Glider Challenge

[Boubywrbyvq]

This challenge is all about gliding. What you are going to do is make any space plane with stock parts and one solidfuel-booster. What you are going to do the is launch from KSC and get as far away from KSC as possible without any fuel

I will choosen 30. June 8:00PM CEST (Central European Summer Time)

Rules:

Only Stock parts.

1 Solid fuel booster.

Under 25 parts.

No Debug Cheating. (Unlimited fuel, hacked gravity etc.)

EDIT:

No Time warp

Must fly a straight line

Picture of both Glider and Map.

Edited June 27, 2013 by Boubywrbyvq
Bugs and Missing rules

[bsalis]

Have you tried this yourself?

Stable gliders fly in circles. Perhaps you could run top rankings for max altitude, and max flight time, as well as distance. Just a suggestion.

[Tex_NL]

You're probably not familiar with the infamous infini-glide bug. This bug makes it possible for both powered and unpowered craft to reach orbit breaking speeds and fly literally indefinitely.

Just search the forum a bit and you'll see your challenge is flawed (no offense).

[Jaedinator]

I've been looking through the challenge section for a few days and i've seen that about half of the challenges are from people with >25 Post who havent read the challenge guidelines at all and arent even close to their ingame experience to post real challenges here. There are dozens of challenges which arent really challenges like "Glider Challenge, Glide as far as possible + 10 more of those gliding challenges all useless due to the aerodynamical system in ksp. Or bring one,three,five... Orange tanks into LKO. There was once a challenge about who brings the most and that challenge should stay the only one of that kind. We should either make a minimum post count to write challenges, so the people get familiar with challenges and how they should be made before posting useless ones or a challenge section for less experienced players.

Sorry if i have been too direct, but it had to be said. Thanks.

[Boubywrbyvq]

I have tried this. And I might have git the infini-glide bug as Tex_NL is talking about.

[Boubywrbyvq]

bsalis: I might have gotten the infini-glide bug as Tex_NL is talking about

Jaedinator: Its not ment to be a challenge but a competition. I could not find anywhere to post that expect from the Challenges tab.

[thescientist]

"without any fuel" Wobbling-propulsion sistem aren't allowed, right? because if it isn't, some special plane can fly (theorically) for an infinite time!

[zarakon]

"without any fuel" Wobbling-propulsion sistem aren't allowed, right? because if it isn't, some special plane can fly (theorically) for an infinite time!

I think pretty much anything you would make as a light glider would be capable of infinite flight, as long as it has control surfaces

[Plur303]

I think pretty much anything you would make as a light glider would be capable of infinite flight, as long as it has control surfaces

Yes I made a small hang glider with only 3 control surfaces and it easily exploits the infinite glide bug. As you can see it can hit 1000 m/s without any propulsion of any kind. So this can just fly forever until I get bored...

This challenge is flawed. The only limit on how far a glider can fly in Kerbal Space Program is how long you feel like playing the game.

[AppleJacks69]

Yes I made a small hang glider with only 3 control surfaces and it easily exploits the infinite glide bug. As you can see it can hit 1000 m/s without any propulsion of any kind.

Haha! Thats so cool... Its like a jet airship thing.

[hawkwing]

Can we please stop killing every challenge posted by crying about infiniglide exploits? We all know its broken. If the OP want's a challenge about how far you can glide off of the thrust from a single SRB, then the OP has a perfectly valid challenge. infiniglide is powered flight, not gliding. Remove all the control surfaces from your craft, and run the challenge without infiniglide.

Yes, due to the nature of the challenge, the OP should have a rule that disallows infiniglide. But shooting down this challenge because the OP didn't know about infinigliding does nothing but hurt the community and make new players feel unwelcome.

[SpaceK531]

I'm an estimated 3/4ths of the way through an entry, the time currently is over 3 hours

more info to come when I finish.

Also, to promote fairness and actual gliding, I propose a change to the challenge:

• For your glider, you must use one probe core with zero (0) batteries and zero (0) solar panels, engines, or energy-creating devices. This gives you roughly 5 minutes to gain altitude and speed and set your trim, and prevents infinigliding.
  
• Your craft must not exceed 20,000 meters altitude
  
• For your entry to count it must touch down. No quitting in the middle!
  
• Score is determined by distance traveled over land and mission time in 4 categories: highest glide, furthest glide, longest glide, and most efficient glide (which is the distance over land/highest altitude*(time in minutes))
  
• mission time stops when the first glider part splashes down/crashes (post pics of your mission log!)
  
• Any SRB is allowed as long as it is only one (protip: don't use a separatron)
  
• Vanilla leaderboard and leaderboards for the following mods: FAR (stock parts), B9, Firespitter, other well-known airplane mods
  

Distance from KSP is hard to determine because there is no way of measuring quantitatively how far your craft made it.

Because of symmetry errors, planes do not actually fly in a straight line, so that would be a good rule to scratch off.

Why the time limit on entries? Why not just an indefinite challenge of who can build the best glider with one SRB to boost it?

EDIT: Also, get rid of the timewarp limitation. My glider has flown for over 5 hours and it gets realllly boring just watching it sit there.

