The Ultimate VTOL Challenge

[Ryu Gemini]

Good luck with that! I had to actually look it up to see what you were talking about. I looks like the basic shape may be doable but as for functions, no idea what it does.

Yeah, I'm not doing much this weekend with KSP, but I've managed to get the bridge right so far.

When it enters tacked-on-for-ending-plane-mode, the bridge actually retracts upwards into the main body. Getting infernal robotics to cooperate with that was a bit of a chore, since its parts start out in retracted form by default (and I refused to go with that).

The wings will be comparitively easy. I'll just need to use hinges for them.

.

[Swifty]

Not meaning to upset you but it says in the challenge rules for the mun challenge that you have to takes off and land 100km away but you only flew 10.9km away from your alpha landing site. Technically to Qualify for the mun challenge you still have to go 89.1km.

P.S. sorry if this seems rude.

Doh! I'll have to check these can do that.

Reading fail....

[DirkLarien]

Just made one specially for the Darpa part only. It looks rather cool :-) I am slow at video editing. Will post it when its uploaded.

[Aghanim]

My VTOL is still in beta stage, there is no testing being done right now as I'm still in my exams:

Meet the Abaddon-test. It could fall from 1 km unpowered and still perfectly capable of normal flying, and have voluminous internal space, the orange tank could fit in there

There is a lot of improvements that can be done, for example replacing all of its fusion reactors with antimatter reactor, adding DT vista and warp drive to it, and I'm still considering either to use 4 AM reactor + thermal turbojets stack or 4 plasma drive with AM reactor and tank core separate from the engines so it could be ejected, and KAS winch, and openable door

[Northstar1989]

My VTOL is still in beta stage, there is no testing being done right now as I'm still in my exams:

http://i.imgur.com/0j5ddcJ.jpg

Meet the Abaddon-test. It could fall from 1 km unpowered and still perfectly capable of normal flying, and have voluminous internal space, the orange tank could fit in there

There is a lot of improvements that can be done, for example replacing all of its fusion reactors with antimatter reactor, adding DT vista and warp drive to it, and I'm still considering either to use 4 AM reactor + thermal turbojets stack or 4 plasma drive with AM reactor and tank core separate from the engines so it could be ejected, and KAS winch, and openable door

I don't mean to be harsh- but what exactly is that? It looks like a giant metal box- and pretty much the sorriest, ugliest excuse for a "flying" machine I've ever seen. At least *try* to make it look aerodynamic, OK? And, "improving" it by using *antimatter* reactors? IMHO, they shouldn't even be allowed in these challenges at all- antimatter on the scale and control of those reactors is simply CENTURIES away, and most people who play with them either cheater them open in the tech tree or spammed thoughtless poorly-designed science missions until they unlocked the tech node. Understand, I'm not saying you did any of that- only that they're WAY too OP'd for most challenges.

Personally, I have no problem with fission reactors an thermal turbojets- maybe even the upgraded sort that you don't unlock until fusion power- and perhaps even the basic fusion reactors in certain circumstances (I'm PRESUMING those are probably upgraded fusion reactors if you're talking about replacing them with antimatter- in fact I'd almost be willing to place money on it), but antimatter is certainly far too powerful and unrealistic for almost any KSP challenge not specifically designed for them...

NOTE: I'm not even sure antimatter-powered Thermal Turbojets *ARE* allowed in this challenge. "Jets, rockets, and gasses" are explicitly banned- I'm pretty sure that includes thermal turbojets too, in practice limiting you to nothing but electric helicopter rotors and stock ion engines. In fact, other than the rather fatuous allowance for ion engines (which NOBODY in their right mind would ever use for a Kerbin VTOL challenge- they can't even lift their own weight and fuel, nevertheless the weight of their electrical generation equipment), the only difference between this and the HELO challenge is the allowance for large wings in the electric category. And many of the goals are physically impossible with those restrictions- such as making suborbital hops (SUBORBITAL? Pfhhhh, rotor-propulsion can hardly lift you above 20,000 meters if you're lucky) or a 2,000 m/s velocity (their velocity curves actually reduce thrust TO ZERO thrust at 500 m/s, and only 20% thrust by 425 m/s). Stupid and overly-restrictive, I know- I've already expressed much ire about them on the HELO thread. Sorry, I didn't make the rules- but I can comment on them.

