capi3101

If you use KIS and KAS, you could always attach a connector port to the underside of your existing plane and equip the surface miner with a winch cable. KAS/KIS would actually save you a number of headaches - the two craft could be up to about eighty meters apart from one another (still a precision landing required but not a precision surface docking) and the needed parts could be attached after the craft are deployed if need be (which would require an engineer with the tools for the job). Only possible downside there is that a Kerbal would be required to go out and plug the damn cable in. It would certainly lend itself well to the notion of an extendable refueling boom. Stock solution - probably what's already been suggested to you.

That largely depends on where you're coming from, but I find that you seldom go wrong with 33-35k. Even if you don't come back down on the first pass, you generally will on the second, and the heat generated in the process is usually survivable. Now, if you want to be sure to get in on the first go around, go 30-33k, but be prepared to lose bits of your craft to heat; ablator or an engine on the end will mitigate that tremendously, of course.

Last night I kicked it off with Bob aboard his Fireball 7a craft on a mission to farm science from Mun. I had landed him the previous night in the Highlands, so I went ahead and cleaned out that biome before moving on to the Highland Craters. Unfortunately, I finally understood that when Geschosskopf said "you need a bigger lander for Mun", he was referring specifically to the gas tanks. Rather than hit six or seven biomes before having to head back to Kerbin, the Fireball only had enough gas to get those two safely. I was able to retrieve Bob before the night was out and he came back with 1,477 science from the two biomes plus the fiddling he did with gravioli scans in orbit prior to landing, which was enough for me to unlock RAPIER engines and the long Mk3 fuel tanks. I'm definitely into the mop-up part of the tech tree at this point; there's not much else there I need to unlock (the 3.5 meter engines are probably the only thing left that I would class as "necessary", especially as I get ready to go to Duna). A redesign of the Fireball for Mun is in order, and now that I have the tech unlocked the time has come for me to finally fix the problems with the Albatross refueling plane. Meanwhile, Theogel returned safely to Kerbin from Minmus aboard the original Project Peacock 7 craft, marking that craft's official retirement and the completion of his rescue contract. Since he was the only engineer available and I had the scratch to do so, he was promptly loaded up into a Wildcat ore-delivery lander and shot towards Mun. The plan is for his craft to dock with Munport when he arrives in two days time, pick up Verise from Munport station and land at the Munar drilling site in the East Crater to begin Munar drilling operations in earnest. Looking at my engineer roster, I seriously need to bring back some engineers from Minmus at this point. Or hire a few, perhaps... Last thing that happened last night was the arrival of Enola Gay at Minmus. She entered orbit retrograde to Minmusport station but that was rectified during her orbital insertion burn, and the craft successfully rendezvoused and docked with the station. Cerxie (the pilot), Jenedith, Neillong, Eldorf and Arissa are scheduled to make a surface excursion this evening (which should fulfill a long-standing Minmus base contract I have yet to fulfill). I've considered setting them down at the Wildcat drilling site so that the Mun Buggy craft can be refitted with a KAS connector port; I don't know if I have the necessary tools at the Wildcat site though, and the Buggy should have sufficient fuel to go down and back easily as it is. Replacement contracts these last few days - I've picked up some "up and down" tourist contracts and at this point I might just launch them all in a relatively low-tech rocket. Going to depend on whether or not I can make a profit by doing so, of course. I have a new Mun space station contract requiring room for seven, a cupola and the usual accouterments; I think my standard space station core covers those requirements but I'll know more once I've got the thing on the pad. The real question there is what to do with the thing once I've got it in place, whether to keep it as a second space station, dock it to Munport or run it into the Munar surface. Finally, I picked up a √900k contract to put a Class C rock in orbit of Minmus. That one just sounded like fun. Plus at this point I've got about √600k and nothing pressing to spend it on - the rest of my drilling hardware is up and en route to its respective destinations, I've got a plane to land and two to tweak, and nothing else going on. I do have five Duna-related contracts in the pipe now, so I may start thinking about how I'm going to go about fulfilling those in the near future.

