Hodo

The RAPIER will work on air breathing if you keep it fast. I found bringing the pitch angle down to 10deg at around 12km and just going for brute speed at that point will get you to about 27km before it will switch over.

Thank you for the compliments, I love the B9 mod the SABRE engines in it are not over powered as many people think. They are a bit like the RAPIER engine, but bigger. I don't think there is a SSTO variant on that challenge.

B9 is not updated for .23 yet. So I would wait. I managed to get my SABRE engines working but it took some work.

All I did today was fix my SABRE engines so they work in .23.

It is, it has something to do with the GUI icon that shows up in the SPH/VAB.

yeah.. unfortunately it was the only way I could get it to work. EDIT- I put everything back the way it is, I can get the Sabre-S to work but it is 1.25m so is an easy trade for the RAPIER. But the SABRE-M is much harder and I don't have the patience to mess with it tonight.

Well I got B9 Sabres working... I basically changed out the entire file with the information and model for the RAPIER, then changed the values of the engine to that of the SABRE. Sorry for it being dark. I am going to attempt to scale it up for the SABRE-M. At least I will have Sabres till Bac9 fixes this.

You haven't been in Kentucky on a mid August day have you? I think we are arguing the same point just from different angles.

I had a different graphic issue... like the model for the sabre was gone, it was a glowing blob at the back of the craft in the place of the engine.

Actually tracks aren't to bring the road with you, they are to reduce the ground pressure footprint of the vehicle thus making it less likely to bog down in loose terrain. This is why the T-34/76 performed so much better than the Panzerkampfwaggen MkVIE Tiger on the eastern front. Because the T-34/76 had a wider track, and had a MUCH lower pounds per square inch, than the Tiger tank. Which lead to the Tiger getting bogged down in muddy situations, and allowing the T-34 to basically drive over that same mud and snow. This is also why the M4 Sherman performed so much better than the A-13 Crusader, or the M3 Lee/Grant. In the US Army they teach us not to slam on the breaks because it will rip up the asphalt, not because the vehicle will tip over. Maybe if you are in the lunchbox with tracks M113, but not in an Abrams.

Thanks it actually does. I think I am getting close... I can get the mesh back in game so it is there, but now it is using BOTH modes at the same time... oh you want to talk about overpowered...

I was able to fix the SABRE-S so that it worked in .23. But I had a problem, when I did the fix I lost the model. It was a glowing block at the back of the aircraft, but it worked perfectly even autoswitched like the new RAPIER. Granted I did just copy and paste then adjusted the values back to the SABRE S values in the .cfg file. The problem lies in the .mu file which I don't know how to access.

Otherwise it is fine. Maybe Squad has a plan for it to start to use oxidizer as the airflow drops below 100% to boost the air intake for the airbreather before it gets below a certain pressure level. I think that is what the real SABRE does anyway.

I land at about that speed on some of my craft. It isn't that bad.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/62142-23-and-Mods This thread is a ongoing list of plugins that are or are not working with .23 currently.

Landing with FAR is much like real life. You have to find your stall speed and land just a hair faster than that. The best way to find out what your landing speed is, is to take your take off speed, the speed at which your plane actually leaves the ground and subtract 5m/s. This is a pretty safe number to start at and work your way down from there. Really aerodynamic craft, that dont produce much drag have problems with stopping, so this is why I use flaps and airbrakes as much as possible for my "slick" craft. You may also have a REALLY high power to weight ratio making it difficult to find that engine balance point for landing. I had this problem with one of my Mach 6 aircraft, it would not slow down quickly for landing, so I would start my landing approach over the ocean to the west of KSC and idle the engine until I hit the mountain range west of KSC, then go one tick on the throttle till final approach. Then I would glide it in from there. And even then it's landing speed was around 200m/s.

You can still use the B9 struts, they are in B9. They have the strength of an I-Beam but are invisible so they work great for wings, and cargobays.

In the past, like it was that long ago, if you wanted to make a SSTO space plane you could do it with a single turbojet engine, 3 RAM intakes, and a LV-909. And that was pushing it to get it to 70km x 70km. Now you can do it with a single RAPIER, 1 RAM intake, and no other engines. Seeing the problem, it is the drop in air needed that bothers me. Every other jet engine flames out at around 90% airflow on the FAR readout, or .1 on the air intake in KSP. Now the RAPIER flames out or switches over at 49%, which is REAL low compared to any other airbreather out there.

B9 is broke currently, SABREs don't work at all.

The reason they feel overpowered to me is because of their ridiculously compact size. The SABRE which is what the RAPIER is modeled off of, is almost 6 times as long and when used as a complete unit with the nonfunctional precooler and intake you have a unit that is almost 7.5m long! The RAPIER I can slap a .5m long tank between it and the RAM intake and it total be about 1.5m in length and weigh less than the previously mentioned combo, and it has fuel as opposed to the SABRE which does not. They do have some drawbacks but not many. They don't generate the power of the turbojet, but who cares when they keep producing power well past mach 5.5. Not only this but they also can operate at 100% throttle well after the air intake flow has dropped to 50% of the required air to keep it running on jet mode. In some applications that can be as much as 6km in altitude or 500m/s d/v. When B9 gets fixed I will compare the two on one of my test craft (the X series). But I also never really liked using the SABRE, it just felt like a cheap way to get to space. I used them because they cut parts count down, and there is no large 2.5m jet engines.

I took a look at the cfg files for the RAPIER and the SABRE-S to see if I could find a difference. Other than some wording changes there is no difference in the cfg files. But I am no programmer, just a automotive tech who used to shoot people.

FAR and DRE dont use much ram. RT2 uses a bit. As long as you avoid B9, KW, NOVAPunch, and Mechjeb, your fine. The last 4 are memory hogs, but B9, KW, and Nova can all be reduced to a manageble level by using the texture reduction plugin. If you can build a 400 part ship you can run FAR and DRE on that rig.

I find the use of mainsails and skippers to be situational. I would never put them on a 12ton craft, but they work great as VTOL engines on my larger 100-250ton SSTOs. And your ISP doesn't amount to a hill of beans if you have 400 smaller engines doing the same job one large engine will do at half power.

The overheat I am sure is from Deadly Re-Entry (DRE). I would consider getting FAR at the very least, it will help with aircraft design, they will behave and work like real planes. I also suggest DRE, as it makes atmospheric work harder, trust me landing on Eve was no picnic with the re-entry heat. FAR makes impractical rocket designs and plane designs not work... well not work well. So most asparagus launchers and massive intake spam hogs just dont work right in FAR. They create to much drag and often do interesting flips before flying apart. But let me warn you.... IF you get FAR, you will want DRE, then KJR, then RT2.... and the next thing you know you have as many plugins as I do. All mine are listed in my sig.

The firespitter mod fixes the issues with cargobays, and other moving parts. But does not fix the SABRE engines which don't work at all currently.