Swiftbird—A small, nimble, stock, 8 passenger aircraft (Extended version released!)

[SaturnianBlue]

SWIFTBIRD

A useful holiday gift for the average kerbal

     The Swiftbird was originally built as a plane that flew around the rocket in "The Asteroid Sentinels" as a "news aircraft", but it proved to be an excellent aircraft on its own. The design was inspired partly by the ERJ-145 and flies even faster than it, reaching 300 meters per second (~Mach 0.87)! The Swiftbird lives up to its name, capable of executing high g-force turns. Despite the small fuel load, the Swiftbird has a range of 600 kilometers, enough to safely traverse the ocean that the KSC sits on. If it runs out of fuel, it can easily glide for at least 30 kilometers. Additionally, a round trip between the KSC and the Island Airstrip the aircraft takes 7 minutes (including the time needed to turn around on the airstrip).

When a significant portion of the wing was lost during takeoff at the Island airstrip, the craft still managed to safely land back at the runway at the KSC.

Be careful of tail strikes though—the plane pitches up pretty quickly when taking off. However the only damage done is usually to the horizontal stabilizer. 

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Swiftbird Version 2

The second version of the Swiftbird, with wing mounted engines. Just like the aft-mounted version, it has good speed, maneuverability, and range. (You'll still have to worry about tail strikes, unfortunately) 

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More Pictures

Thanks for viewing!

Edited December 27, 2016 by SaturnianBlue

[Rodderboy]

looks sleek as [heck]! 

Happy hollidays from a newcomer to the forums!

Edited December 25, 2016 by Vanamonde
Please keep the language clean on our forum.

[Heckspress]

oh my goodness, saturnian actually making a plane? 

[SaturnianBlue]

10 minutes ago, Heckspress said:

oh my goodness, saturnian actually making a plane? 

I did release a "Pheonix-class" supersonic jet a fair while back, but it is quite true that I very rarely have released a plane (though I do mess around with them between projects).

[SaturnianBlue]

This is the Swiftbird with 1.5X the passenger load and around the same speed, agility, and range! The Swiftbird Extended is also tested to be capable of 70 kilometers of gliding from maximum altitude. 

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Edited December 27, 2016 by SaturnianBlue

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

Looks neat! I'll try it out in the morning!

Also: How would a tailstrike damage only the horizontal stabilizer on version 1? It's at the very top! Wouldn't the tail fairing and the vertical stabilizer be taken out before it?

[SaturnianBlue]

10 hours ago, EpicSpaceTroll139 said:

Looks neat! I'll try it out in the morning!

Also: How would a tailstrike damage only the horizontal stabilizer on version 1? It's at the very top! Wouldn't the tail fairing and the vertical stabilizer be taken out before it?

I think I meant the vertical stabilizer, sorry about that. I'm pretty sure that the Elevon part for it is slightly offset down resulting in its loss, though the fairing survives.

[Planetfall]

I like the wing shape, how curved it is.

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

I tried it out, and it's a great biz jet. I found that isolating the control surfaces to their respective axis (using the actuation toggles in the right click menus), most especially the rudder to yaw, improve the flight characteristics however. (In the case of the rudder, it prevents the wild swing when rolling). Nice work!

Edited December 29, 2016 by EpicSpaceTroll139