Hodo

The red number is the sideslip stability of the craft at .35mach at sea level. Means your craft is a bit unstable at landing at take off speeds or more accurately will slide sideways a bit at those speeds. Nothing to major, check at different speeds at altitudes.

The trick is smooth transitions from one point to another on your aircraft. Look at most of those aircraft in that challenge or in this thread, and you will see that most of the successful designs are very simple in shape, but yet elegant in their own way. Length will make the area rule number go down, but dont get fixated on that number, you still need to make sure it flies right. So you may have to balance it a bit and have a less than ideal number. Lets look at this one... It has an area rule number of around 1.3, but it can achieve orbit through brute force, and it still flies quite nicely even at lower speeds.

Yes it is compatible with 1.0.4 I and many others are running it without a problem there. - - - Updated - - - Post your output.log or post a pic of the problem please.

Halsfury, I should let you know that there are points missing from my two entries. Both have the ability to pack weapons. The XF-150A can actually carry up to 13 weapons on it not including the gun. The XF-149B1 can carry 9 total. 5 internally and 4 externally, again not including the gun. So the XF-150A should be 26+68=94 And the XF-149B1 should be 48+18=66.

I wasn't comparing it to anything in real life. As far as I know there was a rocket designed that was a SSTO design but never actually used.

Have you tested the combat viability of your craft? Have you mounted a gun, and missiles to it?

The otherside of this is, who says your SSTO has to be a spaceplane design? I have seen some quite amazing tail sitter rocket SSTO cargo haulers that are cheap and reliable and require very little actual player skill to recover back at the KSC. Like I built this ship last year before .24.5 came out. It wasn't able to take cargo but it wasn't designed to. It was designed to take a small team to Minmus and perform science experiments and return to Kerbin and land at the KSC, which it did.

Your "Flying Pencil" was fast, but it was ugly. And barely could be described as a fighter. But it did achieve something that no other aircraft with a basic jet engine, it went mach 2.

I am an avid SSTO spaceplane user. I have built hundreds of them at this point. I have found one big difference between the SSTO spaceplane and the rocket, is startup cost. While rockets are cheaper, they cost more in the long run in KSP. In real life it is almost the opposite. My current fleet of SSTO spaceplanes come in three load ranges. 1-20 tons, 21-60tons, 61+ tons. I havent made a new heavy lifter, as I havent needed one yet. But the medium and light SSTOs I have made and they are very cost affective, initial cost on the medium lifter was about 95k, and operational cost was under 3k. But ultimately it does come down to pilot skill.

I love the B9 Procedural wings... mainly because I can place fuel in them which makes them a lot more useful. I haven't made anything to extravagant lately. This was the last extreme aircraft I made.

That is awesome. But one question. Will this only work with the AGM missiles or will it work with any of the missiles. I hope it will only work with the AGM missiles as that would fit in the realm of reality. Perhaps later we can port the idea over to bombs, like the mod off of your mod that has the JDAMs.

I need to spred some rep around before I give you more! OMG SO AWESOME!!!!!

I wouldn't have thought to do something like that, amazing. I still dont think I would use it for anything other than station construction. I can imagine the size of the stations I could build with that technique. Thanks for sharing that.

Last edited by Halsfury; 12th July 2015 at 14:49. I think it is on the board, has been since the 12th. -FourGreenFields 138.25 points with the P-13 Shrike -FourGreenFields 43.27 points with the P-12 Flying Pencil

Brings to mind.... One part is missing from the current KSP. A tail ramp for loading and unloading cargo from aircraft. B9 has a tail ramp but not stock, which just sucks. And if he were to close it.... well that would be something to see.

You can get away with smaller vertical stabilizers than what Wonderfound has shown. That aircraft is strictly atmospheric and operates just fine with those tiny fins in the back as a tail. Same for this craft... which is a cranked arrow delta wing design. I tend to go with smaller vertical stabilizers because I found the larger ones are not only "ugly" but also cause drag that I would rather not deal with. Both of those last two are different tail designs, one is more of a traditional vertical stabilizer design the other is a more split V tail, like the YF-23. But ultimately the best vertical stabilizer is the one that does its job without causing unwanted side affects.

It hasn't yet... the nodes on most of the parts are off unless you do a cfg edit.

I cant agree more Halsfury. Crisk has a absolute winner right there on his hands, that is one of the best looking aircraft in this challenge. The YF-17 being the other.

Yeah I never use the FAR Flight Assistance toggles. I dont even design my aircraft with them in mind. I use the PID Tuner plugin most of the time but dont design for it. And RocketTurtle my XF-150A is a true V tail design.

I have to suggest you get the PID tuner for FAR. It is handy and fixes a lot of those issues. Flaps work just set them to a much lower angle then FAR sets them when you first set them. I like to have my flaps between 10-15deg of deflection at max setting. And my leading edge slats at no more than 7.5deg, usually they are set around 5deg at most.

Lets see if this works

Here is two videos for you. I watched both of them and they help explain a lot in simplest forms.

Here is the military contract pack. 5dim Military contracts And you need this to install those. Contract Config

The F-35 is a compromise for an aircraft. It is a single engine fighter, with S/VTOL capabilities mach 2 capable and still supercruise. All this and still be stealthy and agile for dogfighting oh and still be cheap to purchase. Much like my XF-149B1, it is just that kind of fighter. Most everyone is going to build a WAY better fighter than that craft, but out of all of them it is one that is most like the F-35 in many ways. I actually love it for that reason. I built it and the XF-150A in my career mode, because I have a budget in that and I like to build on a budget. I actually have since graduated the XF-150A and the XF-149B1 from X status to full F status. I used my XF-150A just yesterday to complete a military contract, which required it to destroy several ground targets on the island airfield. It did it without taking damage and returned to base.

You can go 100% realism at this point and send a craft out to recover the craft. I remember several versions ago I had a VTOL to do JUST that in RO.