Giggleplex777

Hopefully the LV-T15 receives an Isp upgrade (to ~320s vac) to convert it into a sustainer engine, which was what I originally suspected it to be. The LV-T30's lack of gimbal also bothers me a bit because it detracts from its usefulness as a 1.25m stack engine.

Are you using flaps? They should lower your stall speed by a bit. Reducing the amount of fuel you're carrying and/or engine would help too. One Wheesley's is probably enough if you're using FAR. I'm playing career mode (with stock parts and FAR) and most of the contracts are observational ones which do not require more than one landing, so the drogue chute solution works fine for me.

How fast are you touching down? I've found that touching down at high speeds (>100m/s) tends to cause the plane to bounce. My method of working around this is to fly very close to the ground and then deploying a drogue chute to quickly slow the aircraft down. It's a bit tricky but it actually works quite well.

Forward slippin'

I've built tiny Space Shuttles as well! They're quite fun to build. Here are a few from older versions of KSP: Would like to go back to my Pico Space Program, but, unfortunately the small engines have taken a bit of a nerf in 1.0 and rendering many of my crafts obsolete.

Mainsails are twice as heavy, only slightly more efficient in the lower atmosphere, and much more expensive than Skippers. Looking at his setup, the Skippers and SRBs should work just fine.

Seriously, why is this not stock?

I haven't had a chance to check out the craft ingame but I think I understand how it works. Since parts that are part of the same vessel can't interact with itself (except for landing legs), the "traditional" way of moving and locking a part would require engines/landing struts and docking ports-- which can't undock via action groups. Your ingenious solution to this is to have a second, structural vessel that allows the main spacecraft to interact with itself by giving it something to push on while in turn the "shell" interacts with the engine assembly that's attached to the hinge, causing the entire assembly to move. Absolutely brilliant! BTW the Z-50 (now the Z-51) is still available here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/36708-zepto-eagleworks-z-51-cobra-vstol/#comment-505173

Woah. Can you post pics of the entire rocket?

Can these antennae also transmit science?

Added the "Future Projects" section to the front page. One (actually two) of the things I've been working on are variable-geometry oblique wing aircraft. One is landing strut powered and doesn't have much rotation while the other has a rocket-powered hinge to rotate the wing 90 degrees. The first aircraft with wings perpendicular to the fuselage: And angled: The second aircraft is much sleeker and is designed for supersonic flight. The hinge is also much more unreliable: Takeoff/Landing/low-speed configuration: Supersonic configuration: Not sure if there is any benefit of rotating the wings but at least they look cool.

Fitted the Z-51 with variable-sweep wings as an experiment: Less swept: More swept: There's only LV-1R per hinge in this case, making them stiffer than the those on the ZF-31 and ZF-32 (which had 3 per hinge IIRC). Doesn't do much performance-wise other than shift the CoL. Here's a heavily-modified version with a similar variable-sweep wing setup and a Whiplash engine: I like the look of this one more but it's not as agile as the original Z-51due to the fact that it's quite heavy at 14t fueled and the Whiplash only has 2 degrees of gimbal. Nevertheless, I might release this version as the Z-60.