throttle up 3: Press space to launch 4: After running out of fuel, press space to separate from booster and advanced SAS. 5: Fly around as much as you like. Pitch up or down to accelerate, this works best while banked and at lower altitudes. Note that the roll controls are very sensitive and that conventional landings are not possible. Use roll and pitch to turn, not yaw. 6: Press space again to separate from flight stage and engage parachute. Note: do not attempt to land on mountain tops. Low altitude landing sites are best. Performance characteristics: Max Speed: 155 m/s (low altitude, level flight) Max Speed: 285 m/s (dive) Stall Speed: 5 m/s Service ceiling 12500 m Absolute ceiling 13590 m Range: Infinite Loiter: Infinite Images: It is possible to build an airplane similar to this that flies well over 350 m/s at low altitude. This can be done by adding more AV-R8s and removing parts like the parachute and stage decoupler, but this makes the game more laggy and makes crew recovery nigh impossible. If people would like me to upload something like that, just let me know. Have fun buzzing the tower.