Pine's Trip [Elcano Challenge]

[HazelPine]

 

 

 

 

Welcome to my Elcano Challenge thread!

 

My goal is to sail and drive around Kerbin, going over the poles and seeing some cool stuff along the way! This is where I'll document everything on a daily progress basis, and where you can all enjoy the trip along with me!

 

The Ship

 

The ship I am using is the best of the best (not really), a Ship Mk1 model complete with loading gantries, helipad, bridge and crew quarters! Cruises at around 60 m/s after some of the fuel gets used, and best of all? It can drive on land! Yay! Her name's RV Evergreen! Here's a picture of it when she was launched:

 

The Route

 

Surprise! I'm going totally off of my best hunch and what I can see from the ship on this one! No plotting of routes for me, I'll just go where it feels 'right'. That said, I'll mantain a map of where I've been so far, which is here:

 

The Crew

 

We have a specialized crew of 7 Kerbals onboard The RV Evergreen, which is really to say all the personnel we had at the KSC at the time. The crew is ready for any eventualities that we all know will strike sometime during the trip!  Their names are (in order of importance to the mission):

 

Captain Sparrow - Captain of the ship!

Commander Awesome - The adventurer!

Jozie Kerman - Helicopter pilot and scout!

Pine Kerman - Jeep driver and lookout!

Sandisk Kerman - Cook!

Carly Kerman - Mechanic!

Lia Kerman - Comms interpreter!

 

The Ship's Condition:

 

I expect the ship to get banged quite a bit during this trip, so this is where I'll list any issues it has and an image of it at this very moment!

 

As of now, the RV Evergreen has reached the first milestone of the trip: Reaching the on-ramp to the south pole ice cap! So damage to the ship yet, but the ships wasn't as efficient as I feared, and is almost out of fuel now. The plan is to land a refueling plane nearby and refuel.

 

 

 

 

 

Original early post:

Spoiler

Hello everyone! This is my thread for the development, testing and execution of my very first Elcano Challenge attempt! I plan on making a ship which can cross over land if required, and taking a scenic route, which is yet to be decided.

 

Right now I am testing possible designs and waiting for confirmation that the parts I am using are fair game, so I don't really have anything to post. The ship design so far is this one:

It has no name yet, and is the basic design of the future ship that will go around kerbin the long way. It has 4,000kn of thrust, enough fuel for *around* 2 hours of full throttle, and fits 2. It also has a winch system which can be used to transfer cargo from the ground into the ship, but I still have to test it.

 

I'll make sure to keep everyone up to date on how things are! For now, testing!

 

Edited October 1, 2016 by Pine

[damerell]

I wonder if you should consider Tweakscaling up some of the Karbonite airbreathing engines. They look very cool, are reasonably well-balanced, and offer some ISRU potential.

[HazelPine]

@damerell, I might look into karbonite if any issues come up with the current design plan, but I might not need it.

 

I have some updates on the development!

 

I tried putting the winches to use so I could carry a mining block on the side, and it kinda worked fine on land...

 

The issue was, at speed on the water, things skipped on the water and broke apart.

 

Sooo, I decide I'll make a fuel tanker ship instead to refuel the circumnavigation ship!

Here it the preliminary design of the tanker:

It's pretty quick, and has a claw on the bow to be able to refuel the main ship, which is way smaller.

 

Once I have worked on it some more, I'll make sure to keep you all posted!

[damerell]

Could you perhaps fit an Infernal Robotics boom on top of the sterncastle that would swing the mining platform out from a safely stowed position?

[HazelPine]

That's an idea! Don't know why I forgot about IR, really. I'll experiment later with IR and see if it works well or not.

[Claw]

On 7/29/2016 at 5:33 AM, Pine said:

and has a claw on the bow

I like being at the front of the ship.

 

Nice job! 

[HazelPine]

So, great news today! The loading mechanism of the boat is complete and driving tests have been passed!

So, let's go over what I did!

 

The Loading Mechanism and The Rover:

 

Ah yes, the rover. A nifty weird idea that separates my entry from the ones I've seen so far in the Elcano challenge. Basically, what others have done, is make their rovers amphibious or float in wacky and wonderful ways. But I had to be diferent, 'cuz that's me! So, I decided that instead of the rover floating itself, and risking damage to whatever would keep it floating, I would carry it in a big boat! Of course, that's against the rules, so I decided the boat is going to go around Kerbin, with the rover as a scout to find paths on the ground passages. And that works. Or so I thought, because there's a catch with that idea.

