Surefoot

The amount of trickery on Sukhoi planes is insane The shapes they use, the sleek profile of engine nacelles (thanks to clever gear box positioning... specific to russian jets), the small aerodynamic details on every surface.. I had a lot of fun reading litterature on the SU-27. They are on top of the game in terms of aerodynamics as of today, IMHO. At least those inlet "canards" on SU-57 from what i read on various military publications are pure AoA coupled, where i'm a bit fuzzier is the wing edge slats and the inner control surfaces which i've assigned to flaps, given their positioning not far from CoM, and the slats went to AoA but that's pure guesswork here. In any case with FAR this is a beast in flight, it doesnt need so much control authority to be thrown around in high G's and does your exact bidding from any flight mode, and this for a quite heavy plane (we're talking MK2 base here, not a light MK1). Makes me think the real thing will be quite fearsome since they also seemed to improve a lot upon SU-27 family avionics.

I suppose that's mostly due to air combat manoeuvers involving high positive G's and almost never negative G's which are way more difficult to counter for the pilot (the pressure suit will work on legs, but not on the head). So the aircraft will be mostly encountering positive AoA situations, makes sense to have this high wing / low tail design, also structurally speaking it makes it easier to design for resistance against high positive G's. Also on newer designs (such as the SU-57 i copied here) they use moving slats or canards to keep the wing from stalling at high AoA. Look how the horizontal tail surfaces are in line with the main wing on the SU-57 for example, i think the front slats (and those "canards" above intakes) allow for this to happen. The Rafale is using canards for the same reason. Well at least on the KU-57 it works It can manoeuver fine with 90° AoA and recover from a stall without any issue. I set up the slats/canards in counter-AoA mode, i dont know exactly how they are set up on the real thing but on KSP+FAR they do their job. (edit) VTOL done About to land on top of KSC Mach 1.7 low altitude flying Of course i'm using TCA (edit: used to have trouble with horizontal flight transition, looks like i missed i can assign an action group to both TCA on/off and engines toggle, also 'cruise' mode seems to be the right one for controlling main engines..) That aircraft flies nice, is mostly stable actually, i added front slats so i can do high AoA stuff with the vector thrust engines... it's not as nimble as the KU-57 but it will do well for tasks needing a VTOL !

Yeah i have 700 hours of FAR KSP under my belt, i used to nail tailless delta SSTOs but i seem to have lost my mojo I stopped playing for about a year and just started again, exactly thanks to Atmosphere Autopilot which allows exploring new flight characteristics. I do have enough pitch authority on those delta wings, but the plane wants to fly at a ridiculous 20°AoA where my usual working designs were between 2° and 4° under nominal conditions (flying straight on, cruise altitude). Probably CoM issues, or wing loading, or subtle angles i missed. I'm still fighting with the editor to get correct wing profiles, on that fighter it was "easy" because wings are mostly flat (well they are polyhedral but cross section is flat), whereas on a delta we should put some camber somewhere in there, i have to remember my bag of tricks Some Kronal Vessel Viewer views: That one has a near perfect CoM / CoL alignment (with the CoM a few centimeters ahead), i'll balance for empty tanks later but it has plenty of room for tweaking. (edit) oh, missed that: It's not the issue, it's about having a lever against the CoM and CoL so the greater the distance between your elevon / elevator and the pivot axis, the greater the moment (as in rotational force) it will have. The real issue of having a tailless design and why in many designs tails are elevated is shadowing, as in the wing in front will separate the airflow so as the elevator / elevon will not get any (or just turbulence) and thus will lose its acting power. Delta wings are supposed to mitigate that effect, but given the CoM is rearwards (due to the nature of the design itself) you need bigger surfaces to get the same force.

I'm having a lot of fun with the new version of FAR and that AA mod (fly by wire) that allows unstable designs to be flown ! I'm still strugging with delta / elevon designs (cant get a decent level flight AoA for some reason, i'll look into that later) but that unstable fighter design is a total success: I named it KU-57. It flies beautifully, it's a bit twitchy on roll (should tweak deflections here and there), can manoeuver at high AoA / low speed. Took me about 5 hours of work, the original design is full of tricks, what with the anhedral lifting body and leading edge AoA elevons. The wing design is very intricate and everything was done using B9 procedural wings. I doubt this can fly with stock SAS, it wont react fast enough. This will be my kerbin atmo research platform, next project is a VTOL...

That's a good reward already, keeping you motivated. I especially like the Novapunch engines, these always fit in nicely in my builds so i'll wait for the updated version.

Hey good to know you're alive About sizes, if anything i'd use a longer one (double the length of the longest one or 1.5x) but that's maybe just me building gigantic cargoes ! Other than that current sizes are fine.

Joy Off to test my hypersonic designs again, to feel the changes in sonic drag calculations...

OpenGL here (Linux / 64bit / Nvidia drivers / using EVE) Got some pretty screenshots (i just noticed the flames are all behind the plane, so it happens on OpenGL too) Still i have the post-warp glitches mentioned before (half of Kerbin losing its clouds and oceans) and oceans have that weird texture thing going on: that's from 10m altitude, now higher (1km): Notice the black/white cross hatch pattern. I'm trying to fiddle with the Nvidia driver settings, but without much success at all... I donated some towards Blackrack's new GPU This mod transforms the game so much it cannot be left out.

No special issue with Dynamic Deflection here, but: I am missing KSC from 30 km (see it in the background, or the ILS indicator), tried to land on RW27 I started by following CAMEL, using the NAV autopilot all along, adjusting speed and alt myself. Do i have to start from DONUT ? Also the NAV jumped from CAMEL to IAF instantly. I got FAR, Dynamic Deflection, this mod and also the Pilot Assistant.