Edited August 9, 2013 by SpaceK531
updated rules to exclude infinigliding

[SpaceK531]

Alright! It is finally over at 7 hours 47 minutes, or 467 minutes.

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Glide height: 19,277

Glide distance: 797,481 meters

Glide time: 467 minutes

Glide efficiency:

797481 meters over land divided by 19,277 meters high multiplied by 467 minutes = 19319.58

can anyone beat that?

PS. 797,481 meters is just above 2/5ths of the way around Kerbin

Edited August 9, 2013 by SpaceK531

[Tex_NL]

@hawkwing

The reason glider challenges are shot down with infiniglide is because it's because in 9 out of 10 times it's a new user who thinks he's just invented the wheel.

@SpaceK531

Though I applaud your attempt to exclude infinigliders it doesn't. I currently have a 100% stock craft hovering over KSC. Unmanned and totally unpowered. No batteries, no solar panels, just infiniglide. And it is actually gaining altitude. 30 minutes in I am already over 2km.

I stand by my point all glider challenges are flawed by default.

Edited August 9, 2013 by Tex_NL

[Themohawkninja]

@hawkwing

I stand by my point all glider challenges are flawed by default.

I beg to differ. If your challenge has nothing to do with time and distance, but simply velocity, mass, and Kerbal count, than the flaw is avoided.

[Tex_NL]

I beg to differ. If your challenge has nothing to do with time and distance, but simply velocity, mass, and Kerbal count, than the flaw is avoided.

If you only look at velocity, mass and Kerbals it isn't a glider challenge any more, now is it?

[Themohawkninja]

If you only look at velocity, mass and Kerbals it isn't a glider challenge any more, now is it?

I'd like to think of my challenge as a glider challenge.

[SpaceK531]

@hawkwing

@SpaceK531

Though I applaud your attempt to exclude infinigliders it doesn't. I currently have a 100% stock craft hovering over KSC. Unmanned and totally unpowered. No batteries, no solar panels, just infiniglide. And it is actually gaining altitude. 30 minutes in I am already over 2km.

I added some new rules to my proposal to make it exclude entries like this in the future

(no going over 20 km, must touch down)

[Tex_NL]

I added some new rules to my proposal to make it exclude entries like this in the future

(no going over 20 km, must touch down)

Gonna be pretty difficult to touch down without any form of control.

Those could possibly rule out my contraption. Don't know it will reach 20km yet but it will definitely not come down. With physics warp active at x4 it's over 7 km high in just over 3 hours and has covered over 85km ground distance.

(Too bad decouplers won't work without power. If they did I could design an infiglider that could shed a few surfaces to come down and crash.)

P.S.

Now that I think of it, my 0.20 Ghost of Tony infiniglider came down very slowly but was kept alive by a single RTG. My current infiniglider is of similar design but has double the wings and no RTG. With some tweaking I could build something in between that drops only a few meters per hour and still follow all the rules.

[SpaceK531]

Gonna be pretty difficult to touch down without any form of control.

Those could possibly rule out my contraption. Don't know it will reach 20km yet but it will definitely not come down. With physics warp active at x4 it's over 7 km high in just over 3 hours and has covered over 85km ground distance.

(Too bad decouplers won't work without power. If they did I could design an infiglider that could shed a few surfaces to come down and crash.)

P.S.

Now that I think of it, my 0.20 Ghost of Tony infiniglider came down very slowly but was kept alive by a single RTG. My current infiniglider is of similar design but has double the wings and no RTG. With some tweaking I could build something in between that drops only a few meters per hour and still follow all the rules.

when I said touch down, I also meant crash landing

[Tex_NL]

That's what I thought.

I have a new contraption 'flying'. I dropped 3 meters in just under 13 minutes and still have 145 meters to drop. This would theoretically give me a total 'hang-time' of over 10,5 hours as I am heading towards the ocean. No mountains to crash into

Edit:

1 hour into the glide and I dropped from 148 to 133 meters. Right on scedule for an epic 10,5 hour glide.

Edited August 9, 2013 by Tex_NL

[Tex_NL]

2 hours: Covered just over 23 km at a steady 3.3m/s and are still 118m above the water. Projected gliding time has dropped a bit to about 9 hour 40 minutes.

Shall I let it run overnight while I get some ZZZ's or are there STILL people out there that believe in the validity of glider challenges?

Edited August 9, 2013 by Tex_NL

[SpaceK531]

Shall I let it run overnight while I get some ZZZ's or are there STILL people out there that believe in the validity of glider challenges?

lets just see what your glider can do.

maybe call this the "who can set the best trim in 5 minutes" challenge

[hawkwing]

Oh for the love of god, EVERYONE knows infinigliders are broken. Why would you think a challenge submission even begins to qualify as a glider if you use the magic forces applied by infinigliding to power it? Gliding is about UNPOWERED FLIGHT. The challenge is simple: Throw a glider as far as you can using no force applied to the glider but the thrust of a single SRB.

Here is an example for you all. Take your flaps off and fly it for real.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

[GusTurbo]

I remember an old glider challenge from before the forum implosion. To prevent infiniglide, no control surfaces were allowed.