Volt

Is NEAR throwing NREs when the centre-of-lift indicator is used on a rocket for anyone else? I can't provide output_log at the moment due to lack of time but just wondering if it's just me.

Is there any solution we as code-laymen can use to fix that engine bug? It's happening with all B9 engines with a generator, and Bac9 is MIA, so if any fixes are going to be made, it's gonna have to be us. And B9 has some truly beautiful engines that would be great to be able to use.

...and the glaivin'? That is an odd behaviour, are you pulling up hard into an accelerated stall or something?

Ahh, good. I was thinking maybe they were outrageously low, because that plane climbs like a dream and gains speed in a dive like you wouldn't believe, but then again this is the first time I've succeeded in building a large-body jet, so maybe they all have those energy characteristics? I was also suspicious of B9, because I've been having no end of peculiar glitches with the 0.23.5 fix versions, mainly involving the mass of some of the parts being NaN (oh the humanity...) and messing with analyses, but I don't know if they cause any further troubles.

Quick question. Are drag values like these: expected? Because this aircraft is ridiculously slippery. It has an amazing glide ratio, considering it's a jet bomber. Sorry for the huge picture today.

I have a little question regarding neutral stability, particularly for aircraft that would be flown by many, many little computery bits IRL, like the F-16 and the Typhoon. Might it be possible to increase the normal stability of an aircraft which is neutrally stable in its normal configuration by using large flaps behind the centre of lift to move it back? This would certainly make flight easier without compromising on maneuverability. Additionally, could you use an airbrake under the rear of the fuselage to achieve something similar during approaches? I'm thinking of an airbrake whose root is nearest the nose, which swings open to maybe 20-30 degrees maximum, generating some deflection lift as well as drag and moving the Cl back.

Okay, this is driving me nuts, now. Sorry for a little threadjack but how are people getting multiple aircraft flying at once? It's been a dream of mine since the beginning.

I'll PM my output_log to you now, sirkut.

My blue IFF tag appears to be missing. Am I screwing something up?

I'm having trouble getting the IR plugin to work. The parts load and I can put them on ships and load them into the map, but the GUI is invisible and the keys I assign to the moving parts don't work at all. Any suggestions? I'm using the latest version of MM with a bunch of other plugins, including Skillful.

Your flaps are increasing the amount of lift at the point at which they are fitted, moving your center of lift backwards. A simplified explanation of the effect of this is that the center of lift 'pivots' the aircraft about the center of mass. The further the force assumed to apply by the center of lift is from the pivot point, the larger the pivoting effect, or moment. Moment = Force x Perpendicular distance, and the distance has increased, so the force pushing the tail up and nose down is larger. Try moving your wings forward a little if you can still safely trim it out, so the flaps don't move the center of lift quite as far back. I'm sure Ferram can offer better advice than me, though. Whatever happens, deploying flaps will require a change in trim. The question for your design is if you have enough pitch authority to safely overcome the change in nose-down moment.

Mmmmm, a DB601(3)? Lovely.

Posted this in the Modded Craft Repository, but there doesn't seem to be much traffic there, so here's the replica I'm most proud of. This thing is super exciting to fly, especially in ground attack runs. I built a P-38 Lightning replica which I'm really pleased to find flies a lot like the real P-38. I know you're going to say, sigh, just another warbird, but this one has a targetting system I'm particularly proud of. Mods: FAR Kerbal Aircraft Expansion (KAX) Procedural Wings Skillful Weapons/Combat Damage Mod Hullcam VDS I know the IRL P-38 had one 20mm cannon and four 12.7mm machine guns, but I didn't have a 20mm available and ground attack is the main mode of battle in WT, so I converted it to 2x500lb and 2x 30mm autocannon. It does a number on soft ground targets with that aiming point (the rounds hit a few mm below the end of the communotron when in hullcam mode). Flies happily at about 2/3rds throttle, a speed at which you'll be hard pressed to put it into an accelerated stall in a tight turn. It's lovely! Landing is a little more hairy; keep your approach speed around 250-300km/h IAS (I think ~75m/s IAS). And give it a good, aggressive flare just before touchdown. Hope you enjoy! Download Link

I built a P-38 Lightning replica which I'm really pleased to find flies a lot like the real P-38. I know you're going to say, sigh, just another warbird, but this one has a targetting system I'm particularly proud of. Image Gallery Mods: FAR Kerbal Aircraft Expansion (KAX) Procedural Wings Skillful Weapons/Combat Damage Mod Hullcam VDS I know the IRL P-38 had one 20mm cannon and four 12.7mm machine guns, but I didn't have a 20mm available and ground attack is the main mode of battle in WT, so I converted it to 2x500lb and 2x 30mm autocannon. It does a number on soft ground targets with that aiming point (the rounds hit a few mm below the end of the communotron when in hullcam mode). Flies happily at about 2/3rds throttle, a speed at which you'll be hard pressed to put it into an accelerated stall in a tight turn. It's lovely! Landing is a little more hairy; keep your approach speed around 250-300km/h IAS (I think ~75m/s IAS). And give it a good, aggressive flare just before touchdown. Hope you enjoy! Download Link

Okay, so I've stationed a new target in the same place, but I'm not seeing the heating effects from before. However, it has been a couple of ingame hours, so if there were fires, could they have gone out?