Wound up at home watching my youngest for most of the day on Friday and he entertains himself well, so I had a fair amount of time to play that day. I began by revising the design of the Sojourner 7 survey probe and launching it to Mun for a contract; I don't need Sojourners for Kerbin's moons at this point, but it still made me a fair chunk of change when I got it into position. I was a might concerned after the launch when it looked like the craft wasn't recharging; I looked at the panels and when they said "Blocked by Mun", I had the notion to go take a look at Kerbol and caught a solar eclipse in progress. After that I launched a quick series of craft in succession, largely supporting mining operations - I began by launching Bob to Mun aboard a Fireball 7b craft to gather science and plant a flag for contract. Next, I launched a Mosquito 7 drilling rig, a refinery base module for Munport and lastly a Midas 7 refinery lander all headed for Mun. I was down to √156k by the end of afternoon play that day. I decided to hold off on launching a Wildcat control and ore-delivery lander for Mun for now, at least until Theogel (an engineer rescued from Minmus) finally arrives back at Kerbin. I plan for him to head for Munport aboard the Wildcat, pick up Verise (the engineer already there), and then land them near the Mosquito to begin drilling ops in earnest. Things started arriving at their destinations during play that evening; I had a proper flotilla arriving at Mun, with the Sojourner probe arriving in Mun's SOI a full ten minutes ahead of the refinery base and then the Fireball arriving at Mun's SOI as those two craft were approaching their orbital insertion burns. The Mosquito and Midas craft also arrived at one hour intervals, as the prior craft was nearing their insertion burns - so I had my hands full there for a while, and was grateful for having KAC to keep everything straight. The arrival of the Midas craft was particularly hair raising, as it happened while the refinery module was on final docking approach with Munport. Speaking of which, I wound up with the refinery base's transfer stage nearly full of fuel, and I made an attempt to dock with it still attached to the craft. Unfortunately, I had no RCS thrusters on it and I couldn't compensate for its mass, so I had to dump it - which I was most certainly NOT happy about seeing as how the Munport station was completely out of fuel. I suppose on the plus side, with the refinery module attached to the Mun it should be able to manufacture its own fuel as soon as I can get some ore up there. I ended play on Friday by finding a suitable landing site for the Mosquito drilling rig and putting it on the Munar surface. Drilling ops on Mun have commenced. I was out of town on Saturday and arrived back in town late Sunday, so not a lot happened over the rest of the weekend. I did go ahead and land Bob to begin gathering surface science, and I landed the Midas lander as close to the Mosquito lander as I could get it. Bit of a botch there - she landed on her side - but given that that the lander is not supposed to take off from Mun, it was an "acceptable" landing. I just hope I won't have the same kind of problems when the Wildcat ultimately begins making delivery runs to Munport... Meanwhile, a Midas lander and refinery module are both en route to Minmus to support mining operations there, as is the Enola Gay craft with its batch of tourists. All of these craft should arrive in the next three days.

Last night began with the Mun Sojourner's resource scan. Mun, as it turns out, is not as good of a place to do mining as Minmus, but there are still some areas on the surface that have concentrations in the 80-90% range, so there is that. I spent the bulk of my playing time last night landing my fully-tourist-loaded Raven 7 spaceplane. Re-entry went well enough, but I had problems sticking the landing; in naval parlance, I committed a "ramp strike" twice on the landward end of the Runway. Took me four tries to get the plane down intact. But, I did ultimately get it down. Fully cleared two tourist contracts in the process and between the six of them made over √500k in one thwack. I also brought home 304 science points from the two surface samples I brought back from Mun aboard the plane. The proceeds immediately went to unlocking the Level 3 Tracking Station - my KSC is now fully upgraded - as well as Large Landing Gear. The Large Gear were immediately fitted aboard my Albatross 7 refueling plane, which I've been fiddling with, and I did finally get it airborne; the plane is too stable and she exhibits some pretty nasty roll characteristics. I'll probably make more tweaks when I unlock RAPIERs; she was designed as a RAPIER plane, so at the lower levels those Turbojets give her excess thrust. A refinery module was launched towards Mun last night, which will be added to the Munport space station. I need to get some basic mining equipment to Mun as soon as I can. I'm not sure if I shouldn't have waited to upgrade the Tracking Station; the equipment I've got for mining is pretty expensive...