 

I need to put the rover down on the ground.

 

And that, comes with problems. Firstly, a boat, or ship in my case, doesn't float completely out of the water, which means it sinks a bit, so I can't have the rover drive in and out of a garage on the hull. So that's out. Also, the same fact that the ship sinks a bit is that on the ground, the ship's deck is a ways above the surface. And I want to be able to drive the rover off and pick it back up. So no insane rover jumps off the deck, since I would have to go back up magically.

 

So I decided I'd make a crane. And it flopped. Hard. It picked up the rover, sure, but it didn't really put it on the deck, since it was a vertical crane and KAS cables go thru parts. so stuff happened when I tried to use a second winch to pull the rover to the deck:

The plug on the front of the rover exploded and with the rover already pulled a bit to the side, started to swing. Fun, but not exactly progress.

 

So damerell suggested using Infernal Robotics to make a swinging arm. I cringed. I don't know why, ever since the  early days of that mod, I hated the way the parts looked. A lot. (No offense, mod creator.) Even with the rework, the old parts haunted me when I tried to use the mod, so I never really used it ever, even though I liked the functionality.

 

And now the mod became a necessity. Well then.

 

I eventually gave in and installed it. With the rework, just to help me out a bit. Luckily the ugly parts, along with the reworked ones, are in their own tab, so I could use the mod and not see the ugly bits. So I made a crane, which I'll show shortly, because there's a little thing I decided to try before testing out the crane.

 

A mistake, if you will.

 

I decided that I would have two rovers! The orange Land Rover and a Muleback rover. So I decided to make the Muleback rover. It looked great!

I even drove it all the way to the ship to test the crane!

 

I didn't realize it was so big.

 

At least the crane worked! It's the little white thing on the end of the truss over there.

 

But the darn thing's wheels decided that they didn't like being on the ship, and kraken-ned the rover up into the air when I tried to use phys-warp (a necessity for this mission).

 

So that rover was not going to make it to the mission anymore. Sadness. Shame too, it looked so cool from inside.

 

Right.

 

Enough side-tracking for now. I decided to just use the original rover to test the crane and be the scout rover of the mission, which will be fully decked out with cool stuff for the real thing.

 

For now, I used a rover with a plug on the roof. Here's a couple pics from the test:

 

Winch is lowered, where a plucky kerbal will attach it to the rover.

 

Once secured, the winch pulls the rover from the surface gracefully, when luck is on my side. Otherwise, it spins around, like today.

 

And then the rover gets dropped to the deck!

 

And it didn't have the brakes on, so I frantically switched ships and reversed into the bridge.

 

I parked the rover into the garage and started sea trials.

 

First I had to put the thing in the water, and that was easy. Drove with barely any brakes into the water at 35 m/s, and the ship didn't lose anything.

 

"All good!"

 

I decided the airfield island was a good target for a test, and sailed there at around 25 m/s. It tips like crazy when turning!

 

The trip to the island was simple and uneventful. I think. I went to the bathroom and came back to this, so I don't know what happened.

 

Then I proceeded to waaste 15 min. trying to position the ship next to the beach to try and drop the rover. It wasn't happening.

 

 

So I reverted and did some ground trials. Here's how that went:

 

At least I know the top speed it can handle before failing now. It's 95 m/s. Luckily I plan on driving at 40, so it shouldn't be an issue.

 

That's all for now, I'll post more when more progress is made!

 

Edited July 31, 2016 by Pine

[Geschosskopf]

5 hours ago, Pine said:

That's all for now, I'll post more when more progress is made!

That's an amazing monstrosity but it looks damn cool!

A few things...

