Dropping in on the KSC islands.

[Tw1]

You probably know airfield island. The dedicated runway means it's not too hard to get to.

But, the other three members of that island chain are not so hospitable. Steep sides, small area, inaccessible to boat, and a nightmare landing for a plane.

Sure, I could land there with a rocket, but what's the fun in that?

I wanted to paratroop kerbals in, to finally mark, and name these islands.

At first, I tried using EVA parachutes.

But, they don't always activate on time. My para-kerbals ended up rolling down the sides, or missing the islands completely.

Plus, my plane was not the most maneuverable thing ever, and it was hard to stay within the render distance until the kerbal touched down.

Looks like this approach is lacking. New plan: Drop pods!

After some subfunctional designs, including this, which would've used infernal robotics to lift its engines away from the path of the ejected pod:

It did a good job of going around in circles, and the unconventional wing shape made it almost uncontrollable.

I then made this:

Far more maneuverable. A girder structure to hold the engines in position, and away from the path of the pods.

Perfect. Off we go!

Thought about landing at Airstrip Island to make a quicksave, but decided against it. We were headed straight for the first target.

As the plane approached, pilot Ludous cut the engines, to reduce the amount of speed the parachute would need to kill. Then..

Fsssssssh! The little seperatrons pushed the pod clear, combined with the parachutes sent it into a tumble. Ludous immediately began a series of tight circles, keeping the pod within render distance.

Round, and round.. waiting for the parachute to vanish, confirming a successful landing. But it did not.

It should've landed by now! Surely it didn't take this long for a pod with a parachute to hit the ground!

Ludous was instructed to to a close pass over the pod.

On close inspection, it appeared that the pod had indeed landed, just that the parachute was still visible. Only one way to confirm.

Nervously, Ludous turned the plane towards the next island. We watched, as the distance between pod and plane increased.

2.2Km... 2.3km... 2.5Km... 2.6km! Lack of the marker vanishing indicates survival!

It worked. Bilald was quite exited. As it was his turn next!

Passing low over the next island, Bilald was dropped of without a hitch.

2/3 Islands visited.

Now, the third. This one would be sightly trickier than the others. It was very narrow, but Ludous could see some patches of grass. As long as the pod was dropped on one of them, they should be fine.

They turned to pass longways, over the island.

Success! Now, there's just to land the plane.

The original plan was to land at Airstrip island, and have Ludous plant a flag there. But, without the weight of the pods, this plane was now pretty unstable. And Ludous, who'd never even flown before, was more than a little nervous about landing.

So instead, I decided I'll send someone else to plant the flag on Airstrip island, and land near KSC.

We made a nice big spiral..

*Random stuff blowing up*

And came to a stop

Right in front of the VAB.

While it may not be quite as ambitious as a landing on Eve or Duna,

It was about time someone set foot on those islands, east of KSC.

:cool:

Edited January 19, 2014 by Tw1

[Space Peanut]

Nice. Somewhere for Kerbals to hope to be stranded! Nice long summer holiday on a romantic island, not like getting left behind on the Mun or Duna!