Last night began with the Mun Buggy's descent from Munport to the Northwest Crater, with Val, Jeb and Orlie aboard. Naturally I picked a landing zone with greater than ten degrees of grade, so the landing took two tries, but eventually I got the craft down safe. Jeb got out and took a surface sample and EVA report, and planted a flag for good measure; Val also got her flag-planting ticket punched. Everything done, the craft returned to Munport, where Jeb processed the science in the station's lab and then the trio transferred back to Bockscar for the journey back to Kerbin along with the four science experiments (two Jeb gathered plus two from a previous trip). Bockscar successfully returned to the Kerbinport space station, the science was processed there as well, and the three tourists aboard Bockscar were loaded into the Raven spaceplane docked at the station, again along with the four science experiments. That gives me six tourists - Rayny, Ludock, Orlie, Clauca, Tesei and Thomman - aboard the Raven. The craft is at capacity Kerbal-wise with only tourists aboard; good thing there's a probe core installed on the craft. I'm just hoping the Raven doesn't quoth "nevermore" this time around; my last attempt to land one ended poorly, and this time there are three tourist contracts on the line... While Bockscar was heading back to Kerbin, the Carrier Pigeon 7 intermunar tug hauling a new version Project Peacock 7a arrived at Mun and successfully rendezvoused with Munport. The two craft were undocked from one another and subsequently docked seperately to Munport, with the remaining fuel from the Pigeon transferred to the Peacock. Verise was then loaded aboard the Peacock, where I discovered that the tools necessary to repair the Sojourner ore-scanner probe had indeed been loaded aboard. The repair mission commenced at once and was successful; with this set of repairs, my errors in the launch of the first three Sojourner probes have all been rectified, and ore-drilling operations on Mun can commence (finally). Verise then had a pretty hairy return to Munport; the plane changes drained the Peacock's fuel to the point where the craft only had 26 m/s of delta-V remaining on main thrust. The final rendezvous had to be done on RCS thrusters only. Fortunately, the Peacock is a pretty light craft - 6.5 tonnes fully loaded and 4.5 tonnes empty - and has more in the way of RCS thrusters than she probably needs. The craft returned successfully to Munport and docked with about 45% of its monopropellant remaining. The Mun is pretty much out of gas at this point, so the sooner I can set up drilling ops, the better. That may very easily be my next order of business when play next resumes. While all this was going on, Kerbolport 7-3 arrived in solar orbit. I made some moderately serious bux from that - √330k, to be exact. I was offered two contracts to replace that one, a flag planting contract for Mun (which figures since Mun is out of gas at the moment), which I took, and one to transfer 2100 units of ore from Duna to Ike, with a payout of just shy of √1M. I'm still considering that one - considering the infrastructure necessary, I couldn't imagine that one being profitable. And yet...

Last night's activities began with a check of the revised Project Peacock craft en route to Mun to see if it still had the same KAS satellite repair tools as the original design aboard or not (no real reason why it wouldn't - just one of those "peace of mind" things); you can't check that information without a Kerbal in the pod, so I went to Munport to check Verise's supplies (Verise being the chief engineer assigned to the station and Mun SOI in general). Wound up finding some good science in the Mun Buggy from the first group's trip down there, so I went ahead and had Verise process it in the station's lab - it was good for almost 200 data. I'll need to get a scientist up there now to convert that back into science points, and I'll need to deliver it back to Kerbin at the next opportunity. Probably when Bockscar departs in a few days - the craft arrived at Munport last thing last night. Jeb, Val and Orlie have been loaded aboard the station's Mun Buggy and are preparing to make their descent to the surface for contract and XP; that'll happen tonight. Bockscar's arrival at Mun finishes out a contract involving tourists Rayny and Ludock, so I need to return them to Kerbin at the next opportunity. I have three tourists already at Kerbinport ready to make the journey down; the Raven craft will have a full load upon their return. Last night I also tweaked and performed another couple of test flights of the Magpie 7 ore-delivery plane. Tweaks involved moving the wings back, adding fuel, adding a little more to the fin and increasing the size of the ailerons. She's a rough bird to fly - especially once she's on rockets - and likes to sideslip a lot past 30,000m. I don't think she'll be one I can fly without using TAC to set the fuel to pump forward while still on the Runway. That said, the plane did make orbit last night with 105 m/s of delta-V remaining in the tanks. I reverted that flight, so tonight I may make another test flight utilizing TAC to see if that improves matters any at all. If so, a test re-entry and landing will be in order. Still needing to get refinery modules up at both moons of Kerbin; the one for Minmus is en route and should arrive in nine days. Still got a Vulture flight to land, still have Theogel's Peacock to retire. Bunch of stuff going on but a lot of it is in a waiting pattern until I can find sufficient time to play...

Not certain about #1 - I'd have to do research. I do know that all engines don't reach their maximum thrust at sea level; I just don't know why. Probably so they don't produce so much thrust that they tear the plane apart during take off, if I were to guess. #2. You're seeing velocity relative to the surface when the Nav Ball reads "Surface". Now, there's a horizontal and vertical component to that, which you could figure out between the Nav Ball and the Rate of Climb indicator by your altimeter and the Pythagorean Theorem. Or you could install KER and have it tell you... You've got a resources readout that I'm not familiar with. If it was the stock readout, though, you should know that air intake's readings work differently than the other ones. What it shows is how much air is left in an available "pool", which is depleted as you ascend. You don't start starving your engines until that bar gets down to zero, and even then the engines will keep going for a while. Still, 15,000 m is roughly the service ceiling of the J-33; it'll flame out at that point no matter how many intakes you've got on your plane. Looking at your plane, I can see that you're doing something extremely low tech. If I may ask: how were you planning on recovering the pilot after the flight (for that matter, how did you take off without any landing gear)? I'm also not seeing any ailerons - I assume you're controlling that part of your attitude on cockpit torque alone. That could partially explain why you're having issues with the plane. The other big one is drag - those intakes are producing a lot of it. You definitely don't need three intakes for a single engine; I'd suggest cutting the radials unless you need the mass where it is, in which case I'd replace the circular intake with a nose cone. Just be careful where the CoM winds up; you want it aft but not aft of the CoL - if it winds up there, your plane with become flip happy and uncontrollable. Which may also be what's happening, why it spazzes out at 7,000. Your plane is short - there's no other way of putting it - so it's going to be sensitive to where the CoL and CoM are as well as to changes in CoM as the fuel drains. It could be that the CoM is going aft of the CoL at that time. Try draining the tank in the SPH and see where the CoM is, and set the position of the CoL (by adjusting your main wing position) ever so slightly aft of the CoM in that position. "Refuel" and see where things are. #3. The JX-4 won't get you to orbit on its own; you'd have to couple it with a rocket and use action groups to turn them on and off independently of one another. The JX-4 it will get you up to 20,000 and 1,000 m/s, a "launch" point that's a bit closer to space (making the rocket-driven portion of the flight less fuel intensive). And of course the RAPIER switches from air-breathing to rocket mode.