Regards,

Northstar

Edited February 4, 2014 by Northstar1989

[Aghanim]

I don't mean to be harsh- but what exactly is that? It looks like a giant metal box- and pretty much the sorriest, ugliest excuse for a "flying" machine I've ever seen. At least *try* to make it look aerodynamic, OK? And, "improving" it by using *antimatter* reactors? IMHO, they shouldn't even be allowed in these challenges at all- antimatter on the scale and control of those reactors is simply CENTURIES away, and most people who play with them either cheater them open in the tech tree or spammed thoughtless poorly-designed science missions until they unlocked the tech node. Understand, I'm not saying you did any of that- only that they're WAY too OP'd for most challenges.

Personally, I have no problem with fission reactors an thermal turbojets- maybe even the upgraded sort that you don't unlock until fusion power- and perhaps even the basic fusion reactors in certain circumstances (I'm PRESUMING those are probably upgraded fusion reactors if you're talking about replacing them with antimatter- in fact I'd almost be willing to place money on it), but antimatter is certainly far too powerful and unrealistic for almost any KSP challenge not specifically designed for them...

Agreed. Its extremely ugly at all times, with no wings at all, and antimatter will drain in minutes, right? And you are right about replacing it with antimatter because it is an upgraded fusion reactor, how did you know?

And I'm playing in sandbox/creative mode, so no hope for reactor downgrade at all, going to KSPI thread for suggestion

Probably I will scrap this design and return to good old fuel powered VTOL, no hope for aerodynamics in pure B9 8x8 panels connected together, kinda... But its simple design probably makes it really strong, needs more testing, which I currently doesn't have time to

Edited February 4, 2014 by Aghanim

[Northstar1989]

Agreed. Its extremely ugly at all times, with no wings at all, and antimatter will drain in minutes, right? And you are right about replacing it with antimatter because it is an upgraded fusion reactor, how did you know?

And I'm playing in sandbox/creative mode, so no hope for reactor downgrade at all, going to KSPI thread for suggestion

Probably I will scrap this design and return to good old fuel powered VTOL, no hope for aerodynamics in pure B9 8x8 panels connected together, kinda... But its simple design probably makes it really strong, needs more testing, which I currently doesn't have time to

Yeah, I can understand the desire to try utilizing thermal turbojets- and the design actually makes some sense if you're trying to make something without any lift- but the electric category unfortunately effectively bans all forms of propulsion except electric rotors and ion engines (in fact, you posted too soon- I just edited a comment about that into my last post...) The only REAL difference between this and the HELO challenge then, since ion engines can barely lift themselves on the Mun, and not at all on Kerbin, is that you can utilize wings as large as you like...

I asked for an exception there for TTJ's, but I *highly* doubt Fengist will grant it. And if he does, and takes ONE LOOK at antimatter TTJ's, with their 300 kN thrust and virtually infinite fuel-capacity at first glance (in reality, any knowledgeable KSP-I player will tell you that the real fuel is the antimatter in the reactor- which burns at quite an appreciable rate), he'll go right back to banning them. Better off to stick with fission.

Why are you still playing in Sandbox, with the addition of Career Mode anyways? Career Mode really does serve to make things much more involving and challenging, and will only become more so with the addition of economy in the near future. And, if you're using KSP-Interstellar, you're better off with Career Mode anyways as the mod adapted so quickly to it that it's already became a primarily Career-based mod- with more features useful for it than for Sandbox.

Good old Liquid Fuel is a solid choice. Or, if you want to stick with electrics, you're basically going to throw in the towel on several of the challenges- it's simply physically impossible to achieve the Harrier Distinction with electrics (they lose all thrust at 500 m/s), and unless you utilize some GIGANTIC wings relative to the rest of the craft, get to the island flying WEST around Kerbin, and utilize stock aerodynamics (forget about it with FAR) you're never going to achieve the DARPA-X award either... Oh and the Munar mission- impossible unless you design an all-ion extremely lightweight craft (think a command chair, an OKTO2, a single Xenon tank, a minimal # of structural parts, and at least 45 stock ion engines, with a 0.625 meter KSP-I reactor+generator), made solely for that challenge, you're never going to get that one either...

