X-100 Superbird (a little look into the early days)

[kapteenipirk]

 

X-100 Superbird

 

I started playing KSP in late 2013 and have now (according to Steam) clocked over 5000 hours of KSP witch is a pretty crazy amount, but considering i have been around this game for nearly 5 years, i guess it's not all that bad.

I have to say the more amazing thing is the fact that just how well i can still remember a few of those early creations i made in the first like 10-50 hours of the game.

These early creations include:

My first ever atmospheric craft (a stubby little plane with a MK-3 fuselage, too many engines and not enough wings).

My first ever space related creation (a single launch space-station called Spacelab). I actually still have an updated version of it laying around.

My first ever plane that flew (an SR-71 style thing).

My first ever replica craft (a Mig-21 with far too much weight on it).

My first ever plane that i was able to land and take-off safely (a 707'ish quad engined plane).

My first truly successful aircraft (this).

 

From all of those early creations, the X-100 comes to mind the best as it was the first ever craft that felt it could do something more than just fly around.

At first i didn't really have success with it, but after quite a lot of tweaking and adding of "hidden" canards later, i noticed the thing had transformed into quite a powerhouse of a plane. I of-course wanted to test this by installing a couple SRB missiles witch it carried no problems at all.

Now after all the many changes, tweaks and fixes later, it still flies, actually even better than ever before.

Amazingly enough, this one actually is the original craft, not some rebuild of it, tough it did take some rebuilding regardless as the craft looked like this when i opened it after all that time.

 

With the help of the KerbalHistoricalInstitute mod i was able to open the thing, but unfortunately the part's that had changed model over the years all used those new models, so a lot of rebuilding was ahead.

To make the rebuilding process as authentic as possible, i didn't use any of the "new" rotation and offset tools, not even the Q+WASD (didn't know about that at the time). I also took that screenshot as a sort of part-list to help me get the rebuilt one to be exactly like the original, tough because of all the aerodynamic tweaks and changes, some of the "hidden" canards where left out to make the thing look a little cleaner.

 

All in all, it may be a little how you doing by modern standards, but i still love the old girl and i feel like i should do it justice properly and do a complete rebuild like i did with the Fouglas FC-8.

Here are some few more picks showing the plane and it's SRB missiles in action

Spoiler

Missile away!

 

Direct hit.

 

I ran out of fuel and had to do an emergency ditch into the ocean, turns out this plane is even more amazing than i ever imagined.

 

Technical specs:

Top speed: 373 m/s (without SRB missiles in low altitude)

Stall speed: 55 m/s (without SRB missiles)

Length: 33.6m

Wingspan: 35.5m

Height: 9.1m

Parts: 156

Mass: 84.7 tons (with over 30 tons of SRB missiles)

 

The Superbird is very fast, very smooth, but could propably use some more pitch authority.

 

And there it is for you, a small look into the kinds of creations i started out with nearly 5 years ago. I hope you enjoyed looking at it .

Oh, and in-case you where wondering that what got me into this, it was Hoc Gamig's "That's no moonbase" series that made me think "that looks like it could be fun to play".

[Klapaucius]

I've been playing less than a year, but I totally get it. My first truly good plane was a real victory. It is small, and nowhere near as complex as that, but it is a good feeling to build something that actually works well.