The J-33 "Wheesley" Basic Jet Engine won't go over Mach 1. That's by design - if you're actually getting 330 m/s with it, you're doing pretty good. But you can't expect better with it - if you want to go to orbit, get the JX-4 "Whiplash" Turbo Ramjet Engine at a minimum. The CR-7 R.A.P.I.E.R. Engine will also get you to orbit. Air intake isn't going to matter much - these days the rule is 1 intake per engine, doesn't matter what size. Anything more is wasted mass. If you want to be sure about how much air is getting to which engine and you're okay with mods, try Intake Build Aid. Otherwise, you're going to have to slap your intakes and engines on one at a time (intake first, then engine) to ensure even distribution. Do it any other way and one engine will hog most of the air while the rest struggle to get by, and you'll wind up with asymmetric thrust. Now, as for having problems once you get past 7k, that's going to be design and flight profile dependent. I'm guessing you're overly stable, but let's see your plane just to be sure.

I had a very busy weekend. Took screenies and everything; naturally I've made it to work this morning without the screenies... On Friday night I designed a booster for the Midas 7 IRSU lander and launched the craft successfully; it will arrive at Minmus in twelve days, full four days behind Enola Gay, which means that Jeb and his tour group aboard will have to wait a bit before they can head back to Kerbin - giving them plenty of time for a surface excursion. Midas turned out be one expensive bugger - at over √200k - so I'm hoping I won't have to send up another one when my Mun operations get underway; on the other hand, she'll add a great deal of capabilities to the Wildcat drilling site on Minmus when she arrives in terms of storage and power production, not to mention fuel production. Meanwhile, I sent up a Vulture 7 refueling plane to rendezvous with Bockscar, which had ran out of gas over Kerbin in a stable orbit. The rendezvous and refueling was successful, and ultimately Bockscar arrived successfully back at Kerbinport to refuel and reload a new tour group. Cerxie and her tour group aboard Bockscar are now headed towards Mun, where they are scheduled to dock at Munport and make a surface excursion before returning to Kerbin. Finally, I sent Theogel back to Kerbin from Minmusport aboard the Project Peacock craft docked there. Originally the idea was for him to head to Kerbinport and take a Raven flight back down to the surface with three tourists, but I'm thinking about retiring the design of the original Project Peacock at this point owing to later events that happened over the weekend. Saturday was spent in a frustrating attempt to get a couple of plane designs working. I began designing the Albatross 7, my first Mk3 sized aircraft. She was designed as a tanker, a scaled-up version of the Vulture. I came to the conclusion during the test flights that I need to wait for some more tech before she can become operational; she's a heavy bird and I don't have the large gears unlocked yet, so almost all of the test flights all ended with the craft wheelbarrowing and crashing. The one time she rolled off the Runway to the left I was able to get her airborne, but she promptly lawn darted into the drink - too stable. Finally, she was designed with RAPIERs in mind, and I don't have RAPIERS unlocked. So yeah, a lot of work to be done there. I also began tweaking the Magpie 7 ore carrier plane design in the hopes of alleviating her pitch-up tendencies. Pretty much I just increased the sweep on her main wing, which helped somewhat. She wasn't loaded with enough fuel to make orbit, and during the descent I accidentally sent all her excess oxidizer aft instead of forward like I'd intended; by the time I realized my mistake, she was out of control and down she went into the drink. I also made the mistake on that one of hitting the "space center" bar instead of the "revert flight" bar, so that one wound up costing me some bux - which I was NOT happy about... Sunday was spent doing some more fun stuff. I began by designing the Carrier Pigeon 7, which was designed specifically to increase the range of Project Peacock craft. I realized shortly after I put the first one into orbit and docked it at Kerbinport that the Peacock would have to be redesigned so that the Pigeon wouldn't have its center of mass off-balance with a Peacock attached. The Peacock design was updated and a new capsule launched to Kerbinport, where the Pigeon undocked from the station and docked with the Peacock; the combined craft is now en-route to Mun, where it will act as an emergency "lifeboat" for any future rescue contracts over Mun. I also undocked Bockscar from the station with Val as a passenger - she had lost her XP rating in the Raven accident two weeks ago, and I figured she could stand to do a Mun landing to get it back. I'll send her down with the tourists and pray she doesn't strand them on the Munar surface (which she has an annoying tendency to do); right now almost all of my engineers are deployed to Minmus. I also successfully launced a Beep-Beep 7 probe to a polar orbit for contract (after two failed Ballista flights), and launched another space station towards Kerbolar orbit for contract; that one will exit Kerbin's SOI in two days, and will make me √300k when it gets out there. That station might get picked up by Eve at some point as well. As of this morning, I've got √170k, 69% rep and all buildings at KSC fully upgraded except for the Tracking Station at Level 2. I'm 7080 science points short of having the entire tech tree unlocked.

