Van Disaster

First, thing, land from the sea end. Second thing, until you get the hang of it, turn onto your final approach using the island with the other runway as the turn marker so you get plenty of time to settle the plane ( I still do it that way anyway for spaceplanes ). Don't do this too high, 2000m at most. Get lined up - note that the runway is almost exactly aligned along the equator so your heading will be 270 if you're lined up correctly - then start adjusting your speed until you're comfortably flying slowly but stable, and then start reducing height keeping at the same speed. Now you need to judge if you're going to land short of the runway or most of the way down it - keep an eye on your altitude & remember the runway is ~70m above sea level - and that is just practice ( or you can get an ILS mod with a glideslope ). Above all, *don't rush it*.

Small note - the simulation is out of bounds, so the numbers are garbage anyway ( AoA >0 is the tell ). I think there's something more than just high wing loading going on there.

EE Lightning goes home sadfaced

That's the reason I suggested a slightly better dummy, one capable of forcing your craft into some aerobatics & changes in altitude.

In the UK's case it was really just about reliability - the axial flow jet I mentioned above had the same development time as the centrifugal flow jets & ended up in a lot of aircraft in the 50s ( including US ones ) but wartime metallurgy just wasn't up to it, especially when there was an alternative. The Meteor's engines were far more reliable than the 262s & less prone to melting in flight... postwar being completely broke didn't help developing anything at all. The Falcon from KerbalX has a visual range of 10km, I suppose it could have wandered outside that at the start? the Kestrel linked here also has 10km. It's possible it was just the BDA targeting bug, I guess. That was a closer fight than I was expecting, actually.

The main reason for centrifugal flow jets back then was reliability ( the WW2 Jumo was *awful* - 8 hour life I think? ) - there was a British axial flow jet in WW2 but expediency won over pure technical merit just to get something useful & reliable in service. Not really sure how you go about giving fat centrifugal jets their reliability bonus here... Ed: 10-20 lifespan for the Jumo 004 depending on pilot - note this is actual life, not "in need of repair" - the insides just fell apart because they couldn't use precious metals & their metallurgy just wasn't up to it. I did not realise it had a variable exhaust nozzle though.

Reducing sweep will increase span which will help marginally, but then you'll mess up some other area of the envelope. As was said, less mass or more wing, basically.

Yeap, and the RR Nene ( just a big Derwent ), which ended up in the Mig-15. The F-86 is pushing it a bit for 1st gen given how many things came before it, just like I wouldn't put the Hunter in there despite it being equivalent.

For Korea-era up to 2x might be ok - just don't raise the Mach limit too far so you don't end up prematurely supersonic - or perhaps use a subset of AJE instead? haven't checked what jets are in there recently. Early Korea - era jet engines seem to be around 15-16kN, 1/2-2/3 tonne mass ( well, stuff that actually went there - RR Avons in Canberras/Hunters overlapped Korea, that's in the 30kN range ). Some experiments needed to see what's sane, I think.

I've just noticed it's on KerbalX... not sure why I didn't notice it there before. Initial verdict would be that it seems very nice - can certainly change direction swiftly & aims well - but a bit prone to overcontrolling. As for early jet era - this already is the early jet era. Maybe with a 2x power jet.

I believe it's still using the same PID for everything. I'm a bit leery of adding too much complexity for this, but let's see first. I guess to do this properly you'd need seperate settings for general maneuvering and aiming ( I remember Baha tried to do that by just turning the PID gains up - I can see why he did but that is not exactly the best way... ). Posted the biplane using a detuned Wizard & 6 Breda 7.7s, that probably needs some AI tuning too. It's um, a teensy bit low drag. https://kerbalx.com/VanDisaster/DAC-Tisiphone-Mk-1

I couldn't if I wanted the thing to stay intact - any lighter on the wing parts & bits started falling off. I've seen it hit 250m/s at the bottom of a steep dive & pullouts under min alt tend to be quite violent. I'm a little disappointed none of the tail bits got removed - that craft has an amusing ability to fly with most of it missing, the balance shifts just right. My other problem is the AI PID settings - I don't think it had enough prop. gain so that's why it can't aim very well - correction is not keeping up with the heading error - but I really wanted to keep it's control inputs smooth rather than snapping to maximum all the time so it didn't bleed energy unnecessarily. That is something of an issue with BDA itself I think - @tetrydshave you any input on modifying it's behaviour? ( code, not plane setup, I mean ) this is your area iirc.

