Hodo

Because I had a Realism overhaul failure, and I am back on a stock sized Kerbin I decided to design the AV-8A Harrier Jumpjet look alike.

I can't recommend Navyfish's Docking camera plugin, it is great on so many levels and should be integrated into the stock game.

Looks like bulk of the Starfish is B9 parts, there is some KAS in there, and the tracks mod, I can't remember the name of it.

My J-10 Vigorous Dragon, knock off. F-3 Dragon And my P-3 Orion knock off, the P-1 Cyclops

Still doesn't explain why the engines are losing power. When the pressure is over 200kpa and the velocity is well over 600ms, the engines should not lose power.

With the stock sized Kerbin I can launch a brick into space using a ramjet and enough SRBs.

Awesome, good to know then MJ drag reading is off. As it said I was only generating a few hundred mm/s of drag.

Thrust is greater than drag, aircraft was not accelerating, that is the problem. Did you even bother looking at the album or are you just talking out of your fifth point of contact? I understand how aircraft work, I understand how thrust vs weight vs drag works. It is the same principle in auto racing, and I have built sub 8second in the quarter mile cars.

If you look through the album I posted, the 5th picture I posted, the aircraft is making 300+kn of thrust from the ramjet engines, but it is actually slowing down. When in fact it should be going faster because of the power generated by the engines.

BTW Ferram4, Love the new version, the compression forces and speed settings was really needed!!!!!

Here is the pictures I said I would post. I think I figured out the ramjet, but it still doesnt fell right. The first aircraft is a larger aircraft but should still operate quite well with the ramjet engines. Unfortunately it does not, it loses power to the ramjets as soon as I switch off the J93 jet engines. The second aircraft is the only one that works with the Ramjet engine, but it seems to be limited at mach 4.4-4.5. I maybe able to get it to go faster if I went higher, but the engine does not produce enough power to climb under the ramjet engine alone.

Camlost, I am aware of that, the aircraft is not a Boeing 747, not even close. According to the FAR and Mechjeb, it generates very little actual drag. The cd on it is low, real low, but not manned missile low. The issue I am having is the RAMJETs are creating over 100kn of thrust at the time of switch over, which is according to MJ at a TWR of 1.01:1 for the aircraft. It should by all accounts it should continue to accerlate, but instead it starts to slow down and lose power. The aircraft is flying mostly level, with a 500mm/s rate of climb (yes that is milimeters a second). Instead of continuing to push past mach 3, it suddenly starts to lose power and slow down. When I get home I will post pics of the craft and let you figure it out.

Thats pretty awesome right there. I am running full RO with Pwings and AJE, FAR,DRE and havent had that happen yet. But I also removed KJR because I was having problems with my craft just falling apart before they even launched.

So I have a quick question. Is it possible with the Real Earth Solar System mod in the RO to place the old island base and old KSC next to the Kennedy Space Center?

B9 cargo bays still work.

AndreyATGB, Yeah I imagine it would accelerate fast, that is a sub 10 ton aircraft with an engine that cranks out over 200kn of thrust. Camlost, did some more testing last night. This time on the RAMJET. Built an aircraft that runs 2 J93s as its primary engines and 2 RAMJETs as its secondaries. Took off with all 4 engines on, the RAMJETS kicked on at .3mach as expected. Climbed to 11km altitude proceded to accelerate to mach 2.5, where I turned off the J93s, at that point the RAMJETs started to lose power and the craft began to slow down, only making it worse the RAMJETs continued to lose power till I hit .3 mach where they just turned off. If you are using ramjets on an aircraft and it is going mach 2.5 shouldnt it be going fast enough for the ramjets to generate enough power to continue to accelerate on their own at that point? I was doing this test to see if using RAMJETs in place of SABREs is a more practical application for lower altitude acceleration of a space plane. The current issue I am having with a SSTO space plane with the Realism Overhaul and AJE is the SABREs burn WAY to much fuel just accelerating to mach 4. And they die at mach 4.5, when they should continue to make power up to mach 5, as that was the Skylons switch speed.

You have a couple of options for this. I also run FAR+DRE amoungst other mods. The thing is you will need struts or run Kerbal Joint Reinforcement by Ferram4, same guy who does FAR. But it is still recommended you strut things that do not have a solid contact point or are load bearing objects. You can avoid the heat by flying higher, around 20-25km you will avoid most of the thick atmosphere with the stock Kerbin scales. My maching bird challenge craft I build sometime ago flew around 22km and did 2201m/s or Mach 6+ without air hogging and burning up. The other option is to edit your parts cfg files and increase their heat resistance.

I have made 2 working SSTOs under RSS already, but none with the AJE mod. I hadn't had the time to really try till recently. Right now I am doing some test flights to see how the engines have changed what their peaks are, and how they respond at different speeds and altitudes. The biggest thing I can take from most of the air breathing jets is they overheat instantly at any speed beyond mach 4. So may have to start adding more airbrakes to my typical SSTO design just to get them to slow down enough to switch to air breathing engines. This is the X-4 it was the first SSTO with RSS for me. And this is the X-6 the second SSTO with RSS. Both worked fine, but I needed to refine them a bit more but stopped after a few days of designing because life happened. When I got back to it I decided to give your mod a re-try, and went full realism down to the actual Earth Solar system.

So I finally figured out AJE, jet engines, and made a single stage to space plane..... Still working on the orbit part. But using the B9 SABRE-M and that is it, I was able to get it to mach 5.1 before and and altitude of 24-26km (Realism Overhaul with real sized Kerbin/Earth) before I had to switch to closed cycle and blow the craft to space. The trick is not burning up on climb out. It maxed out at an altitude of 141km before it began its decent back to Earth. But I figured out with a few tests before the craft attempted to go to space. Engine power on the SABRE and the RAMJET are based on airpressure more or less. Using Mechjeb to read the velocity, and FAR to read the air pressure in kpa, I was able to watch the engine power change as the aircraft went higher but not faster. The air pressure dropped so the power of the engines dropped even though the aircraft never really slowed down. Once the aircraft accelerated and increased the air pressure on the front of the aircraft the power increased on the plane. Thus making it increase power, almost in some cases to the extreme. (NOTE do not put 4 SABRE-M engines on the back of something that only weighs 45tons)

I used KAS. Kerbal Attatchment System It is for wenches, and hooks. Great for making EVA saftey lines for your Kerbals, and for refueling tankers on the ground. Along with lifters and cargo haulers. One of my top 10 Plugins for KSP.

With FAR you should ideally start your gravity turn MUCH sooner than stock. I no longer play with a stock sized Kerbin but instead with the Realism Overhaul, and the way I managed to get my light weight communications satellites into orbit of 500km x 500km was starting the gravity turn as soon as I hit 1000m altitude or 180m/s. But I also use an Ares style rocket with a long SRB first stage. But you want to make sure your TWR should ideally be between 1.2-1.5, and if you are able use fairings around your cargo to reduce the drag on the front of your rocket. Your second stage should be about the same as your first stage for TWR, if not a bit less, I usually get away with .9-1.2 TWR. But my second stage doesn't kick in till well past 60km altitude on Earth.

All FAR does is fix the aerodynamics in KSP so they don't react like a childs toy in water. It is advantage for anyone who understands how planes and rockets are supposed to work, not how they work in KSP.

Nothing bad in the output log, it was weird. Unfortunately I deleted the craft and started over so the craft file is gone.

They are just attached to the back of the Stretchy tanks, nothing special.

and you did it with an outstanding looking craft! Great job.