Regards,

Northstar

P.S. I knew about the fusion reactors probably being upgraded because I have become VERY familiar with the KSP-Interstellar tech tree. In Career Mode, purchasing Antimatter Power provides access to upgraded fusion reactors- and I figured you were playing Career Mode like most KSP-I players seem to now... If you're playing sandbox, you have to individually upgrade each reactor last I checked- the reactor should be basic level by default... What does it say for the name of the reactor when you right-click on it?

Edited February 4, 2014 by Northstar1989

[Northstar1989]

And, forgetting about all my complaining on the rules for electrics for a brief moment, I proudly present my traditional, "Who Needs a Runway?", LiquidFuel VTOL; the K-5 (referring to the # of major revisions before a final design was reached) 'Blackbird'.

Here the K-5 'Blackbird' is completing the first challenge:

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I know most of you may not believe this, but I think most of the challenges actually are doable with this design. The VTOL engines, when swapped for their rocket variety (and the plane equipped with a number of LiquidFuel drop tanks and the main tanks switched for LFO) should be capable of making orbit. The Kerbal-capacity challenges can probably all be met by carrying a couple lawnchairs strapped to the wings, or a couple passenger fuselages dragged below on a winch like cargo (the tricky part will be getting that off the ground in VTOL mode without flipping- although the total craft weighs about 18 tons fully-fueled- so that's less than 1/18th of vessel mass, and things could be further balanced with small "ballast" drop-tanks...) The cargo challenges- those will be tough (imagine dragging 7.2 tons below a Harrier- the closest real-life craft to this design!), but doable with variants stripping down the base-weight (by reducing the # of engines and swapping the main fuselage for a structural version) to a possible minimum of less than 12 tons (4.8 tons- that can be done...) And the Munar mission- even that's doable with the rocket-type VTOL engines in basically the current configuration of the jet VTOL's (though I'd probably strip off all the jet engines and, if allowed, intakes- to reduce the weight I'd have to haul to the Mun on a rocket...)

The only mission this design might NOT be capable of is, ironically, the one it's closest real-life relative gives its name to: the Harrier Distinction (though, FYI, acutal Harriers don't come ANYWHERE CLOSE to making speeds of 2000 m/s- they can't even cut much above a tenth that- their max speed is around 1,100 km/h). The velocity-curves reduce even the stock turbojet engines to half-thrust by 2000 m/s, and the best plane in the Maching Bird challenge could only make 2400 m/s, with MASSIVE intake spam. It's virtually impossible for any plane to make this speed (the wings create too much drag)- what you really need is basically an air-breathing rocket or an actual rocket...

Edited February 4, 2014 by Northstar1989

[Northstar1989]

Presenting a Pogo Stick contestant the:

V-STS-P-Hummingbird

weighing in at 15.6tn

http://imgur.com/a/iFs2D

The Bedstead Award: Check

The Airgeep Distinction & The DARPA VTOL-X Award: Check and Check (Playload weighed in at 7.41tn (47.5%))

The Harrier Distinction: Check

The Mollar Distinction: Check (I flew up to 60km and the circlrised my orbit to be ~60x60, kept my speed up until i did a retrograde burn to come down and land on top of the VAB)

The Dornier Award and Osprey Award: Check ( Base aircraft only capable of holding 4 so I carried an additional 6 in the payload... - The payload weighed in art 4.51tn(28%))

The Delta Clipper Award: Check (This craft was originally designed to transfer crew to a station at 120km)

The MLRV Award: Check ( Landed on the Mun, Planter "Landing Zone Alpha" Flag - Craft modication: Jet VTOL Engines changed to rocket VTOL engines)

The Pogo Stick Award: Check!

If all the above is within the rules.