Glad I could be of help, and thanks for the rep.

I had a sneakin' suspicion that you might be... A couple of ways - stock, you just drain out all the fuel from your plane in the SPH and see where it goes. If you're okay with mods, install RCS Build Aid; it has a marker that will show you the DCoM.

For questions like this one, you might try the Official FAR Craft Repository thread; you'll be more likely to receive a (useful) response. That said, lemme look at your imgur album and edit later... EDIT: Where's your CoM in relationship to the CoL when the tanks are dry? Craft isn't area ruled at all, either; those are some nasty pressure crests right there on the leading edges of the wings and that alone could explain the behavior you're seeing. Forgive me for asking, but do you happen to be a newcomer to FAR? If so, I can give you some more pointers. Probably on the other thread, though.

The page I linked yesterday deals with Dutch Roll a good deal. Looking at the design history of the two RL planes specifically mentioned on that page that had notably bad Dutch Roll tendencies - the Boeing 707 and the KC-135 - would give you some clues as to how to fix the problem design-wise; the long and the short of it boils down to increasing yaw stability (the ß parameter) with MOAR FIN (the fin surface area I usually go for is 10% the area of the main wing, if you need a working guideline). And then that page I linked will tell you how an RL pilot would handle the Dutch Roll on your existing design (it's down at the bottom).

Yeah, I wasn't thrilled about that one - coming back to find my ore tanks full but my wallet still almost empty, and having to dump out a full half of it. Why didn't I just convert the ore to fuel, some of you may wonder? I needed the money from the ore-mining contract to pay for the converter I would've needed to send out there. Why not send more storage tanks? Same reason...

Last night's activities began with a WTC moment, as KSP refused to load up my current game. Turns out that if you crack open a persistence file, the first word in it is "GAME"; KSP won't load the thing if all it says is "E". Did something the other night when I looked through the thing for my ore contract. A quick "GAM" on the keyboard and I was back in business. So once I got into the game, I tasked myself with returning my two Stratofortress 7a "atomic bomber" craft - Enola Gay and Bockscar - to the Kerbinport space station. The Gay, holding Cerxie and her tour group coming back from Mun, arrived back at Kerbinport without any major issues; she was able to dock, refuel and swap out tour groups. Cerxie is now on her way to Minmus, where her tour group is scheduled to dock with the Minmusport space station and transfer to the Mun Buggy for a surface excursion for contract. Bockscar was another story; Jeb and his group of tourists came in a full 100 degrees off the plane of Kerbinport's orbit, and it took most of the craft's remaining fuel supply just to realign the orbits. After eight aerobraking passes, Trajectories was predicting the ship would enter atmo for good on its next pass, so I went ahead and circularized. The ship is out of gas now in a 264 x 94 orbit around Kerbin. I plan on sending up a Vulture flight to rendezvous with and refuel the craft this evening if I have time to play. I also finally figured out what was going on with that ore mining contract - you actually have to be present while the ore is harvested in order for it to count, apparently. So I wasted 1200 units of ore by dumping it out of Wildcat's storage tanks and let the drill work at filling the tanks back up while I watched in timewarp. This morning I am √350,000 richer, which oughta be enough for me to get some refineries up and running at Minmus, and maybe take care of some smaller contracts in the interim. Current plans - aside from the planned Vulture flight, I want to send a fuel pod to Minmusport so that the refinery module will have a place to put refined fuel as it comes in. Both Munport and Minmusport need refinery modules installed. I still need to tweak the Magpie 7 ore-delivery plane and put a booster on the Midas 7 refinery lander. I want to redesign the Project Peacock 7 craft for interlunar flights; it's not really designed for that and it's consistently arriving at the moons with only about 300 m/s of delta-V remaining, which is a low margin for space station rendezvousing. I need to get Theogel from Minmusport back to KSC to round out his rescue contract, and I've got three tourists at Kerbinport that need to come back down to finish out their itineraries. Finally, I'm considering a replacement for the Vulture refueling plane; it's an excellent design but it does have one drawback - the amount of fuel it delivers, which is equivalent roughly to an X200-16 tank, or enough fuel to refill a Stratofortress completely in two trips. It might finally be time to venture into the Mk3 spaceplane realm... Sitting with about 90% of the tech tree filled in, √505k and all buildings at KSC at Level 3 with the exception of the Tracking Station as of this morning.

