Peafowl L1 Atmospheric VTOL

[T-Bouw]

Hya fellow Kerbonauts!

After I talked a lot about planes on the forums, I finally decided to post a craft of mine at last.

It's the first one I've posted and, considering the imminent update, probably the last one until 1.0 hits.

May I present: the Peafowl L1

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Craft file: http://www.filedropper.com/peafowll1

It's designed to be a simple, stable, clean and well handling plane.

Handy for retrieving a stranded pilot for instance.

The fuel is perfectly balanced by default from full until empty.

At ten tonnes it is, in my opinion, the heaviest a single engine VTOL can be.

Parts: 53

Mass: 10.1t

Action radius: 475 Km (confirmed)

Some tips:

Start up - Press "staging" once to engage horizontal engines.

Horizontal takeoff - minimum takeoff speed: 45 m/s, rotate to 10 degrees pitch, tail strike angle: 20 degrees

Vertical takeoff - Press "abort action" to switch between horizontal and vertical engines, hover is at 65% thrust (at full fuel load)

Horizontal landing - Make final approach with about 10% thrust, vertical speed upon landing below 10 m/s

Vertical landing - Make final approach witch about 55% thrust, vertical speed upon landing below 10 m/s

Emergency parachutes - Press "staging" again to deploy the chutes when you panic and are too close to the ground to recover or are just lazy to make a proper landing...

The reason for the "weird" action grouping and staging is that it makes it possible to use the plane in Career mode with a level 2 Space Plane Hangar.

As always with Jet VTOLs be gentle with the throttle when using the vertical engine.

Try to keep the throttle around the hover point (2/3 throttle). Slightly below for descent, slightly above for ascent.

Anticipate what the plane is about to do and watch that vertical speed meter!

If there are any questions, please feel free to ask!

I hope you'll like it!

Edited April 26, 2015 by T-Bouw