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A Brand New Series… Part Tutorial, Part Let’s Play, All British, In the New RP-1 Programs and Launch Complexes, it's time to take some Small British Steps.

Please sit back with a cup of tea, and relax as I try to take Britain to the stars. I have taken data from prototype, developed and planned British engines, mixed it with a bit of British design and decided to see just how well could they do if post war Britain had thrown a little bit of money at the problem instead of just the innate creativity mixed with sticky tape and hope that usually happens... Will Britain expand into a Vertical Empire?

I've always been fascinated with the idea of creating huge models piece by piece, especially replicas. Over my few-year long KSP career I've already built space shuttles, N1-L3s, at least a few not-really 1:1 Mriyas and some really big naval vessels. The projects got bigger and bigger ranging from 60m corvettes, through 90m rockets, to 130m destroyers. Once I hit 150+ metres i started getting into the aircraft-carrier size range. The partcount and KSP engines stability were the only limits. And just like that, the Invincible was born. At nearly 1700 parts this is a true behemoth. Running a GTX 1050 I managed to hit about 10FPS and had to cope with insanely long loadup times. While not exactly smooth, it is definitely manageable enough for me to be able to land fixed-wing aircraft on it with about 85% success rate. The partcount could be cut down greatly if I were to omit the details, but they're the part of the replicas charm after all. The carrier will most likely receive a few improvements in the near future. I plan on including some landing lights to make night operations feasible and perhaps including some period-correct carrier vehicles and/or some parked Harriers. I will also make the carrier mobile quite soon. For now it is a static model for practicing carrier landings. I'm releasing this version due to the partcount limits. I want to make this thing accessible to as many people as possible without crippling their framerates and frying their GPUs. Due to it being 1:1 scale it is perfect for testing out all kinds of life-sized carrier aircraft replicas. Stock arrestor gear isn't really an option but due to how strong KSP brakes are they aren't really necessary most of the time. The deck layout consists of two separate halves, the left half accomodates the runway strip and the takeoff ramp (and is the side you should probably be landing on), with the right part consisting of two parking areas and the superstructure. On the bow there is a small, functional Sea Dart SAM battery which in 1982 was the only defensive system aboard the Invincible. It relief heavily on covering fire from it's escort vessels (which I might make sometime soon, they shouldn't be too much of a problem to build and a whole carrier group might look nice together if it doesn't make my PC explode in the loading process) The deck is very rigid and should be able to handle hard landings with ease. The ski-jump ramp makes aborting your approach quite easy provided you spool up your engines soon enough. The carrier was designed to operate STOVL Harriers exclusively, but landing regular fixed-wing aircraft is absolutely possible. Might try to land my Tu-95 on it sometime soon for the memes. The carrier has functional citadel lighting. It doesn't do much apart from making it look extra nice in the darkness. As mentioned before, I'm planning on giving it some more lights and details and releasing a higher partcount version. It will light up the runway, the superstructure cabins and turn your GPU into heated plasma for some extra lighting effects. Optimal landing speed sits at about 50m/s for the majority of my planes. General rule of thumb for carrier landings is to come in for a relatively shallow approach, line up at approx 2.5km from the carrier and make fine adjustments to your attidute. Just before touchdown it's wise to apply a fair bit of thrust to make aborting possible if necessary. Watch your speed and altitude, the line between overshooting and hitting the stern of the carrier is a fine one. Here are some videos demonstrating some landing and takeoff examples. They also display the scale of the carrier in comparsion to the Skyhawk nicely. The A-4F is built in 1:1 scale. Here are the download links: CARRIER: https://kerbalx.com/EvenFlow/HMS-Invincible SKYHAWK: https://kerbalx.com/EvenFlow/A-4F-Skyhawk Happy landings!