Had a relatively busy night with a lot of rendezvousing and docking going on. The first thing I did was to check the Kerbinport space station's available fuel supply anticipating the return of Jeb and company aboard Bockscar. The station had plenty of fuel; I did do some rearranging of the tanks, which allowed me to cut lose the final booster stage from the station's core and de-orbit it. That oughta save me on the part count once Bockscar arrives; Stratofortress 7a craft like Bockscar aren't exactly light on part count... The fuel pod I sent to the Munport station arrived successfully; I used the remaining fuel from its transfer stage to refuel the Mun Buggy lander already docked there, and then jettisoned the transfer stage and de-orbited it. Later on, I finally got the Stratofortress craft I had sent to Mun in orbit and docked to the station, picking up Cerxie and crew from Munport (they had delivered the buggy out there but needed a different ride to get home; I missed getting the Stratofortress in orbit on the first attempt due to hardware-related foul-ups on my box). Since it's now crewed, it was time to give the craft a name, and so I named the craft after what's probably the most infamous member of the 393d Bombardment Squadron - Enola Gay. As I had anticipated, she had arrived very low on gas owing to the extra maneuvers needed to get her back to Mun; the fuel pod is now almost empty. I will send Enola Gay and her crew back to Kerbinport tonight, and then it's definitely time to look into getting my Mun ore mining operations set up. Speaking of mining operations, the Wildcat 7 mining rig on Minmus crossed the 2050 ore threshold needed to fulfill its lucrative contract last night. For some reason, though, I didn't get paid; the ore tanks are completely full - 2400 units worth - but the persistence file says I've only extracted just short of 600 units from Minmus. I'm still trying to figure that one out; if anybody has had a similar experience or ideas about what I can do about it, I'd like to know. I really need the money from that contract at this point. I was also able to get the Minmus Mun Buggy craft docked to Minmusport, despite its initial orbit being in the opposite direction of the station. While I was fooling around with getting that craft dock, I sent the Project Peacock craft docked an Minmusport on a mission to rescue Theogel from a higher Minmus orbit. The two missions resulted in near-simultaneous rendezvous, but I was able to manage them both successfully; the Mun Buggy is now docked to Minmusport, and Theogel was able to return to Minmusport aboard the Peacock (again, despite the fact that the craft were orbiting in opposite directions). I'll send Theogel back to Kerbin on the next available flight; in the meantime, I've got an extra engineer to help with mining operations over Minmus. Jeb and company aboard Bockscar return to Kerbin from Minmus tomorrow; getting them docked to Kerbinport and swapping out the ship's passengers for the next run to Minmus will be part of my activities this evening, again assuming that I have sufficient time to play.

I've used the simulation tab for reals my own self. It uses the principles described on this web page regarding aircraft stability. The sim tab is for testing dynamic stability (whereas the derivatives tab tests static stability), and I have had instances where I had green static numbers across the board and still wound up with a divergent oscillation on the sim. Doesn't take much to use the sim tab - just grab the derivative values for the speed and altitude for which you're having problems, then switch over and start plugging in numbers into the sim; a value of 1 is usually sufficient to test a given axis, and I usually check the axes one value at a time. If you see a divergent pattern, that's something that needs to be fixed. ß and W are the ones you really need to keep your eyeballs on, in my experience.

Myself, I fly FAR, so my advice may not be all that great. I have had great success with a combination of a single Turbojet and a pair of Aerospikes - which in FAR, is sufficient for a plane up to thirty tonnes. In stock, that setup will get you about half that - about fifteen tonnes. I've heard it said that you want somewhere in the neighborhood of 1800 m/s of delta-V for the rocket portion of the flight (to make sure you can get up there, fool around a bit and still have sufficient fuel to de-orbit), and the rocket engine you pick will have a huge bearing on how much plane you can have that's not gas. At a vacuum Isp of 340, the Aerospike offers a good balance of thrust (which you want for that part of the flight), small size, relatively low mass and high efficiency; I can get it to space on 12.5 tonnes of fuel. Only downside is the lack of gimbal, so you have to be a little more careful about how you go aligning them. I've also had success with Thud engines before instead of Aerospikes. I do have access to RAPIERs in my current save game; I haven't really tried using them due to their lower thrust as compared to a Turbojet at takeoff.