• Kerbin's land is all 1 supercontinent shaped like a 3-fingered hand.  The palm of the hand is draped over the north pole and the 3 fingers stick down south, with the longest finger reaching the south pole.  There are thus no totally land or totally sea routes around Kerbin.  No matter which mode of travel you want to emphasize, you always have to do some of the other.  So your main boat must be capable of driving across continents.
• Due to a game limitation, you can't really leave anything (Kerbals, a rover, etc.) unsecured on deck while the boat is the active vessel and moving.  All non-active things not actually attached to the main boat will try to remain in the same planetary x,y,z positions you left them, so the main boat will drive out from under them.  Then the non-active things will either fall off the back end or, if there's a wall behind them, clip into that.  The clipping will eventually result in a Kraken attack or at least the inability to pull something out of the wall.  Therefore, Kerbals should be in cabins or command chairs and rovers should be docked.  Hard docked with docking ports, NOT left hanging on KAS cables.  But you can use KAS and IR to position the rover on the docking port, then disconnect the KAS cables.
• You might want to use a ramp to get the rover on and off the main boat.  As you're using IR, you can make your own out of structural panels.  It doesn't have to lead directly into a hangar, just get the rover on and off the deck.  Then IR and KAS can get it in the hangar.
• I noticed in your ground tests of the big boat that the medium wheels you're using overstressed.  This is usually the result of a bounce or just change of ground slope causing all the weight to be concentrated on 1 or a few wheels.  So the 1st line of defense is to go slowly, the 2nd is to use more wheels, and the 3rd is to use bigger wheels.  Problem with the latter is, the large and XL wheels don't steer, so you might need to use a more mediums up front to spread the load while maintaining the ability to steer, then use bigger, non-steerable wheels elsewhere.

[damerell]

You can use KAS - KAS pipes dock vessels, and KAS winches have a docked mode. (You can attach the winch in undocked mode, winch the object down, then switch to docked mode, although this is all a bit fiddly UI-wise). You can then use KAS struts to further secure things.

[Mjp1050]

11 hours ago, Pine said:

 

Is that a ring system in the background?

[HazelPine]

Thanks for the tips and ideas everyone! I'll see how to go about securing the rover on the deck when I work on it again, and map out a path.

 

The path I plan on taking right now is one that lets me sail by the sea a lot, and where there is minimal bumpiness on land, like this:

But I need to scout it later. The bit where I get to the south pole is wrong, BTW, since I need to climb on to it by land, on the continent over to the east.

Edited July 31, 2016 by Pine

[Geschosskopf]

3 hours ago, damerell said:

You can use KAS - KAS pipes dock vessels, and KAS winches have a docked mode. (You can attach the winch in undocked mode, winch the object down, then switch to docked mode, although this is all a bit fiddly UI-wise). You can then use KAS struts to further secure things.

Sometimes, but it often occurs that when you retract the cable all the way, the winch won't dock at all, or will say it's docked when it's still flopping all over.  So never trust that.

As to using KAS struts and pipes, I find them to do more harm than good post-1.1.  So IMHO, using a regular docking port if at all possible instead.

 

 

2 hours ago, Pine said:

The path I plan on taking right now is one that lets me sail by the sea a lot, and where there is minimal bumpiness on land, like this:

(pic snipped)

But I need to scout it later. The bit where I get to the south pole is wrong, BTW, since I need to climb on to it by land, on the continent over to the east.

Well, you've got 2 problems with that route.

#1 is, circumpolar routes, unless they're land-based, have to contend with the Ice Cliffs.  At sea, these rise sheer from the ocean to the ice surface ~100m above sea level.  The only places where the Ice Cliffs don't exist are well inland from the ocean, and they don't correspond either around the perimeter of the same polar cap (as in 180^ apart), nor on the same meridian for both the northern and Southern ice caps.

#2, and more serious, your map of your proposed route only shows 1/2 a circumnavigation heading south about on 100^W.  You're omitting the northward journey along the 80^ E meridian, which is almost all on land, following the longest of the 3 "fingers" of the Kerbin supercontinent.

Because of how Kerbin's supercontinent is arranged, circumpolar routes are more suited to wheeled vehicles and equatorial routes are more suited to boats.  But both must face some of their antitheses along the way.

[HazelPine]

Welp, that gives me something to think about. I forgot how maps work when I drew that path, so no wonder half the path is missing! I'll do some research about possible routes during the week and see what I can do.

[Maverick_aus]

Your design and planning is coming along, Pine. It's entertaining and interesting to see your progress and ideas. I like the creativity of your ship design. And the ship+rover concept could be fun if you can hone it to work. I'll be very impressed if you can get that crane to work. (I mean that positively!) I've never made a crane. And like you, only just really installed and started using IR properly recently. 

