Icky

now that we've necro'd this thread. 750, level flight, no clipping, 9 engines.

stage to yeet the lawn chairs with pulled chutes. not sure the range but i built it with the river kile run in mind.

complete! my main post on this page has a more detailed update. 9 days/1 hour mission time.

In 2021 i started my rover kerbin run and got most of the way around and just got burned out by it, did other things, and kind of forgot about it for a while. with the recent ksp2 reveal i decided i wanted to finish this before ksp2 comes out. when i started, this new thread wasnt here and the old rules of the challenge didnt have the specifics regarding thrust/control while airborne. my rover DOES use control surfaces and prop power in the air (but it wont actually maintain flight, the longest jumps are maybe 10 seconds) so if this run doesnt count then so be it, ill leave that up to the powers that be to decide. ill probably do it again in ksp2 anyway lol. i just want to finish this run. so ill quote my old post with its updates up to this point and continue underneath. ok first leg of 2022 done. into the desert! getting close! MISSION SUCCESS!

well time to do that hour long water crossing AGAIN

day one down. many many more to go. ill just keep updating this post. after driving to the north pole from ksc i wanted to build a rover with better suspension. i had good success with using hinges to make control arms. when i was building for this challenge i knew i would need to do a few water crossings with it so i stuck a couple small props on top. upon testing i found they would get me upwards of 80m/s on land all on their own, and do it using a LOT less power! so i ditched the powered wheels in favor of medium landing gear which could take much more abuse. with some fine tuning of the landing gear's suspension settings and the hinge settings i got a rover that will comfortably cruise at 80m/s across kerbins terrain and soak up bumps and jumps with ease. with added rudder for steering (steering at that speed with the wheels is too sensitive) and ailerons so it wont nose over on jumps, it ends up looking like a plane without wings, but i assure you it wont fly in its current configuration. it will descend at around 10m/s. heres the first few minutes of the trip. setting off, planting the flag: this is the route ill be taking: day 1: day 2: day.....idk...something. theyre getting a bit blurred now. you can see the mission time. over half way!

so i did some studying on aero and had a close look at what was making drag and how much. so i did a couple redesigns and found all you really need is a pair of elevons to make lift. i found the actual wings to make too much drag and by the time i got the angle of attack of the craft to close to zero, the wings werent making any lift anyway. i still have the same motors and prop layouts as the last plane. i switched from solar power to fuel cells so i could put them in a cargo bay and have it all nice and tidy and making no drag. so by getting it up over 340 then carefully managing the elevon angle so that the angle of attack was as close to zero as possible and VERY slowly increasing the prop pitch, im talking a tenth at a time, i managed to eek out 361.3. and this is still without putting the motors in fairings. i also took some video of going from 330+ to landing to show it actually flies pretty nice. im amazed at how much lift the elevon 5s make. although i guess once you pitch it up the mk2 parts are making lift as well. EDIT: i tried fitting a fairing around the motor and i was able to build it but i dont think i did it right as the motor was still making the same amount of drag. although after yeeting the fairings and dropping the drag THEY made, i got a little faster. 363 even. first pic is with the fairings still on, you can see the motors still make drag. next pic is after deploying them. interesting side note, i was able to push drop the throttle a bit and push the prop pitch to 65 (the max in my KAL, probably wouldve gone higher) and kept it over 300m/s with each motor consuming under 9u/s. EDIT again: ok, im done. i promise. 365.3. still no fairings. still 6 sets of 8 blades. i did a lot of messing with the large rotor and you can easily reduce its drag to almost nothing by just slapping a cone on the back of it, but i couldnt get it much over 335 no matter what blades configuration i tried. so i came back to this plane and did another run for the heck of it.

i came across this post searching for something else and it seemed right up my ally. I often find myself messing with prop planes trying to eek out every last m/s but i was blown away by the stuff you guys are coming up with. anyway, heres my best attempt so far at 349.7m/s: I tool a look at @fourfa craft with the fairing housed motors but i couldnt figure out what was going on there. i couldnt replicate it myself, wouldnt let me build the fairing, and i tried deploying the fairings from his to see what difference it made in speed and the motors just fell out haha. though to be fair ksp said i was missing something when i tried to load the craft in so that could have something to do with it. anyway, i took the idea of putting lots of the mid size ducted fan blades on although i could only get 6 sets of 8 to fit. and i didnt do any messing with fairings. though i remember someone somewhere saying shock cone intakes have the least drag out of all the nose cones, both leading and trailing so i went with those. im not sure how to upload the craft file elsewhere, but ill put it on the workshop called "8x6x2 solar prop plane".