Jarin

Okay, I vaguely copied the plane from the SpaceDock header for a testbed: All tests are performed at mach 0.97; or 345m/s at sea level. Autopilot used to maintain constant flight for consistent readings. Hope that's helpful. Let me know if I can test further. Edit: should state for the record, no FAR or any other mod that modifies atmospheric physics. Edit2: Just noticed, those body segments are getting more lift than your average wing. That might have something to do with it. Maybe I should just make flying fuselages. o.o

I had this happen on a craft with no KAS attachments, but there were mods involved, so I can't claim it as a stock issue with 100% certainty. The setup was making a satellite launcher on minmus using Extraplanetary Launchpads. I had a framework set on the ground, then three upwards-facing 1.5m decouplers with the satellites' engines set on top of them. Two of them launched fine, but the third had gotten itself invisibly strutted to the launcher's girders and wouldn't move. I used KAS to try to fix the problem, but just ended up with a bunch of parts suspended in the air as I detached their (visible) physical connections to the base.

Huh, I must have something borked in my install, since I'm not getting that option. Is this linked to every control unit inherently? Or is it specifically added to stock parts?

I'll give that a shot, thanks! I tried using manual control, but anytime I tried to drag the throttle bar above 0%, it wouldn't actually move. That gives me the right direction to look, though. Ooh, didn't realize you could enable/disable on an action group, where would I find that? And I'll have to look at the Macro guide again once I get the manual mode figured out. Edit: Okay, macros are still baffling, but for the rest... success!

Hey, I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out VTOL aircraft settings. I've dug through the manual, but I must be missing something, so I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction. I've got hovering down just fine. Can zip around KSC and land on whatever I want in various modes, terrain-follow or otherwise. But I can't for the life of me figure out how to make a VTOL craft with forward thrust engines transition to horizontal flight. It either throttles the horizontal engine to zero, or it tries to use it to hover, pointing my nose at a 45 degree angle and balancing on both the lift and thrust engines. How do I configure it to use one set of engines to maintain vertical velocity, and another to accelerate horizontally? Is that possible? At the moment, I'm using TCA for takeoff and landing, then doing an awkward dance of switching it off and taking manual control to transition to horizontal flight. Edit: Simple example craft for what I'm talking about

Fair enough. I just hate how much dV landing and takeoff requires, but yeah, the transfers between Minmus and LKO do take a while, especially if you're being at all efficient; at which point the trip becomes 6-7 days.

Any particular reason? I'm just curious, since I tend to avoid the Mun like the plague.

I'm getting some seriously nasty drag with these parts. Riding at the sound barrier, I'm getting over 400kN of drag on a basic LF fuselage, even though it's supposedly occluded by the cockpit, which is itself getting over 150kN. Note that a Mk2 Mk3 craft built almost identically gets about 12kN on both. I mean, I get that the parts are bigger, but thirty times more drag? Something screwy going on here. I see there was some drag discussion a few pages back, but other than "strap on more broadswords" it doesn't seem to have been resolved.

Oh I know about that. I mean testing drag for the "brownie points" you mentioned from shape. Need to find that variable-weight mod so I have ballast to offset aerodynamic parts for consistent drag testing.

Huh, I was still seeing a lot of "close the intakes for better drag" then. Hadn't heard anything about it actually taking the whole design into account now; just the pointyness of the part at the top of any given stack. Need to figure out some proper testing...

I think most of what's changed is in the drag model, and that's just how the engine deals with pointy bits. Honestly, going through all the conversations and testing in the past month, I think the differences just boil down to "don't bother closing intakes anymore".

Good lord, how would you move it? You'd something bigger than a Whackjob Arkingthad booster to get any kind of orbital shift there.

That unfortunately doesn't fix the fact that all bodies in the system have to have their poles in parallel. You could probably do some interesting and weird stuff with a setup like that, but inclinations are still fixed.

Steering and motor toggles please and thank you.

My vote is for "take 2.5m metal can, desaturate and darken slightly, call it a day"

Out of curiousity, what do you use KAS for? I've never really had much success finding practical use for KAS other than the EVA struts and Pipes. And even those hardly see much use these days. Autostrut mostly deals with the former, and I prefer EVA Resource Transfer pipes for most uses I had for the pipes previously. (KIS on the other hand, I couldn't live without) I mean, in theory, you could make cranes and whatnot to assemble bits and pieces of a base, but when you can survey-build an entire large base in one go, that's less useful. But if you consider it a soft requirement for EL, I suspect you have specific uses in mind, and I would love to get more out of the mod.

I have come to accept that you RO folks are basically playing a different game than I am, and that's great. But there's never going to be crossplay with craft.

Okay, meet the Royal Albatross. As ugly to fly as it is to look at, but it gets an orange tank to orbit without burning a drop of Ox. Lumbers off the end of the runway while still losing altitude, but levels out before hitting the water. Run low and fast to get the rapiers up to speed. Your ideal acceleration profile looks like this: Somewhere between mach 2 and 3, pull up to 10 degrees and leave it there. Kick on the nukes passing 20km. It'll probably bounce, but it gets to orbit eventually. No parachutes because I never have them, but it does come with airbrakes and very sturdy landing gear. Fully stock, but does take advantage of expanded offset limits, so don't try to move those engine pods yourself unless you have the same. --- Like every LF-only craft, this thing's biggest issue (aside from just kinda being a terrible design all around) is lack of TWR. Even one of those tanks having some Ox in them would make it 100% easier to reach orbit, and would probably get there with a ton more dV on the nukes since you wouldn't spend so long in middle atmosphere clawing for speed.

Pretty sure I've got something in this ballpark in the hangar somewhere. Give me a few to check. Like @Rune, most of my distance planes are hybrids. I mean, I'm using RAPIERs for best atmospheric velocity already, so tossing in a bit of oxidizer for that initial kick is an easy choice. "Pure" LF SSTOs become more of a "because I can" exercise. Might have an old whiplash/nuke plane though.

Okay, gotcha. That reduces my comment to a mere nitpick. We want to minimize all forward-facing nodes, regardless of cap. The way you talked about it before, I thought you were implying that using nose cones rather than intakes was preferable. I'm totally onboard with minimizing frontal drag profile.

I'm all for it, as long as the obvious scrap storage issues are addressed (not a huge fan of making MFT required, since I don't typically use it, but I'd deal). Any existing save that would be affected should already have manufacturing in place, so building out the extra scrap processing infrastructure in-place shouldn't be too onerous a task.

No longer true for intakes. Data from testing here shows that shock cones and other intakes are among the least draggy nose components; regardless of open or closed. (for a while the shock cone was apparently better than anything else, but it's now on par with other nosecones) Not that airhogging does you any good anymore, so there's no reason to spam intakes or anything. But they're not something that needs to be avoided, either.

I suspect it's the comparison to the Wheesley, which easily sends a Mk1 plane supersonic. The problem with that comparison though isn't the lack of power in the Juno, it's the lack of other 0.625m parts to make proper ultralight craft with.

The only reason I bother with "all stock" builds is for sharing. If I build something stock, I know anyone can use it. Not everyone likes the Mk2/3 expansion mods, or Near Future, or [insert mod here] since everyone's mod tastes will vary. If I build it stock, it just works.

*snip* Arguments have long since been made and minds aren't going to be changed. There's plenty of ways to enjoy the game, so I'm leaving it alone.