Spent my time last night designing. Up first was the design of a converter-lander craft, which I ultimately dubbed the Midas 7. I went ahead and tested the design of the lander on the launch pad last night and so far it looks like the thing should work just fine. She should be able to launch, transit to Kerbin's moons and land all under its own power; at over 3500 m/s of on-board delta-v I'm thinking the design could be utilized for outer planets as an orbital platform as well. Only problem there - she uses KAS connector ports, not docking ports, which is not insurmountable. I still need to go ahead and design a booster for it but with the payload mass (just shy of fifty tonnes) that's a pretty trivial exercise, especially given how far along I am up the tech tree. I probably won't be able to launch it until I'm in a spot where I need it, though; I still haven't collected on that √350,000 contract for Minmus ore miining yet and at this point I'd probably need the cash first... My second design of the night was the Magpie 7: She's designed to be able to haul down loads of ore from LKO. FAR was telling me she'd have pitch-up tendencies, and naturally FAR was right; I only had time for one test flight last night but it ended spectacularly, with the plane completely disintegrating around 13k and 500 m/s from a quick pitch-up while trying to keep the plane's attitude steady. The basic numbers of the plane's desired wing area, wing loading and aspect ratio are correct, so I'm thinking my first bit of corrective action will be to give more sweep to the main wing as well as the tail to try and bring that CoL back a bit. I'm thinking the design will need more fuel before its all said and done as well; I'm still about eight tonnes shy of the FAR single-Turbojet recommended limit and the back tank is dry in that screenie, so I've got some room to maneuver there. Tweaks to the plane are on the agenda for this evening; like I said, she's only had a single test flight, which was going well up until the sudden ending... Other planned activities for the evening - I plan on using the Project Peacock 7 craft docked at Minmusport to go rescue Theogel from Minmus's orbit, continue harvesting ore from Minmus, and possibly launch a few probes for contracts. All dependent upon how much time I'll have tonight, and I imagine tweaks to the Magpie will take up more time than I suspect. One last screenie before I go - the Old Coot 7: This is my new rescue plane design, the one I used to pick up Seandard from Kerbin's orbit the other day; this particular screenie was taken at the end of Bob's unauthorized joyride the last test flight.

In addition to what's been suggested already, you might try (if you've got it available) switching from the LV-T30 to LV-T45. The T45 has gimballed thrust while the T30 doesn't; in my experience, rockets equipped with the T45 are loads easier to control. The other thing I could suggest is setting it up to where the top fuel tank drains last; you can manually pump fuel from the bottom tank to the top tank while the flight is ongoing, or get a mod such as TAC Fuel Balancer to handle that for you. Keeping the fuel pumped forward keeps your mass forward, which will tend to keep the right end pointed towards space.

Had a relatively busy night last night (and today's been busy too - can't believe it's 2:30 local and I'm just now getting to the KSP forums today). Last night my Mun Buggy arrived in orbit of Minmus. Unfortunately, the craft wound up in a retrograde orbit relative to the Minmusport space station, but as I have plans to land the craft (it satisfies the conditions of a high-paying Minmus base contract), I'll probably just land it and have it head on to the station from there. I'll just have to dump the transfer stage and lose the extra fuel that was in it instead of hauling it to the station as a spare supply like I'd originally intended. Meanwhile, I finally figured out what happened to the Stratofortress 7a that I'd launched to Mun the other day, and apparently promptly forgotten about until after it had left Mun's SOI. My computer has an annoying tendency sometimes to click twice when I meant to click once, and when you're deleting KAC alarms, sometimes it gets something it shouldn't - which is annoying but not troublesome unless I don't actually catch it (which is what happened the other day). I figured this out because it happened again...luckily this time I was paying attention and promptly restored the alarm. I made a burn that will slingshot the Stratofortress around Kerbin and back to a Mun intercept in four days. The maneuver did short the craft on fuel, so to compensate I took the time last night to launch a fully-loaded fuel base to rendezvous with the Munport space station. It will arrive in about a day-and-a-half - well ahead of the Stratofortress - which should enable Jeb and company to finally go home once the craft finally gets there. I also launched a Raven spaceplane to haul passengers to Kerbinport, and another Sojourner probe around Kerbin to try and pick up a polar-orbiting satellite contract. The passenger delivery went well; the plane is still docked to the station ready to take folks back down when I've got a load ready to go. The Sojourner's mission was a partial success; though I launched at the wrong time and wound up with nowhere near enough fuel to put the satellite into the correct plane, I did still wind up in a polar orbit, so I took the opportunity to scan Kerbin for ore. I'll make a fresh attempt to fulfill the satellite contract later. Meantime, I know that Kerbin definitely ain't the place to be doing any mining, y'all... Mining of Minmus is still going well. The planet went into night but it turned out my combined Wildcat/Mosquito craft had sufficient battery power available between them to carry the craft through to dawn. At this point, about 1600 units of Ore have been mined from Minmus; another 500 or so and I collect on a contract worth over √300,000. Definitely looking forward to finishing that up. I had been considering sending out a refinery module to the site so that enough Ore could be refined into fuel so that the full Wildcat craft could make a delivery to Minmusport; I have yet to make any further plans there, though. Right now I'm sitting at about √158k, with every piece of KSC upgraded except for the Tracking Station and that upgrade as a short-term goal. I still need to do some sci-mining on Mun and get started with the process of Ore mining there as well, but that mission is also rapidly approaching on the horizon, and then I turn my attention to Duna and Ike again.