Yeah, that was well worth entering for

It's kinda fun building something that works with the smallest engine - that biplane isn't too bad with it, but I did build it to the single engined rules rather than trying to be as light as I could get so it's a little sluggish. It does have four hispanos though, which is a little more than your average biplane... apparently there were some Gladiators with 6x303s, that sounds like it might win the most-armed-biplane award.

Yeah, I also wonder about Bob's plane - I didn't comment because I've not seen it properly. I have an open cockpit version of mine, it's actually not noticeably better so I think most of that is down to my AI setup... I did sacrifice a little turning for lower drag & keeping speed up because I thought I'd get eaten alive by B&Zers if I didn't, my plane is surprisingly good at retaining speed, not that that helps with the quality of pilot:p. I do have really good roll rate... but of course that doesn't often come into anything either. I've flown mine against the Rolf-75 a bit, end results are pretty even, seems mostly dependent on luck. That Wasp eats it, no chance vs that. At least my biplane doesn't dominate it, althought that can put up a very nice fight with one of the bigger engines. Then again that thing terrorizes my jets... but it does have the Merlin. Well, I suppose there was a CR.42 with the Bf109 engine.

Yep, congrats. A fight between yours & mine & Keptir's ( and perhaps SI's, I've not seen it fly though ) planes would be a riotous whirl I reckon. For people who've been contacting me about the throttle fix, the PR went in yesterday. If there's anything else in the AI that needs actual fixing rather than just something you think could be better, let me know ( privately, don't clutter ).

If it was lighter so it could climb, and had enough time to be able to climb. And there wasn't a head-on merge without avoidance. And the AI didn't have rocks for brains, too. The illegally light version of my twin jet can run rings around this thing if it's given enough separation to accelerate, but the pilot will lose by bleeding off energy & making itself an easy target, and not putting itself in a decent position to shoot even with the advantage ( and this is with the fixed BDA zoom too ). I honestly don't see why there's a ban on biplanes.

Nope. Doesn't stall, just bleeds speed like mad - but with the way the AI works, it doesn't matter. Only thing that'll beat that sort of craft ( other than another, better one of the same type ) is something that does near supersonic B&Z, and with the BDA zoom bug I fixed still there, forget that too.