One suggestion: If you like the concept of driving the Land Rover on/off the ship, as well as a ramp with which to do this, you may like the RO-RO (Roll on, roll off) bow of Fengist's Maritime Pack. You may be able to adapt that to your existing craft (or possibly not) i don't know. It looks a lot smaller than the scale of your ship. Perhaps you could use two side-by-side in a catamaran fashion. I've used the bow and it works very similarly to the stock cargo bay ramp, and work well from the little I tested it. (Drove a rover on, sailed away). The advantage of this design is that you don't need to fluff around with manoeuvering your ship alongside the short at a precise point. You can simply point your ship at the shore and beach it, then lower the ramp, and drive off, and back when you please. When you want to keep sailing, you engage reverse thrust, or alternatively if you want to pursue the land route, you deploy your gear and drive landward.

However, that said, I can see you've already invested heavily in the crane set up, so fair enough if you want to stick to that. It's certainly a good technical challenge, and as you say, a unique concept. 

Oh and by the way hurrah! to you for using the Land Rover in the Elcano! I'm just a little jealous that you're getting there first...! :)

Edited August 4, 2016 by Maverick_aus

[HazelPine]

Well, I lost all of my ships designed for this challenge earlier today, so I spent the last couple hours designing a new ship! This one will have all the features the original ship had, plus:

+Catamaran hull!

+Helipad!

+Helicopter for scouting!

+Crew quarters!

+Space for carrying supplies!

 

And here's the prototype article so far:

 

I based it (very) loosely off of this:

Spoiler

And I made an official Pine's Trip Flag! Still needs some change, but looks nice!

 

[Maverick_aus]

Very good! I like the flag. Also, did you check out Fengist's boat mod I mentioned above?

[HazelPine]

Yeah, but I decided to stick with the current ship mod I have for now. Although, I might see if a loading ramp of sorts has any merit on the new ship design, which has way more deck space than the original!

[HazelPine]

And we're off! Decided to head south and get to the south pole as the first half of the trip, so it'll take a while. Every single day I sail around I'll write a quick report of sorts, and keep everyone updated! Wish me luck!

 

A 1375 ton whale of a research ship, the RV Evergreen begins the long march towards home... the long way!

[HazelPine]

So, kinda late for this since it's been a week since it happened, but:

 

DAY 1

 

 

The first day is always the best day, right? So there it was, the RV Evergreen, chilling on the runway waiting for the final prep before its voyage. Once the mission organizers felt everything was right with the ship, they moved it over to grass beside the runway. Then the crew boarded, each one of them having confetti thrown at to celebrate, and then they proceeded to eat the 'day one' snacks.

 

The intrepid crew.

 

The RV Evergreen chilling on the grass.

 

The only thing left to do before they could depart was to put the mission helicopter in place, which would fly around to find safe passage on bumpy terrain. So you see, the mission hinges on the as-of-yet untested helicopter flying, landing and performing well on the ship. So the helicopter was flown onto the ship. And it worked! Hooray for experimental designs!

 

The experimental helicopter (later named Mini Heli Mk1) flying over the RV Evergreen.

 

Carly Kerman secures the helicopter with her screwdriver.

 

After the Mini Heli was strapped in, the spokesman for Kerbal Geographic rushed towards the ship, screaming about having forgotten to load on board some 'exploration vehicle' or something.

 

Turns out he meant the jeep.

 

We loaded that in too.

 

The jeep awaiting to be loaded on board.

 

The jeep is pulled from the ground and begins to sway, just for kicks.

 

The jeep, all ready for the trip, awaiting to be secured.

 

After the jeep was secured safely, Cmd. Awesome gave the order to evacuate the ship. It had been discovered the snacks had run out. A new delivery of snacks and a stern lecture to the crew promised that the mission would continue, so they turned on the fans and began towards the beach.

 

So many wheels.

 

And soon the ship was in the water.

 

Bet you're glad you have thrust reversing now, eh?

 

In the water!

 

Soon Cpt. Sparrow plotted a rough path to follow for this leg of the trip:

 

The image sums it up pretty good.

 

And so the RV Evergreen followed true to the generalized direction at a cozy 45-50 m/s, which meant it 'sailed' around 180km every hour, as long as it kept moving. So, it kept on moving.

 

What a great turning radius though!

 

It began just fine:

 

Sonnah up in the sky, watching...

 

And time did what it does best.: It passed.

