Help with personal aircraft challenge career

[Jarin]

5 minutes ago, AeroGav said:

I've never kept a career game going so far.  At first I thoght it was normal waning enthusiasm, but more likely i'm just not sure how to proceed.  Launching missions and not having them arrive for 2 years.  Forgetting the antenna and having to wait 4 years to the  next launch window.  Euch.  

Yeah, since I hate fast-forwarding more than a couple days at a time, I tend to stall out pretty hard, late-game. 

Interesting design with the nukes. How'd you manage the attachments there?

[AeroGav]

18 minutes ago, Jarin said:

Yeah, since I hate fast-forwarding more than a couple days at a time, I tend to stall out pretty hard, late-game. 

Interesting design with the nukes. How'd you manage the attachments there?

Especially if you got stuff happening in LKO, on Mun and on Minmus while a Duna mission is in transit. One of the reasons I decided to basically land on one Biome on each of those two then stop exploring Kerbin SOI altogether one i have proper interplanetary missions on the go.

The nukes are attached to FT100 tanks which are radially mounted to the wing, then offset forward.I tried using incidence on the wings to minimise the mk2 drag penalty, as Val urges.  I normally just use loads of wing to try and drown out the bad fuselage, but i've also been restrained in that respect this time.   L/D ratio of 2.5 supersonic which is OK I guess.     Some of my mk1's get up to 3.5 with plenty of wing and no incidence.   A sandbox mk2 of mine  , with no incidence but lots and lots of wing, also gets 2.5 

Spoiler

 

 

My new "star empress" mk3 passenger liner was the real surprise, gets 3.5.  Just as well as it's so underpowered.  Wing incidence and very little in the way of radially attached engines i guess.  What is it with mk2s eh? Maybe we should start a complaint thread in the suggestions forum.

Spoiler

 

https://kerbalx.com/AeroGav/Star-Empress

It's so underpowered my first flight in the thing got into the back end of the lift/drag curve after flopping off the end of the runway. It lost more and more speed and ended up ditching itself.

 

 

Edited November 10, 2016 by AeroGav

[Jarin]

7 hours ago, AeroGav said:

What is it with mk2s eh? Maybe we should start a complaint thread in the suggestions forum.

Now that I'm getting a better feel for drag mechanics, I really should go back and try to fine-tune my old Mk2 designs. I basically just had a horribly-inefficient satellite lifter, and that was only because I was tired of working without a cargo bay. The thing could barely reach equatorial orbit. It had to punt polar satellites out suborbital. Everything else was cobbled together mk1.

[AeroGav]

On 10/11/2016 at 9:31 PM, AeroGav said:

Yeah finally, Whiplash engines.  Also pre-coolers and Aerospike on same tech node.   

A late night session eventually produced the above craft.  I think I was fed up of the very Kerbal looking spindly mk1 devices i'd used up till now.  That weighs 50 tons fuelled but with an empty cargo bay.  2 Whiplash, 2 nukes and  one Dart aerospike   Gets to orbit with about 1/3 of its LF remaining, which is fairly considerable (the sponsons on both sides of the mk2 fuselage are just a string of mk1 LF tanks). 

 

I just came back from Gilly with the thing.  So nice not to be flying spam in a can missions.   This thing actually looks quite comfortable - by Kerbal standards.  You even wander around inside (and give it push when it runs out of fuel, but let's not go there).