Mods: FAR, B9, Kebral Engineer and Kethane for a handy 1tn exactly tank

Trying to figure out how other ppl made the Harrier Distinction, and I must ask, where's the proof you made it Swifty? None of your screenshots show your craft moving at above 2000 m/s while below 40 km in altitude, and the flight log screen at the end was from the Molly Skycar one- and clearly shows you reached a 64 km altitude in that flight- which disqualifies that flight for the Harrier Distinction (as you may have only achieved that speed due to re-entry from higher low-orbit altitudes: thus why the rules say no flight above 40 km in the flight qualifying for the Harrier distinction).

I'm not saying I don't believe you made it, but there's absolutely no proof- and honestly I'd like to see how you accomplished it and what kind of flight regimen you were sustaining at the time (making it at 60+ km is trivial, because at more than 4 scale heights further up, the atmosphere is less than 2% as thick as at 40km...) so I might figure out how to do it myself (simple jet engines WON'T cut it, but LFO mix for rockets is fairly heavy...)

Regards,

Northstar

P.S. I wasn't mincing my words when I said "re-entry from low-orbit." Technically, a Low Earth Orbit, for instance, is one that passes THROUGH the thermosphere or exosphere- the uppermost layers of Earth's atmosphere. What defines it as an orbit is that it has both a periapsis and an apoapsis- not that it's stable. That's one reason why the International Space Station actually requires regular small burns to keep it "orbital"- because it is experiencing very small amounts of drag from the tiny amounts of air around it, as it is actually orbiting within the Earth's upper atmosphere- with a circular orbit around 420km, it never even leaves the thermosphere, and thus isn't in a 100% stable orbit.

SOURCES:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Earth_orbit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_decay

Edited February 4, 2014 by Northstar1989

[Swifty]

The Harrier Distinction - Have your VTOL achieve a Kerbin atmospheric speed in excess of 2,000 m/s. Stay under 40km altitude. (In honor of the Harrier Jump Jet and it's variants.)

Simply put I achieved the Harrier Distinction at about 30km by switching to rockets (jet power runs out for me at about 1700m/s) and burning just as if I was doing an insertion to obit burn. However, I control the AoA of the aircraft to ensure the apoapsis (or however you spell it) stays below 40km. It is pretty trivial if you can get your aircraft into orbit - All my SSTO's finish there burns well below 40km, so really its just a question of keeping your nosedown whilst burning.

I'll post the craft file if you'd like to give it a go.

(making it at 60+ km is trivial, because at more than 4 scale heights further up, the atmosphere is less than 2% as thick as at 40km...)

Remember I'm using FAR...

Edited February 4, 2014 by Swifty

[Northstar1989]

Simply put I achieved the Harrier Distinction at about 30km by switching to rockets (jet power runs out for me at about 1700m/s) and burning just as if I was doing an insertion to obit burn. However, I control the AoA of the aircraft to ensure the apoapsis (or however you spell it) stays below 40km. It is pretty trivial if you can get your aircraft into orbit - All my SSTO's finish there burns well below 40km, so really its just a question of keeping your nosedown whilst burning.

I've never had an SSTO finish its burn that low- mostly because most of my SSTO designs have been spaceplanes designed for prolonged use as planes on Duna- and a such they have extremely large wings and can cruise at over 32 km at around 1,000-1,200 m/s. They usually finish by around 50-60 km.

There's a big difference between reaching 2000 m/s at 60 km, and reaching it at 38 km- because as I said before, at 38 km the air is much thicker (more than 50 times as thick, actually) causing much more drag.

I'll post the craft file if you'd like to give it a go.

Remember I'm using FAR...

Ahh, you're using FAR- I didn't catch that before. That makes reaching Mach 6 (2036 m/s in the Kerbal universe) trivial in the 35-40 km range: as the drag coefficient falls off exponentially with increasing speed in FAR shortly after breaking the sound barrier. It always frustrates me when people give extra points for using FAR in challenges that reward speed or altitude (such as the Flying Duna challenge: extra points for altitude). If anything, it should be a penalty- because FAR's mach-effects and rewards for streamlining makes it much EASIER to reach hypersonic speeds, provided you can stop your vessel from being torn apart by the stresses it simulates...

