Panther ideal altitude?

[Laughing Man]

Has anyone managed to figure out this engine yet? I've had a plane that can supercruise (up to 500m/s) at 4.5km at level flight then flown the same plane the next day at the same altitude and it won't break Mach 1 on dry thrust. I even lowered the plane's mass, burned all the way up to 12km, came down in a dive and it won't break Mach 1 on dry thrust. I know I'm not misremembering because I took screenshots of the plane accelerating past Mach 1 on dry thrust.

Is there an altitude where this engine operates best? So confused as to how a lighter plane has such a performance hit. Edited November 24, 2015 by Laughing Man

[Randazzo]

[quote name='Laughing Man']Has anyone managed to figure out this engine yet? I've had a plane that can supercruise (up to 500m/s) at 4.5km at level flight then flown the same plane the next day at the same altitude and it won't break Mach 1 on dry thrust. I even lowered the plane's mass, burned all the way up to 12km, came down in a dive and it won't break Mach 1 on dry thrust. I know I'm not misremembering because I took screenshots of the plane accelerating past Mach 1 on dry thrust.

Is there an altitude where this engine operates best? So confused as to how a lighter plane has such a performance hit.[/QUOTE]

I don't know about it's ideal altitude, but I do know the Panther is a dual mode engine. I imagine you swapped modes without knowing it, there's no other explanation for such drastically different performance. You had to be running wet on the first go.

[Racescort666]

It's not strictly altitude since there are a lot of variables that go into determining what is ideal for an engine. There was some good discussion in these 2 threads that are relevant to your question though:

[URL]http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/139019-1-05-Intakes-Lets-figure-them-out?highlight=panther[/URL]

[URL]http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/139568-Comparison-of-the-jet-engines?highlight=panther[/URL]

[Laughing Man]

Looked at those but they didn't help. I must be flying it wrong somehow. Thanks for the replies.

[COLOR="silver"][SIZE=1]- - - Updated - - -[/SIZE][/COLOR]

Figured it out. I made one wee change which I didn't consider and that was adding struts to reinforce the plane. Removing them had a huge impact on performance. Worth noting as well that they were all within a structural fuselage. So onto the next question:- is there any way of adding struts without inducing massive drag?

Craft files for proof:-
[url]http://pastebin.com/hzQhYVYD[/url][B] (Struts)[/B]
[url]http://pastebin.com/NPr0KnLz[/url] [B](No struts)[/B]

EDIT2: Think I'll make a new topic for this. Edited November 24, 2015 by Laughing Man