Van Disaster

Started a test build of a stagingpost at 120km Kerbin orbit, happiest using my usual method I think. Monolithic core packed in the lifting spaceplane - could easily fly itself to Duna also. Used the Kerbinside desert runway, although that's a fairly light load so it didn't actually need it all. Out we go, and a bit of power. The containers stuck on the side hold inflatable emergency pods and some KAS struts. Er... it was a nice gentle landing! someone put mines down again... Now the lifesupport/habitat section. Slightly more complicated packing, habitat modules which will end up radially docked are stacked on the end currently. Liberal use of RCS ports which can be pulled off later. The core ran out of power, so after a little gnashing of teeth I remembered you can move solar panels with KAS, so sent someone out with ducktape. Needs a docking truss and more fuel storage, so that will be a couple more launches along the same lines, but that's how it usually goes for my stations even if I use rockets. Would probably have done the second section in two launches then though.

There's no formula like that for FAR, too much depends on shape and well, general aerodynamics - however I would imagine that plane does actually have enough wing area. What I don't think it has is enough control surface area - or more to the point, enough pitch moment ( which in visible terms is control surface area * distance from somewhere around CoL/CoM, given there is also a pitching moment if there's distance between those ).

You can produce craft that fly very well in FAR once they're in the air, which have a high enough wing loading that they need rather more than 100m/s to lift off. The OP's plane looks rather short of pitch control authority, though.

Kerbinside gives you another approach, a 4km runway.

You need to tell FAR it's a fairing/cargo bay, in the config in the KSC scene.

That's because running that on it's own puts you in SM3/DX9 look at the top of your log. At least that's what using that does for me. @helaeon: I'm not actually that au fait about how planets work - they switch from one topography to another ( scaledspace->pqs ) at some point? I would imagine that's 800km from Minmus and yeah I'm guessing it's also the shader ( read: material ) but I don't know what options there are to change that, if any. I've got no idea about the details of either way of planet rendering & coming up short on links for those right now.

Not actually sure where to put this, because solutions might be found involving mods, however the issue is also present in a stock game. Running dx11 mode ( start with -force-d3d11 ) * Minmus' surface turns completely black below 800km altitude * Ike is also reported to behave similarily, possibly other bodies too Minmus is ok in the tracking station and from altitude. I'd like some ideas about exactly what's causing this so I can investigate possible solutions using kittopia, perhaps in extremes by using Minmus heightmap data on a clone of a different planet and swapping that in via RSS or something. I don't know enough about how planets are composed and rendered at the moment to know what routes to investigate.

I'm pretty sure the new aero model is not going to resemble FAR ( specially with a new FAR on the way also ). I think the current aero model wasn't really ever any more than a placeholder, it does smell of placeholder mechanics; any aero model bearing any resemblance to reality is going to seem like FAR after that I'm all for things making their way into stock, if only *all* the features would make it in.

The Extraplanetary Launchpads mod makes a little use of some stats, but that's about as much as I can think of at the moment. It does seem like something of a half-done feature, so maybe there's more on the way.

I suspect you'll have to make it as a Kerbinside part - those are static scenery as opposed to being landed vehicles, so they have different rules. I haven't made a KerbalKonstructs part yet but I doubt it's really that hard.

"Is Trigger" needs ticking for ladder & airlock colliders.

It ( Infernal robotics ) has quirks, but it performs. Oddly enough does exactly what everyone in this thread is asking for...

Yeah, I did pay attention to the MM patch - obviously it didn't actually patch... I'll go do that in NP++ just to be sure and then see how it goes. I didn't pay much attention to what it actually did because it appeared to be a solution to a problem I didn't have

Crew Manifest will let you spawn more Kerbals ( and name them ), at least in sandbox.

Does the red beacon light ( not the nav light ) not do what you want? I don't think you'll have anything seen from more than ~3km without it being a kerbinside static object though.

No, I'll have been flying PA via WASD. Might be right on the easing thing given most of my presets seem to have it at 0.01, I didn't actually pay much attention to what that's for

As in "the pitch surfaces are pointing in the wrong direction given the condition being tested has gone way past the setpoint"... AoA is the obvious one ( well I guess it could be the VS controller sticking, I'm usually too busy trying to rescue the plane before it pitches a-over-t to expand everything ) given it changes a lot more than the others, so maybe it's universal and I've not triggered the others. Or maybe I need to go and redo all my presets, I dunno.

Couple of wierdnesses: * I -think- that enabling a PA hold the first time by typing into the box & clicking the relevant set button isn't actually enabling it until I change the value further ( say, with keys ). I keep forgetting to rigorously check that. * Sometimes the AoA controller seems to be getting stuck, beyond what I'd expect from integer windup... When I've managed to actually reproduce something reliably I'll post how, but maybe you can give anything related a brief once-over at some point.

As has been said, enough to keep a sensible AoA in all the parts of the flight envelope you want to explore. Supersonic stalling is a different process to subsonic, so make sure you're checking the right speeds in all the tabs of the SPH tools. If your wing loading ( that's mass per unit area ) is too high you might also technically be able to fly, but be unable to take off in the available runway ( or land at a sane speed either ). After a little while you'll be able to judge by eye - procedural wing mods help a lot with that. I generally only use the tools when something isn't performing as well as I think it can, other than a brief once-over to see if there's anything grossly wrong.

All great so far haven't tried the categories yet but the rest is looking good. Thanks! Only complaint is the craft list is unsorted.

Just have it show up in the email, even.

You can get solids into 3d studio ( I've never worked with them myself so I don't know how usable any internal conversion to mesh is for an actual model as opposed to rendering ), no idea about anything else I'm afraid.

If so, would I be correct in assuming that the proper way to set this up would be to give the canards some -%AoA? Or am I misunderstanding how that would work? Thanks again for all your help and this truly wonderful mod. As far as I know, not unless the surfaces actually overlap - although if you have a surface right in front of another surface and you stall the front one it appears to stall the one behind it also, so if you are going to use canards it might be an idea to have the main wing piece behind them be it's own strip the width of the canards, that way only part of the wing loses lift. If the canard actually overlaps the main wing then both will be a little less effective. Which leads me to KerbMav's craft; unless those are non-lifting structural panels at the rear you have a biplane section, that's a big no-no.

Yeah - you can stall control surfaces individually of the fixed flight surface they're attached to ( and in fact any aerodynamic device can stall ); stalling spoilers, which for some reason isn't working in current FAR, is a way to get them producing considerably more drag. The reason I suggested putting FAR's tint-stall option on ( it's under the Aero Viz button ) was because I suspected you were stalling the tail surfaces - it sounded like either that or just a lack of control authority, but with the size of your HS that is pretty unlikely. Stalls are dependent on AoA; you can be in a steep dive banked to the right and still stall, it's not about being pointed up and slow.

Sounds like you might be stalling the tail - that's a bit dependent on the shape of the tailplane. Try it with FAR's "light stalling things up" option. I knocked this up quickly with fully moving HS and ailerons, it loops fine if I don't pull up too fast & stall. Incidentally at some point I reduced the size of the main wing & it unloaded some fuel, so I'm a bit confused by that one.