Best way to scan for Kethane?

[Hiromoto]

I have only been playing for a week, but once I found the kethane mod it gave my game sense of purpose. Scanning for kethane though seems to take for ever. What I do now is put my self in about 100,000 m orbit make an rotation or two, then change my inclination by five degrees repeat. It takes about four or five times before I find a spot, but most of the map is still dark. I'd like to hear how everyone else scans for kethane.

[agentexeider]

Best way, is use more probes on Polar orbits, and just have the probes scan as the planet/moon orbits, however it can take a while because some of the moons have long orbital periods.

right now since .20 is out, it has borked the entire mod system and everyone is scrambling to get their mods working again. so you might be waiting a bit before you get another reply.

-Æ

[Mcflow195]

Use a Oval orbit and use a orbit that goes north to south, since the planet/moon turns est to west or vice versa, a north to south orbit will eventually cover the entire area you want to scan, good luck

[GwiloProductions]

I do mine as follows :

1. place a sat in a polar (N/S) orbit.

2. Place your second sat in an orbit between 32 and 45 degrees... essentially the same as the ISS.

Using this you can cover the entire surface in a matter of minutes.

**You have to be in control of the vessel for it to scan.. Use a MAX time warp of 4 arrows **

Edited May 25, 2013 by GwiloProductions

[lyndonguitar]

I think it only scans when your in control, when you leave a vessel the scanning will stop

[Hremsfeld]

This seems the best place to ask: Does anyone have a link to the googledoc that was talking about orbital resonance and how it affected Kethane and MapSat? The altitude you scan at matters; if your orbital period divided by the body's rotational period is a rational number (or close to one), you won't actually map the entire globe, just a few stripes across it. Everyone saying you need a polar orbit is correct, though. 50x or 100x speed if you don't want to go insane.

[GwiloProductions]

This seems the best place to ask: Does anyone have a link to the googledoc that was talking about orbital resonance and how it affected Kethane and MapSat? The altitude you scan at matters; if your orbital period divided by the body's rotational period is a rational number (or close to one), you won't actually map the entire globe, just a few stripes across it. Everyone saying you need a polar orbit is correct, though. 50x or 100x speed if you don't want to go insane.

I do not have the link, but I make it a point to scan from no further than 150k from the surface of the body, for me this gives the best results at x50 or x100 warp.. and still keeps entering space safe .

[lyndonguitar]

In Kethane its ok not to fully map the entire area, Kethane deposits are big, not just one pixel wide.

however it is useful for ISA Mapsat if you want a full image

[Reavermyst]

sadly I'm having an issue where if I put a kethane detector on my craft, it causes the launch screen to just be a picture of space with the UI and an ominous hum from what sounds like an engine. It's weird.

I can't wait til it's working again, Kethane mining is pretty much my main source of interest in this game xD

[JonoRig]

sadly I'm having an issue where if I put a kethane detector on my craft, it causes the launch screen to just be a picture of space with the UI and an ominous hum from what sounds like an engine. It's weird.

I can't wait til it's working again, Kethane mining is pretty much my main source of interest in this game xD

Someone posted a fix for that (not the German one) I'm at work atm, but when I'm home ill find u the link, I had this problem and the updated dll didn't help, now its working perfect, as for me, I made a nice big beasty satellite with 9large scanners and 4 baby ones, put it in a polar orbit, then played a diff game for couple hours while leaving it on 100x, nice big chunky lines, and almost no black left on my kethane map

[Hiromoto]

Thank you all for responding I never thought about a North South orbit, that makes a lot of sense. I had to restart since the update and now I'm wondering are the kethane deposits In the same places?

[BJ Quest]

I put one IAS map sensor/dish on top of the rocket/prob and two (perhaps more) Kethane detectors to the side. Polar orbits for mapping then kethane detecting in same orbit and compare, writing down the center of deposits with amount of fuel in the deposits. I time increase 50x when mapping. If I remember right ISA will map under 250k height AGL and Kethane detection (I not sure?) under 200K. By using two detectors (or more) activated opposite in time I get a nice map with better resolution for the same time of mapping with one.

http://imgur.com/gsc862t

Currently I have a ship/prob with 2 IAS dish on top and 6 Kethane detectors spaced out from the sides of the ship with long I beams headed to Jool.

http://imgur.com/e8aA8Ok

I have tried this in orbit of Kerbal and like the mapping results with the detectors activation spaces out. All of this is in version 1.9. I am stating to play with version 2.0 but have yet to figure how to successfully transfer add on's and ships/miners/probes over.

BJ Quest

PS: The Two attached rovers to the scout ship are fuel trucks that hook up to the Kethane mining rig with a winch cable that can attach to ships to transfer fuel. Mods I use are: parts from nova punch pack(6.25mm tank and engine), Kethane, winch, as well as ISA map mods. The Scout can be used to explore the surface once the rovers/fuel truck are dumped off at the mining rig. I do use the FTmN400 Nuclear engine in the middle stage on both rockets. The Ranger (with 6 detectors) has this nuclear engine as it core power source.

Edited May 27, 2013 by BJ Quest
Adding Pictures

[JonoRig]

bit off topic, but for those running into issues with kethane on 0.20 in this thread; extract https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21650546/Kethane.rar to the gamedata folder; unfortunatly the link is a .rar, so you'll need to get something like 7zip (which is free)

[Psycho529]

As soon as I start to try scanning I can't activate the scanner or open the map...?

[GavinZac]

Currently I have a ship/prob with 2 IAS dish on top and 6 Kethane detectors spaced out from the sides of the ship with long I beams headed to Jool.

I have tried this in orbit of Kerbal and like the mapping results with the detectors activation spaces out.

Just because this is showing up prominently in Google results: the physical location of the detectors doesn't matter, it scans from the centre of mass of the ship. All those detectors are detecting from the same spot - the improvement comes from having them firing on that spot more than once per second.