I've done one that does everything in a single stage mode, including Tylo, but except Eve where it needs additional stages for takeoff. I'd enter if rules were relaxed for Eve.

Exciting times. Funny that kind of news coincides with my watching of Steins;Gate, an SciFi anime series where a "time machine" is built out of a microwave oven.. Really looking forward to seeing larger scale, better built experiments on this principle.

Clicking on "Mechjeb2 Modules for FAR" brings CKAN down with that exception: CKAN.ModuleNotFoundKraken: Cannot install MechJeb2, module not available àCKAN.CkanModule.FromIDandVersion(Registry registry, String mod, KSPVersion ksp_version) àCKAN.RelationshipResolver.<RelationshipResolver>c__AnonStorey0.<>m__0(String name) àSystem.Linq.Enumerable.WhereSelectListIterator`2.MoveNext() àSystem.Collections.Generic.List`1..ctor(IEnumerable`1 collection) àSystem.Linq.Enumerable.ToList[TSource](IEnumerable`1 source) àCKAN.RelationshipResolver..ctor(IEnumerable`1 module_names, RelationshipResolverOptions options, Registry registry, KSPVersion kspversion) àCKAN.MainModList.ComputeConflictsFromModList(Registry registry, IEnumerable`1 change_set, KSPVersion ksp_version) àCKAN.Main.<UpdateChangeSetAndConflicts>c__async1.MoveNext() --- Fin de la trace de la pile àpartir de l'emplacement précédent au niveau duquel l'exception a été levée --- àSystem.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.ThrowForNonSuccess(Task task) àSystem.Runtime.CompilerServices.TaskAwaiter.HandleNonSuccessAndDebuggerNotification(Task task) àCKAN.Main.<ModList_CellValueChanged>c__async0.MoveNext() --- Fin de la trace de la pile àpartir de l'emplacement précédent au niveau duquel l'exception a été levée --- àSystem.Runtime.CompilerServices.AsyncMethodBuilderCore.<ThrowAsync>b__4(Object state) ************** Assemblys chargés ************** mscorlib Version de l'assembly.: 4.0.0.0 Version Win32.: 4.0.30319.34209 built by: FX452RTMGDR CodeBase.: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework64/v4.0.30319/mscorlib.dll ---------------------------------------- ckan Version de l'assembly.: 0.0.0.0 Version Win32.: 0.0.0.0 CodeBase.: file:///I:/Kerbal/ckan.exe ---------------------------------------- System.Core Version de l'assembly.: 4.0.0.0 Version Win32.: 4.0.30319.34209 built by: FX452RTMGDR CodeBase.: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Core/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Core.dll ---------------------------------------- System Version de l'assembly.: 4.0.0.0 Version Win32.: 4.0.30319.34238 built by: FX452RTMGDR CodeBase.: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.Net/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System/v4.0_4.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.dll

That is quite awesome. One of these small but important mods that transforms the game in something even more amazing.

At least try in a sandbox game a few designs in order to learn how to build stable rockets (or flyable unstable ones..). If your design is unstable it's like balancing a sphere on top of a needle: can be done, but not really easy. SAS + gimbals will help but you have to limit your AoA, and that's what they do in real life too (gimbals, limited AoA, and SAS). One hint, your fins should be placed as low as possible, and should be bigger than what you showed here.

That is so Kerbal. That bug was approved by Jeb.

Hey we've been happily using your mod, and will happily do so if you update it for 1.0+ POWAAAAAA

Any mod out there has proper intakes usable for hypersonic ? Stock ones are too blunt, and will overheat quickly - even on the shock cone intake, the cone is not tall enough. B9 intakes were properly done, but that mod is either gone or not coming soon. I'm playing with a few designs that can easily fly at mach 5+ (i'll post a few here) but my only problem now is the air intakes

I think the idea is by using a high altitude drogue you shed some energy *before* reaching higher density layers that means a bit of slowdown but not enough to torch the drogue chute, since we're talking about low density upper atmosphere. Then when you hit lower layers you'll have lost quite a bit of energy already which means less heating up at that point.. I tend to do that with airbrakes, but if drogue chutes can survive, for example when they are made of reflective material, why not ? Sounds like interesting experiments to come with DRE

That's control reversal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_reversal One cause is wing deformation. Are you using KJR ? Ferram mentioned it a few pages ago, it's to prevent all your rockets from flipping when a little gimbaling goes a long way

On the real thing it was on the right hand side control panel, upper part. Look at this (scroll up a bit for a picture of the control panel). That book also describes SAS and flight controls, and there are more books (written by former pilots) that are highly interesting on the subject. The details on aerodynamic design will give you a lot of ideas for Kerbal+FAR

Somehow my answer was lost... I was reacting on your comment about stability. Unstable designs *are* valid, delta wings and almost all modern jet fighters are unstable. And IMHO delta are the way to go if you want to make a beautiful SSTO If you take a look at SR-71 flight controls, it did have a "SAS" button and flying without it was quite dangerous (it wanted to flip black, mostly) only a few pilots claimed they were able to fly it without SAS. Now most modern jets have it in-built. If you look at subsonic designs, yes most of them are stable, but their purpose is different. If you want to go hypersonic and keep a decent level of control, without compromising too much on weight / heat distribution / payload you'll have to give away some stability. My current challenge is to overcome dutch roll and natural pitch-down tendency on my designs, i'm working on it

v1.6.14 installed here, the "go to changes" button stays disabled wether i add or remove or update mods (nothing will bring it up).

Ahh there's a donation button *sends money* you deserve it man. Basically i've been playing KSP just because of your mod.

Did you even bother to read posts on the same page ?

Can someone add that mod to CKAN ? that would be nice