Virindi

KAA officials have completed their survey of the new South Pole Runway. However, we have found a strange anomaly: the runway is so close to the pole that the centerline calculations in our ILS software fails. Visual approaches are recommended for this runway. http://www.virindi.net/junk/kerbinside_035_rwy.cfg Notations: "FW" - This is the forward direction of a ski-jump runway (flat end towards jump end). "RV" - This is the reverse direction of a ski-jump runway (jump end towards flat end). "X" - Runway centerline information is unreliable for this runway, use bearing only.

Awesome! Can't wait.

The phasing through the ground problem is most apparent if you start a craft with gear up, let it sit on the ground, the try to lower gear. The gear will just pass through the ground and your vehicle will not be movable. During time warp, gear will also drop through the ground. The former is common with stock gear as well but the latter, I do not usually see. I tested this on the runway. Oh, also on the suggestion list: ability to disable the RCS ports in the SPH, at least for the cockpits that have RCS. The RCS on cockpits makes balancing RCS using tools such as RCS Build Aid incredibly difficult. I normally disable the cockpit RCS in flight but having it on in the SPH renders RCS Build Aid useless. In the past I even stopped using the S2 cockpit because of its RCS ports. Later on my solution was to just delete the RCS ports from the config. Cockpit RCS ports look really cool, but they are far from practical.

So when the gear bounce from side to side at high speed, that is intended? Even though stock gear is completely immune from this? BTW, I am also having a problem with the gear phasing through the ground on time warp.

Awesome, it's great to have B9 back and being updated again. I love the HL cockpit IVA and RPM system. I noticed that the landing gear have been updated, but when I tried them out they still do some of the 'b9 wobble'. It's not as bad as before, but they are certainly not as stable as stock landing gear still. Also, I'd like to suggest the addition of a MK1 cargo bay. It would be nice to have one for those little planes carrying probes

That's correct

I love the look of these, so I had to make my own. I play FAR, which makes this problematic. A flying delta wing is inherently roll-unstable and FAR faithfully models it. In particular, the sideslip-to-roll derivative LBeta tends to be a large positive value. The result is a craft that rolls and explodes into the runway the moment you take off. The secret to making this design roll-stable in FAR is to add a V-tail*. In my opinion, it doesn't compromise the delta flying wing look. (I also used realfuels, b9, and flag decals on this craft.) *This solution is taken from the F-117 stealth aircraft, which has a very similar shape and employs a V-tail for stability. See: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/F-117_Nighthawk_Front.jpg

BTW, here is a screenshot of my SCANSat map from 0.34. http://www.virindi.net/junk/kerbinside_scansat_034a.png

Yeah. I love the variety of different characters you can get, and the no ridiculous goofy lipstick female characters.

Updated the ILS config for the new KSC2 runway 35/17. http://www.virindi.net/junk/kerbinside_034a_rwy.cfg For some reason, Mattie Kerman is not excited about the new KSC2. I think she needs to get some more training from Jebediah. I'm excited.

Ignore the jerks. While your work may not look like it came out of a big budget scifi movie, it doesn't have to. These bases and structures add an element of fun and atmosphere that are missing in the stock game. And the art is not bad. If anything it is a little goofy, which fits with KSP perfectly. You're doing a great job. The new KSC2 is amazing.

Okay, consider a smooth curve like the following: if (!intake.intakeEnabled) { cosine = 1f; } else { float realcos = Mathf.Max(0f, Vector3.Dot(vessel.srf_velocity.normalized, part.FindModelTransform(intake.intakeTransformName).forward.normalized)); float fakecos = (float)(-0.000123d * vessel.srfSpeed * vessel.srfSpeed + 0.002469d * vessel.srfSpeed + 0.987654d); if (fakecos > 1f) fakecos = 1f; cosine = Mathf.Max (realcos, fakecos); } Giving you 100% intake at 10m/s, with a smooth downward curve until it hits 0% at 100m/s. Sorry for the overly complex suggestion, I didn't realize this was all in the intake module until I looked at the actual code. My experience with KSP modding is limited. I just tested out my little rolling jet tester (a jet attached to a fuel tank) and this caused the speed to self limit at around 70m/s.