A CoL located below the CoM will also cause instability/greater maneuverability. In that particular case, the plane will have a tendency to want to fly inverted. That's probably tolerable in the upper atmosphere, but for landing, well......

Usually when that happens, it's because your CoM has shifted too far aft as your fuel has drained. To diagnose the problem, empty out all the fuel from your tanks in the SPH and see where it winds up. Or you can install a mod called RCS Build Aid; it has a "dry center of mass" marker that does pretty much the same thing. Check to see where the CoM is when the tanks are dry; if it's aft of your CoL, there's your problem. If not, we can work further through the diagnostic process.

Had a reasonably productive weekend. Friday night was spent redesigning the Old Coot 7 rescue plane (the one I was working on Thursday in which I made the mistake of ignoring my FAR design formulas). Bob snuck on board for the test flights; fortunately the redesign went well, and I had a successful launch, re-entry and landing. The design has a few bugs - it gets some pretty wicked Mach Tuck in the low trans-sonic and its not well area-ruled, but I still felt comfortable certifying it as "Kerbal-rated: generally non-splody", and used the plane on Saturday night to successfully retrieve Seandard from Kerbin's orbit. I took a screenie of the Coot to show y'all; unfortunately I forgot to post the thing, so it'll have to wait until later. Saturday also saw the final arrival of the Ballista 7 probe at Minmus as well as the Minmusport station. I ended the night by launching a Stratofortress 7a towards Mun - this last flight was a moderate disaster, as I neglected to forgot to set the alarm to put the thing in Mun orbit and didn't catch it until it was already out of Mun's SOI on its way back to Kerbin. I did a burn so that the thing would at least swing around the planet; I'll attempt another rendezvous later. With the arrival of Minmusport, Bill in his Project Peacock 7 could finally get underway with repairs to the Sojourner 7 survey probe. First part of that was to rendezvous with the newly-established space station to refuel; that was a touch tricky, but Bill did affect a successful rendezvous and docking - with 20 m/s of delta-V to spare. With the tanks topped off, he maneuvered to rendezvous with the probe, switching from an equatorial orbit to a polar one. Rendezvous was pretty standard and uneventful, and he was able to maneuver the Peacock within 10 meters of the probe. Then it was EVA time - having been equipped with extra EVA fuel, a screwdriver and his precious payload (a Communotron 16 antenna), he affected a successful repair of the probe, got back into the Peacock and then headed back to Minmusport, successfully docking with the station a second time. Sojourner was finally able to scan Minmus for ore; good landing sites were logged and the Mosquito 7 drilling lander was placed on the surface to begin drilling operations. The Wildcat 7, which held most of the ore tankage for the contract mission, then affected a landing next to Mosquito. That was a bit hairy (as are all close-proximity surface landings), but Wildcat eventually set down within twenty meters of Mosquito and the two craft were connected by winch cable. At the close of business last night, 400 units of ore had been extracted from Minmus; the goal is 2100 units. I'm thinking that at this point I need to add both refinery and fuel modules to the Munport and Minmusport stations - the two outposts would become relatively self-sufficient at that point, or at least could act as fully-functional fuel depots if nothing else. A refinery lander for the Wildcat rig might also be useful; right now I'm forecasting that Wildcat will only have about 500 m/s of delta-V when it's fully loaded and whether or not she'll be able to affect a rendezvous with Minmusport is in question. Jeb arrived with his tourist group at Minmus as well this weekend; since his group only wanted flybys, they're already headed back to Kerbin and should arrive in about six more days. I've got a new batch of tourists ready to take up to Kerbinport at this point; the station only has one occupant at the moment, so I'll probably attend to that later today if I get a chance.