INTRODUCTION Hi everyone. Ever since I've created my replica of the Soviet Tu-95K bomber with stock parts I have been thinking about taking the idea of stock propeller plane replicas further. And after a few months of hiatus, here is the fruit of this ambitious plan. This is one of the very few replicas of this magnificent superprop attack plane from the 50s in KSP, and, as far as I am aware, the only one created with solely vanilla parts. The propeller has some limited functionality in terms of actually propelling the plane, but is mostly here for the looks. The majority of power is provided by the exhaust pipes on the sides of the airplane which isn't that much of a stretch in terms of realism. The real Wyvern also gained some additional thrust from it's turbine exhaust, so it's just the matter of scale and proportion here. This replica doesn't only approximate the real deal's looks and proportions, but also comes very close in terms of performance even in stock aerodynamics model. PERFORMANCE Here are some stats gained from preliminary testing. Real life performance figures are marked in red. Top speed: 604km/h vs 616km/h Rate of climb: Varies with altitude, approx. 15-16m/s loaded with fuel vs 11m/s stated on Wikipedia (Couldn't access historical sheets but i am pretty sure it is higher than that especially at low altitude) Loaded weight: 10.975kg vs 11.113kg (This is MTOW for the real Wyvern so the loaded weight is probably even more accurate) Turn time was hard to judge correctly, partly due to unclear testing circumstances and partly due to the fact that KSP does not model compression correctly, thus making planes vastly overperform at high speed turns. At mid to low speeds in range of 280 to 360km/h the craft turns pretty much as you would expect from an 11 ton attack aircraft. In short - it will not pull 20Gs at 80m/s. FEATURES I've tried to model the most vital features of the real aircraft into this replica. The Wyvern S4 comes with: 1. Correctly distributed and modeled flaps, activated via Action Group 1 2. Openable engine cowling which allows the pilot to take a look into the engine, which apart from it's mechanism is semi-realistically detailed with some shenanigans. It is toggleable via Action Group 2 3. Retractable tailhook for carrier landings. It's not like you will be performing many of those in KSP though sadly. Activated through Action Group 3 4. Functional, spinning, fully stock propeller assembly. The instructions on how to get it to work properly are attached further below. 5. Plenty of little details such as correctly placed antennas, Hispano cannon props in the wings etc. HOW TO FLY: 1. Pre-flight procedures and startup Before taking this turboprop cow to the skies there are some things you need to do. Idle the throttle and engage brakes. SAS needs to be off. Stage the first stage. The ring securing the propeller in place will come off and your control will be redirected to the propeller. Start up the propeller. Hold down ALT and either Q or E. Hold the key until the roll indicator in the bottom left corner of the screen will reach it's limit. Remember to have SAS disengaged in this stage if you want the propeller to work. SAS, along with neutralising set roll trim with ALT can be used to stop the propeller post-flight. Switch back to the main vessel, engage the SAS (although the craft is perfectly flyable without it of course) and disengage the brakes. After the propeller has started rotating sufficiently quickly you can add throttle and begin the takeoff. The plane will take off by itself after reaching approx 60m/s. Tailwheel and rudder can be used to counter the torque generated by the engine which can be felt while the plane is low on speed (this also applies to real life propeller engines) 2. Flight Flying the Wyvern is very easy. The plane is stable at any speeds above it's stall speed (which sits at about 40m/s), will reach speeds of up to 170m/s (and over 230m/s in a dive), and the fuel will last for ages. The drop tanks are expended first, after they run dry you can jettison them with staging. Turning is safe at any speed in it's flight envelope, but due to compression not being modelled it will lose speed in high speed turns rather quickly. Mild turns are advised if you are planning to keep your speed up. Just like in real life, roll rate of this plane gets rather sluggish when your speed is too low. Keep an eye on your speed during tight turns to prevent stalling. Optimal climb can be achieved at approx 80m/s TAS at most altitudes. 3. Landing Landing the Wyvern is relatively easy due to it's low stall speed and flaps doubling as very effective airbrakes. To drop your speed quickly, feel free to pop the flaps. Get your speed down to about 70m/s, retract the gear and lower the throttle. Watch out not to come in nose-first, since this could damage your propeller. Engage brakes after touchdown, use the tailwheel to taxi into a desirable position. Engine can be turned off with methods described in "Pre-flight procedures and startup" section. Creating this plane was a great experience. I hope you will enjoy flying it as much as I've enjoyed building it. DOWNLOAD LINK https://kerbalx.com/EvenFlow/Wyvern-S4 Updated on 22-07-2017, V1.2 CHANGELOG: 1.0 - Inital release 1.1 - Minor tweak to the bottom part of the cowling which made the propeller assembly spontaneously detach when jumping to the craft from more than 250m, wing strake is now attached to the wing itself which prevents it from clipping awkwardly while pulling high-G maneuvers. 1.2 - Tweaks done to the page itself, part of a revamp of all of my noteworthy older creations Here's a little preview GIF too, as requested.