The only reason I suggested that is because a kill at merge means the battle is quite often over before it's begun & I think everyone is cheated out of a good experience, unless one side is way better than the other & the weaker side got lucky & then gets massacred by the remaining opposition craft. If BDA didn't fly headlong into bullet hails on the first pass it wouldn't be needed. I suppose I have to say I'm putting out ideas for discussion here, not making demands. The problem with raising jet thrust is it's not just about TWR, but drag also. Starting the fights allowing for more energy buildup first would help low TWR/low drag craft ( like jets or even prop-twins with the smaller engines ) at the start of the fight, it's up to the builder to maintain energy after. WW2 jets were only historically superior once they'd got energy up, there were many many kills on LW jets by allied prop planes when they were around their bases or even just down low. I'm not sure there were any Meteor combat losses at all, at least not by Axis forces - seems collisions & friendly fire were the biggest danger. Immediately post-war jet thrust skyrocketed - 9 days after VE day the next Meteor was 270kmh faster - until you end up in Korea 5 years later & piston engine fighters killing jets is just about luck. In BAD-T battles, that Meteor replica I built can easily out-pace the fairly low-drag twin prop, I just can't set it's pilot up to make best use of that ( as I said, maybe someone who can tune B&Zers can do it as a demo? ); but that's only if it's given time to accelerate first though. The single jet ( the Vampire-alike ) has an even worse time if it's not given any buildup. They don't behave the same as props at all at the moment, and that feels a good thing - not much thrust but it just keeps going. If every fight starts the same distance further away then the playing field is still the same, it's just a slightly different field. I don't see how that of all things is a balance change other than to give all the stuff nobody uses a better initial chance, the only type of craft that'd get hurt is one that is already artificially built to take advantage of a close start at the cost of performance later. Everyone else's craft is just going a bit faster. I've run a whole bunch of people's posted craft in fights & the only thing start distance mattered to was the jets. How many engines were entered? Metrics are up to whoever runs the tournament & the type of show they want to put on and before there's a debate about "replica battle" - if we didn't care about putting a show on we'd all be building ultra-low mass/loading things that look like experimental RC aircraft & just happen to have props, rather than the nice field of things that could have stepped out of 40s comics. I feel this tournament is successful because it's both competitive and stylish ( and thanks Tetrydis for starting it ). Again, about giving everyone including the builder a good time, if they have a bit more pre-entry guidance & then have a better time in battles. Cockpits: well, we're all either picking the same cockpit now anyway or concocting something from parts, so even if there's just 2-3 cosmetic choices it's a bonus & nothing is lost. If you really want 1946 jets vs props then yes, much more jet thrust, very slow spool, and bi-mode prop engines with water injection et al ( easy to do that with the bi-mode engine module, and BDA can use afterburners already - just use water/whatever as a seperate fuel. Worth a thought anyway ). That's a lot of balancing work ... Anyway, we've only seen one fight, going to shut up for a while.

It really wouldn't make much difference other than the AI not having a clue & spinning out at slow speeds when it slams the throttle open. It would, however, require a completely new engine module, not just some simple tweaks to curves. I will say that nobody is likely to use anything below the Merlin in the current rules. There's not really any use in the two-stage engines either with the way fights are run at the moment. Here's an idea that would need a lot of testing - but how about a much lower FAR wing structural limit? iirc the best WW2 planes were pulling 6g turning ( let's not get into compressibility, we have a supersonic wing profile ) - not sure if that's an aerodynamic limit or a structural one.

Standby mode puts the brakes on, which is really handy engine running or not Engines are in a good place, I think. A couple of lighter BAD-T cockpits might be nice, and I've mentioned the jets need a weight break - at least twin jets need one anyway - perhaps all twins get a break & the piston engines get heavier? ( Edit: nope. Just give jets a weight break if you must keep the min weight ). I think a slightly more capable dummy is a good idea too, but I remember that being a little contentious. Aesthetics in a "would this have been used?" sense rather than "does this look like an actual plane" is also another contentious area - it's not like there's no room for bizarre craft, just look at all the wacky British & German stuff of the era ( the US was guilty too, remember that flying saucer? ) - alternatively some broader performance metric than just the dummy hunt. It's easy to minmax these contests ( I'm guilty of that in the past too - one contest didn't require landing, so I just launched on a trolley & dropped the gear but didn't take any skids or any other means of setting down in one piece ) & this one has always felt a lot about providing a spectacle. I don't really care who wins, as long as it looks good A nice change also would be starting the fights further apart, now we can - BDA doesn't like going over 21km, but at least it'll get out that far ( not suggesting we go that far but it can ) - this would give jets a boost even without any shuffling of weight. Related, perhaps restart a fight if there's a kill before the pairs ( or perhaps one element of the pairs if they've split up a long way ) have passed each other once, judges discretion.

A little tip to help set fights up easier - turn standby mode on in the hangar, and add Toggle Guard Mode and Activate Pilot to the staging action group. That way you can drop the craft, hit space, and it's ready. I'll post mine after it's first fight. I couldn't make it do what I wanted, so I doubt there's much to be learned from it.

I entered this one when literally everything I did to the craft made it worse even though nominally it should be better, so obviously some sort of sweet spot. Overall though all I can say is that there'll be faster craft & ones that turn better, I just hope I can be faster than the turnfighters & outturn the b&zers & not lose to awful piloting

Ouch, that is not the easy first fight I was looking for...

That... is a very confused aeroplane. Apparently wearing a bra, too.