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Inaugural Kerbal Air Race Championship

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Goddess Bhavani

Goddess Bhavani

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After all its Kerbal, and not Earth, and they -might- have antigrav technology. Hehehe.

More seriously though, this competition course could be used for a future \'KerbalFighter 2012\' competition between various defence contractors. Consider my interest piqued lol.

A template for this flyoff might be:

Fighter aircraft with single engine, carrying a pair of air to air missiles. Top speed of at least 300m/s at 1500m altitude. (minimal drag, moderate to high wing loading)

C7 parts to be used, experimental parts are probably fine provided they come from C7 himself.

No (A)SAS assistance.

No magic turbine lol.

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Goddess Bhavani

Goddess Bhavani

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ASAS is helpful when I create deliberately unstable designs off real world fighters. Things with a rearward CG can be made to point the nose fast in one direction then use ASAS to get it flying straight without spinning out. Snap direction changes could be made in this \'cheating\' manner, where manual control means stalling and spinning out.

Not tried a course as tight as yours yet, so point noted :)

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TheMattyPrince

TheMattyPrince

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Why is there landing gear?

I like all my planes to be able to land, and actually, trying to do this course without the landing gear would cause it to be unstable as there is no counterbalance to the tail, and if I were to use tail pieces on the underside to counterbalance the craft would be too stable so would result in a slower time.

So, yeah, a bit of personal preference, a bit of Centre of Gravity work. :)

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TheMattyPrince

TheMattyPrince

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I can\'t even finish the race, in any amount of time. I inevitably end up splattered across the geography, usually within the first few turns. Never even successfully rounded the fifth flag.

As white owl stated earlier, its all about energy manipulation, watch the videos him and me did of the default craft and try to follow a similar route around the track, or one that goes further out, then, when you make your own plane, do a similar route too, when you can do that competently, start trying to speed up and make tighter turns. Dont try to go fast, try to glide and only use thrust to maintain an optimum speed, which I personally think is around 60-65 m/s, any faster and you may miss turns and wont have much reaction time, any slower and you dont have enough thrust to turn enough or pull up.

Also one bit of advice I have, is dont turn so your wings are perpendicular to the ground, when you are taking a corner go at an angle so you are slightly pulling up as well as turning (pulling up but not necissarily gaining altitude) Also, if you use a keyboard like me, tap the keys in the slaloms so you dont turn too harshly. Last thing, if you are turning sharply right and then quickly turn left, there is a high possibility of losing control, this is the main part where tapping comes in. :)

Hope this helps :)

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Herra Tohtori

Herra Tohtori

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This is quite tricky to do with the default challenge aircraft.

My current best with default craft is 02:51 02:40 02:37. There may still be some room to improve it, but damn is it hard to control that craft. Very sluggish in the turns. I shall upload a video of my run soon, then move to Open category with something a little less wing loading, and better pitch maneuverability - the biggest challenge I found with the default craft is to get the nose up - which is even more problematic due to the craft\'s use of canards as elevons instead of elevators, so every time you apply roll input you can\'t use full pitch up from them.

I nosedived into ground many a time...

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Herra Tohtori

Herra Tohtori

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Then perhaps a plane that is easier to control and fly through the course?

Biggest thing to improve the handling characteristics would be:

-reduced wing loading (more wing surface area per mass unit); this would help making the aircraft more mobile and easier to fly slowly

-slightly increased elevator response (so that pilots can pull higher angle of attack)

-dedicated elevators and ailerons instead of combined elevons

-reduced rudder response (the mobile canard is WAY too powerful a control surface for a rudder in such a small aircraft - a tail fin with small control surface bolted on it would likely do a better job)

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