BubbaWilkins

How about the propeller drag issue?

Sight unseen, I'm going to guess that you have a control module/pod which faces a direction other than the intended path of travel.

FAR has had some drag code updates recently, so you may experiencing more drag induced deceleration g-forces. You need to spend more time in the upper atmosphere bleeding off speed gradually instead of punching through the upper layers and hitting the dense air in the lower atmosphere. Better to establish a lower orbit and utilize a much shallower re-entry curve. You'll have lower temps overall, less g-forces, and your craft will be less likely to get all explodey. These are all secondary to the primary anti-explodey rule of FAR/DE - which is SLOW DOWN before you start pushing the G-limits. Drag increases exponentially with Speed. Drag produces friction with the atmosphere. Friction produces heat. Heat eats your shielding. What you are seeing is that the higher PE allows you to bleed more speed off in the upper atmosphere. This results in you going slower when you hit the more dense atmosphere thus lowering temperatures throughout and increasing the duration your shield remains intact.

Appreciate it! If that is the case, than this might also explain the over-the-top instability related to the use of helicopter rotors as well.

Ferram: I'm afraid that whatever you did to the drag code just busted any prop driven craft I have to about 1/4 speed. This craft for instance can't even get over 33m/s and take off now: Similarly my smaller single engine K-51 (P-51) and Biplane derivative suffer severe speed hits. They can take off, but can't come close to their previous cruising speeds. Bear in mind that each of these was designed and tuned in your previous version. Also, a small request. Could you leave links to older versions archived in the first post? I didn't hang on to them myself and have no way to revert back.

Sadly no, just Chatterer going off.

This is how it has always been.

I'm using FAR, so mine flies a little different from yours. Slamming the breaks will nosedive it, but pulsing them only pops the tail up a little and is manageable. Best thing to do is just coast in as slow as possible. If I had my wings configured like yours, it would put the CoL too far forward and be uncontrollable. I'll see if I can throw a video up later. EDIT - short vid added.

Just when I thought I was done with prop planes.... Nice job, had to make one of my own! Sucker is slow, but agile!

Not entirely true. SNJO has been updating Firespitter and there are now several versions of the .dll in circulation. The one packaged with B9 gave me problems. I suggest the OP just get Firespitters latest update and use that one.

After a corporate restructuring, we're back in business! Shown above, the Firespitter product line featuring the KH-53 Kerbal Stallion and K-51 Kustang. Also included is the our current all terrain service vehicle feature a RollKage frame and Wayland's Mini Monster drivetrain. While range of the K-51 is limited, it's ideal for those times where you just want to put on a small airshow or take a short jaunt around the space center. We also recently launched a new and improved Orbiter!

Fuel? post a pic of the craft with the resources tab pulled down.

Nothing wrong playing stock. But I prefer to build things like this which simply aren't possible stock. Stock is great for building basic rockets and small aircraft/spaceplanes. But if you want to make serious craft with serious capabilities and still actually be able to play the game, then you will have to mod it up.

I was merely referencing this article and the base study which it covers. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/researchers-western-iqs-dropped-14-points-over-last-180634194.html People certainly seemed to have gotten dumber over the course of my lifetime though.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/24677-%280-21-x%29-Wayland-Corp-Development-and-released-download-Thread The monsters come in two sizes: small.... HUGE... unrelated to that, but to the thread in general...took this last night:

Actually, the average IQ has been in decline at a rate of 1.23 points per decade. I'd say that kids in general have a broader knowledge base, but most of that knowledge is of a superfluous nature. None of this has anything to do with KSP though. The game appeals to those who like to build and construct things as well as just general problem solving. If you don't enjoy either of those activities, you're probably not going to enjoy the KSP experience.

You've certainly made exploring Kerbin itself much more interesting. Good Jorb and Congrats on your successes!

You have mechjeb's limit acceleration toggled which is passively active even when you are manually flying the craft. That's why you can't adjust your throttle while the boosters are active. Your main engine also appears to have too little thrust and/or gimble to keep you going straight up and you're going too slow at 50m/s for your fins to to control the craft. Open mechjeb's ascension guidance and disable "limit acceleration". Then try launching again. This time, you should have full throttle for the entire first stage and enough velocity for your fins to work correctly.

Looking good. Now all we need is a matching nose cone and we can make all sorts of fighters. Very exciting times!

Firespitter has electric props & rotors.

Well, in general...helicopters are inherently UNSTABLE. 1) Pay attention to the arrow direction indicators on the parts, rotors need to face forward, tail rotors face downwards. 2) Ignore CoL, it's Center of Thrust which is the determining factor and that needs to be initially set near dead center of CoM. 3) Place the main rotor last, dead center on the CoM. 4) If your craft tilts up, you're tail heavy and the rotor needs to be shifted towards the rear to compensate. Tilt down, nose heavy and shift the rotor forward. Sometimes this means only by a few pixels. Stock aerodynamics are pretty forgiving and you should be able to produce a very easily balanced craft. Flying takes practice, but generally make very small moves until you get used to it. Remember that they require constant input to fly and aren't like a other aircraft. Helicopters will fly in FAR, but it is magnitudes harder to control them and I would advise against it. I can't manage it without activating SAS, Mechjeb, or hover mode.

What mod pack is the nose cone from?

FAR and mechjeb work just fine together, but it takes far more fine tuning and experimentation to produce a craft that flies well. It is possible to manually fly some crafts that mechjeb can't handle, but more likely it's less frustrating to just fix the balance/performance of the craft first. If your craft is balanced, but you still fight instability mid flight, check to make sure that you are strutted sufficiently to remove ALL flex. It only takes a small amount of flex to upset an engines thrust vector and send your craft out of control. first, expirement.... remove the gravity turn all together. 1) Does your craft stay straight up at 10/km? 15km?, 20km?, 25? if so, move your gravity turn to a higher elevation and try again. 2) If your craft becomes unstable even in a straight up ascent with no turn, adjust your speed accordingly. Perhaps you're going too fast for that elevation and need to back off a touch. My original shuttle+launcher design was flawless as long as you didn't exceed 200 m/s below 10,000 feet. 3) If 1 or 2 get you close, perhaps activate RCS in the atmosphere to add that little additional bit of command authority. 4) Now add a gravity turn, but experiment with the altitude it initiates. Perhaps 10,000 is too low for your craft and you need to wait until it's higher up in the atmosphere and/or going faster. My current shuttle+launcher can not handle a gravity turn under 20km. For me this works out well because its just above this point that the solid boosters typically run dry. 5) All else fails, redesign the craft until you get something more stable to start with.

Who says they are restricted to the command module? maybe they have a billiards table back in the structural fuselage you know nothing about!

A good idea with any mod is to look at the file structure of the .zip file and adjust accordingly. Most have made it so that you merely unzip the file directly to the \Kerbal Space Program folder with a "GameData" folder built in and all parts and configs going in their proper places. Some mods only have their individual sections and thus need to be placed in the GameData folder directly vs the root KSP folder. I'm guessing from his descriptions that he didn't know the difference and thus had \Kerbal Space Program\GameData\Gamedata\B9.