You know what, for all the testing I did, I didn't actually launch a new truck and test its immediate heating! I'll make sure to do that when I get on tomorrow. You could be right about the fires, because I had a couple of HE 500lb bombloads which dropped ~50m away from the target on my first run. While we're talking about odd behaviours, I also had strange things happen with the individual Lau missiles. I fired six from an altitude of around 800m, with HE warheads, but when they impacted (I was by now at 1000m directly above the impact site) my plane disintegrated, with some parts yellow and most outright destroyed. Is that the same thing, heating from fires, just at very long range? By the way. This mod, coupled with procedurals and FAR, has made building warbirds and military planes worth it again. Now we have some decent weapons to slap on and test. I've already got myself a turboprop powered P-51 and P-38 with somewhat accurate armament! Thank you so much!

Nope. I thought of that, and since I don't have it, there's definitely no WasteHeat involved!

I think I've just found a bug. I noticed that on my ground attack targets, my Rovemax Model M1 wheels started exploding. Upon checking for the cause, I found they exploded due to overheating. The entire rover, in fact, was running at a temperature of 3000 degrees, transmitted I think from either the wheels or the Rovemate.

Colon worked; semicolon didn't. Is there a central resource for these names of keys or do you just learn them as part of your coding work? Because I'm now trying to set my 'Return' button to reset the camera, but 'Return' didn't work.

But it's already set to 'Minus' and 'Equals' in the config; don't all the rest of the buttons have designations too? Also, has anyone else noticed that the 'abort' and 'exit hullcam' buttons are the same? That's... less than optimal for my planes. I do already love this mod though, I remember the days of driving around on a Bigtrak with SAMs and the original hullcam equipped. My love for first person has not changed.

I'd like to change the key bindings, but I want to change them to the : and ' buttons on my keyboard (English UK). What strings would I use for those in the cfg file?

I couldn't say. I assumed that Chad did long ago, but only because he created the very first hit wing pack back in, oh, 0.12? 0.13? Maybe even before that. But actually, Harv is probably most knowledgeable in that field because he's the one that created the original lift/drag system, weird as it may be. But there's no way they match Ferram's in-depth insight, hence why this mod so realistically recreates aerodynamics.

No kidding. Ferram is on par with SQUAD devs in terms of skill IMO, and that's no mean feat. Hint hint nudge nudge wink.

Leaving on a jet plane. I launched about fifteen rockets to construct a space station and develop a fleet of transporters and launchers for 0.23. In those fifteen or so launches, I have managed to strand four Kerbals; the first was my brave (scratch that, mostly reckless) Jebediah, stuck in an eccentric 70x280km orbit after gyroscope issue (read: pointed sepratrons prograde) testing a deorbiting system. I then tried to clip a 2.5m decoupler into two engines on cubic octagonal struts on my 2.5m crew bus, and launched the 'test flight' with three Kerbals onboard despite only selecting one. (what gives, devs?) The decoupling event in a 150x150 orbit inevitably but, to me at the time, surprisingly caused complete disassembly of my service module. What followed was one near-spent launch stage for the space station pushing Jeb's pod back to a deorbit, one heroic 10km rendezvous using a jetpack by Jeb (did I mention that Jeb was relaunched on the 3-man as soon as he was rescued from the 1-man?) and the recovery of the two inferior Kerbonauts by a mark-two version of the same 3-man. They all got back to Kerbin or the space station eventually. So Tl;dr: My Kerbals leave their families on jet planes. I can give no guarantee when they'll be back again. I hope they packed a pretty substantial bag.

I would like improved aerodynamics, control surface configuration settings (no more rudder causing dutch rolls!) and fixes for infiniglide. However, I think FAR-style aerodynamics being forced is for the more hardcore players, so it could be added, but it should be able to be massively simplified. One of my worries is that in its current state, the game would make interplanetary flight and space station construction very difficult with a realistic drag model. For example I was putting a 4.5 long-girder truss system up to my space station yesterday, but I couldn't for the life of my get the end point of the subassembly to become the root, so I could mount it vertically to the rocket. I ended up flying it up horizontally with the long side into the free stream. In FAR the rocket would have been unstable, flipped around and never got to orbit, and ultimately adding a truss to my station would have been a 4-5-launch affair and there would have been more parts and more docking process, taking hours of work rather than half an hour. Not everyone has the time or patience for complex aerodynamics, nor do many people want to be straining their brains when they're using their chill-time to play KSP. Tl;dr: I think it'd have to be simpler than FAR, or at least able to be disabled or simplified by a setting so that not everyone is forced to play hardcore-mode all the time.