 

Sonnah seems bored...

 

And pass it did:

 

Even the sun seems bored now...

 

Eventually the sun set, and the crew was navigating the empty ocean blind.

 

Everyone played board games that night.

 

At some point it was decided that enough was enough and they stopped to sleep and to give the engines a chance to rest. Everyone back at mission control agreed that the first day had been a great success, and so they agreed that extra snacks deliveries would be a thing they'd consider once the explorers made it to the poles, which in all honesty, didn't look that far away as they once seemed.

 

Progress so far:

 

Circle marks the spot!

 

 

Hope you enjoyed the trip so far! Next up, the push for ice! Can the intrepid crew make it to land before nightfall the next day?

 

 

See ya next time!

 

Edited September 3, 2016 by Pine

[Van Disaster]

A small warning - you won't get up on the ice from the water directly, which annoyed the pants out of me; you should get up via some green area just fine though. I went via the poles too, but mostly overground, good luck!

[damerell]

I must say, not that I can talk, I hadn't realised just how outrageously huge that ship was. :-)

[HazelPine]

Day 2

 

The second day of the trip was a very successful and eventful one! The crew woke up sometime around midday, tired from the nighttime cruising they did the night before, so from then onwards the PSP (Pine Space Program) directors decided that cruising would only be carried out during the day, if possible.

 

The RV Evergreen during the morning of Day 2.

 

Pine Kerman, being the lookout he was, noticed that the ship seemed to be floating a bit higher on the ocean, which later was discovered to be due to the fact that the ship was using up its fuel reserves, and thus lightening the ship. That came with benefits as well! The less fuel the ship had, the faster Captain Sparrow could make it go, and it was able to go over 75 m/s compared to the 45-50 m/s of the day before by the end of the day!

 

The crew took advantage of that extra speed and made up time lost from the late start, and covered around 1000km in the matter of a few hours. They managed to get withing 30km of the shore, but soon it got dark, and they stopped to rest, before attempting a landing.

 

Sonnah overlooking the RV Evergreen as its crew get ready to stop.

 

Land ahoy! The crew sees land for the first time since they departed the KSC, which wasn't long ago, really.

 

The bay in which the ship arrived, and where the first sea leg ends. Note the fuel levels.

 

Quick note about the trip:

Spoiler

Times in MET from screenshots will not match my dates, and that is because of how the game counts 6h days for stock kerbin. In this save, kerbin is not in its normal orbit, and is a moon of Soonah, so it changes the day length, so I count dates based on days visually passed.

 

 

 

Day 3

 

The 3rd day of the expedition prove to be the most interesting one so far for the crew! With the RV Evergreen limping on fuel, it was decided that a crew member was to fly the helicopter over to shore and find a suitable spot for the ship to land at. But first, they considered what they would do once on shore.

 

Early morning aboard the RV Evergreen.

 

Once the crew decided that calling in a fuel request from Evium Oil to be delivered by airplane was the best they could ever hope for this far out, they got started on preparations for the beach landing, such as who would get to fly the Mini Heli over to the beaches and wait for the ship. Jozie Kerman didn't like that at all. After all, she was the heli pilot!

 

She didn't get her way.

 

Instead, Lia Kerman got to go, simply because she had lots of experience crash-landing on beaches from her long-past experimental aircraft pilot days. So she unhitched the Mini Heli from the deck, and got onboard.

 

Lia Kerman gets ready to fly to the beaches, to find the perfect one for the RV Evergreen to land at.

 

After fiddling with the rotor's thrust settings, she was off!

 

After a short 11 km flight, Lia landed at the beaches, almost crashing the Mini Heli in the process. She was quick to hurry out and plant a flag to mark the end of the first leg of the trip, and to guide the crew back in the ship of where they should go towards.

 

Looks like a nice spot...

 

And she's landed!

 

"You can already see the ice cap from here!"

 

The flag's plaque.

 

Once all of the setup was done, the crew back at the RV Evergreen got busy and started to bring the big lady to the beach. So, the ship was soon at the beach and ready to start the small trek which would get it up on to the ice, ready to receive a bucketload of fuel.

 

Almost there.

 

The ship maneuvers into position for the landing.

 

At long last, the ship touches land, where it'll be for the next couple of days.

 

"Wish you were here!"

 

That's all for now! Thanks for reading!