The KERdog STOL Jet

[Geschosskopf]

I wanted to make a long-range jet I could fly around and admire the new Kerbin scenery. I really wanted a VTOL but after much frustration, I settled on STOL instead, which is MUCH simpler, safer, and almost the same thing when taken to extremes like this.

The 1st prototype passing a mountain that looks surprisingly like Mt. Saint Helens. The production version has more air brakes, external seats, and drop tanks.

Mods used:

B9 Aerospace: wings, engines, engine mounts, air brakes, most of fuselage

TT's Modular Multiwheels: main landing gear, tailwheels

Firespitter: drop tanks and mounts

ISA MapSat (Unofficial): the GPS unit so I can use maps made by satellites

Stock: cockpit, external seats, control surfaces, ladders, lights, nose landing gear, struts

This plane, in the clean configuration, can take off at 20m/s in about its own length. Add drop tanks and external seats and it needs 30m/s and about 1.5 of its own length. But it has the power to go straight up immediately after leaving the ground to whatever height desired. So not technically VTOL but damn close . It also lands at 20m/s and, because I put the brakes on an action group and set them before landing, it comes to a full stop in about its own length. The hard part is making it stop flying, which is why it's got lots of airbrakes.

With it's extremely low stall speed, wide-track landing gear, and tailwheels under the wingtips and tail, it can get in and out of just about any place you can imagine. Uneven terrain is no problem. I've made some VERY rough landings and ain't broke it yet.

Shamelessly exploiting the plane's low stall speed and the new SAS's ability to hold a bank angle indefinitely to land on the sharp spire of rock sticking out of the sea south of Airbase Island.

Airfields are overrated

Normally, I use 2/3 power to get off the ground and go straight up to cruising altitude as quickly as possible. I like to cruise on 1/3 throttle, which gives me about 300-350m/s between 10km-12km altitude. Put on 2x or 3x time warp and you can really cover ground this way with very good fuel economy. However, at full power I have gotten it up to 850m/s at about 15km, which is about all it's got air intakes for. But this doesn't get anywhere near the fuel range I get at my cruising altitude and speed.

I've taken this plane to the North Pole and back to KSC on just internal fuel and still had 1/4 tank when I got home, so the drop tanks aren't really necessary. Still, they work nice as bombs so I keep them on there .

Maneuverability is OK, not great, but this wasn't designed to be a fighterplane. Flight is very stable although it tends to fly slightly nose-up and with the nose a hair left of center, so to keep it going in a straight line you also need just a hair of right bank on it. The reason for the nose being a bit left is because the plane is a bit asymmetric. The canards are in the way of the cockpit ladder so I had to make a curved ladder to go around. This created so much drag that the plane pulled to the right, so I slapped a radial air scoop on the left side as balance. This worked almost perfectly, except for the slight angle to the left now, which is entirely tolerable.

The external seats were an afterthought. After I'd gotten the plane itself squared away and had flown it over most of Kerbin, a long-distance rover wrecked in the mountains west of KSC. Rather than just Recover or Revert the mess, I decided to see if I could rescue the Kerbals with my plane. So I slapped 4 seats on the belly and got them out of the deep canyon they'd wrecked in.

And that's how the plane got to be named KERdog. Kerbin Exploration and Rescue. Before this incident, I just called it the "exploration jet".