Yeah, but you would want to maintain loss of thrust when the intake is backwards but give it a smooth curve that decreases without discontinuities until you hit a certain level where the engine would no longer be running. I'm thinking more about the desired results, really. I want to fly my VTOL but I also really enjoy the added difficulty this mod creates for SSTOs

Perhaps an appropriate hack would be to simply take the greater of two values. One, the result of the existing algorithm, and two, a minimum value based on the current power of the engine minus the projection of velocity in the opposite direction of the intake. Just tune it so that >100m/s with a big engine, you're not going to get any power at >90 degrees AoA. If you want to get fancy, use a time weighted average of recent engine power outputs so that spooling down due to intake starvation is a gradual process (turbine blades do have inertia). When the engine goes from off to on, reset the average to zero. I know, I know, hax, but it's better than the current behavior in the meantime before any bigger changes fix it. There shouldn't be a velocity 'cliff' beyond which an engine goes from nearly full power to zero instantly, and a powerful already running engine should be able to operate in strong tailwinds, just not backwards at extreme speed. Unfortunately, this does also impact behavior when you get into a flat spin. Normally, they are unrecoverable with this plugin because you lose all engine power (unless you have a fueled rocket on board). In this case, it isn't just the direction of travel that matters, but also the rate of rotation and the distance of the intake from the center of rotation. For a very long plane with an intake at the end, the 90 degree air speed would be much higher. At the center of rotation, it would be almost zero. Don't know if it is already done but when calculating the air velocity vector, it should take into account vessel rotation. This would restore some of the difficulty to flat spins if adding a sliding minimum power level to low speed (for hax you could just use the vessel CoM and intake distance from CoM, even though this isn't actually a realistic center of rotation).

Starting maybe, but the engine is already running (even with the afterburner lit!) and thrust is zero at 10.1m/s with AoA at 90 degrees. I think arguing that this is realistic behavior is a little beyond reason It's not like I'm trying to go to orbit at mach 4 with backwards intakes.

The behavior of this plugin with backwards air intakes represents a huge problem. It makes VTOLs extremely dangerous if not pointless (unless you want a ton of intakes pointing in different directions), and is also unrealistic. A moderate tailwind would kill you. At any airspeed above 10m/s, engines running off a backwards facing intake produce exactly zero thrust. Thrust goes from 90% at 0-9.99999m/s, to 0% at 10.000m/s. I discovered this to my dismay when trying to land my new VTOL and it started backing off slightly, and suddenly thrust went to zero. Of course this sent me careening into the ground. Note that this same thing happens for a 90 degree intake as well. If this happened in real life, the F-35 STOVL would be impossible, for instance. I initially tried to solve the problem by having one vertical and one horizontal intake, like the F-35 engine. Nope. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Engine_of_F-35.jpg

http://www.curse.com/ksp-mods/kerbal/222813-flag-decals-v2-0 I create a custom flag for each name in a paint program, then set it as the mission flag for the vessel. Not completely painless but not difficult.

I actually like the standalone house button. It makes sense to me that it is there and not on a toolbar, since it is something you need every time you launch.

Infernal robotics, TT multiwheels, KAS, B9 lights and struts, tweakscale because I prefer probe sized radial attachment points to clipping in cubic struts. Using strut clipping to place stuff radially seems cheaty to me for some reason.

In my game, I'm doing extensive ground support operations for my flights. Every ship is refueled and re-equipped rather than just being recovered and relaunched. So I've been having fun building ground vehicles to support the spaceplanes. Tonight I have built an articulated tractor trailer refueling truck. The articulation point is a bit troublesome; I am using the free moving docking washer from infernal robotics, but it is a little weak. Their small size is perfect, though. Articulation demo: Refueling the KSS Enterprise for another scansat satellite launch: Side view: These things are pretty big... And I already posted in another thread, my pushback vehicle. There seems to be some bug with the free moving docking washer that makes it not so free moving when you dock, or at least sometimes. Also, whether I use a klaw on the end or kas, once I detach, physics gets wonky and it acts like part of it is still being pulled on by the undocked stuff. Fixing this requires a quicksave/quickload. And there are more in progress... If you have any similar vehicles, feel free to post yours.

Also, it is possible to do a space program to the mun with multiple Aeris 4As. Fly them both to low orbit, dock and transfer almost all fuel to one, then fly that one on. Probably harder for newbies though, since docking with minimal fuel use tends to present a challenge. You are better off redesigning the Aeris 4A to fly with a nuclear engine. Note: it's much heavier, so pay attention to center of mass and center of lift. Keep center of lift behind center of mass and keep in mind that the further from the center of mass a control surface is, the more powerful its effect. This is part of the reason real aircraft have a tail that sticks way out of the back of the aircraft (more pitch authority), and flaps are placed on the wing centered front to back (near CoM, to reduce pitch effect).

I am loving the taxiways! Make the runways as long as kerbally possible

Use nuclear engines. With stock aerodynamics, try to get your vessel to 1700m/s in the upper atmosphere before lighting off the rockets. Keep fuel for jets as small as possible; 100-150 units each is probably enough. Remove all excess weight parts. The simplest configuration is 1x 800 rocket fuel tank, 1x 400 rocket fuel tank, 1x nuclear engine, 2x 150unit fuel fuselage, 2x jet engine. You can do it, there is no need to download someone else's solution Oh and there's also no need to use a cheaty number of intakes

The first link here is broken.

Great idea. Unfortunately my plane is too short to fit under a stock klaw. However, I made a probe-sized one using TweakScale and it works nicely.