Personally, I'd use FAR myself- but my computer is already dying under the current list of mods I have installed (and adding more complex aerodynamics equations would finish it off.)

Regards,

Northstar

Edited February 4, 2014 by Northstar1989

[Swifty]

FAR doesn't really increase the load on your machine. It tends to be part mods that I've found cause issues.

It does make designing stable aircraft a lot more difficult though (until you get the nack of it)

As for fairness my be have separate scores for FAR and Stock Aero.

I personally just like seeing other peoples approaches to challenges.

[Aghanim]

Yeah, I can understand the desire to try utilizing thermal turbojets- and the design actually makes some sense if you're trying to make something without any lift- but the electric category unfortunately effectively bans all forms of propulsion except electric rotors and ion engines (in fact, you posted too soon- I just edited a comment about that into my last post...) The only REAL difference between this and the HELO challenge then, since ion engines can barely lift themselves on the Mun, and not at all on Kerbin, is that you can utilize wings as large as you like...

I asked for an exception there for TTJ's, but I *highly* doubt Fengist will grant it. And if he does, and takes ONE LOOK at antimatter TTJ's, with their 300 kN thrust and virtually infinite fuel-capacity at first glance (in reality, any knowledgeable KSP-I player will tell you that the real fuel is the antimatter in the reactor- which burns at quite an appreciable rate), he'll go right back to banning them. Better off to stick with fission.

Why are you still playing in Sandbox, with the addition of Career Mode anyways? Career Mode really does serve to make things much more involving and challenging, and will only become more so with the addition of economy in the near future. And, if you're using KSP-Interstellar, you're better off with Career Mode anyways as the mod adapted so quickly to it that it's already became a primarily Career-based mod- with more features useful for it than for Sandbox.

Good old Liquid Fuel is a solid choice. Or, if you want to stick with electrics, you're basically going to throw in the towel on several of the challenges- it's simply physically impossible to achieve the Harrier Distinction with electrics (they lose all thrust at 500 m/s), and unless you utilize some GIGANTIC wings relative to the rest of the craft, get to the island flying WEST around Kerbin, and utilize stock aerodynamics (forget about it with FAR) you're never going to achieve the DARPA-X award either... Oh and the Munar mission- impossible unless you design an all-ion extremely lightweight craft (think a command chair, an OKTO2, a single Xenon tank, a minimal # of structural parts, and at least 45 stock ion engines, with a 0.625 meter KSP-I reactor+generator), made solely for that challenge, you're never going to get that one either...

Regards,

Northstar

P.S. I knew about the fusion reactors probably being upgraded because I have become VERY familiar with the KSP-Interstellar tech tree. In Career Mode, purchasing Antimatter Power provides access to upgraded fusion reactors- and I figured you were playing Career Mode like most KSP-I players seem to now... If you're playing sandbox, you have to individually upgrade each reactor last I checked- the reactor should be basic level by default... What does it say for the name of the reactor when you right-click on it?

Actually, I have asked him about this before:

If I'm using an antimatter reactor and 4 KSPI plasma drives, does it counts as Who need a runway or Tesla fanatics?

Ok, I've never used those plasmas so I can't give you a definite. I'll sum it up this way. If you use any liquid fuel, it's Runway regardless of reactors. If you use no liquid fuel and electric sources, it's Tesla.

That is why I'm considering to switch to plasma for my final design, and probably a DT engine if my power budget allows.

And for sandbox thing: Its only a testbed which I test if 4 random engines slapped into a giant metal box could fly. And it could.

[Northstar1989]

Actually, I have asked him about this before:

Ahh, missed that somehow before. But since he made that statement, he's banned ALL reactors for the "Who Needs a Runway?" challenge category, soooo....

I'm also not sure he was really aware of the possibilities with KSP-Interstellar when he wrote that- especially plasma engines, which get their best thrust with Xenon and the best efficiency with Lithium- which they burn through kind of like fuel, except coupled with a very large electric charge.

That is why I'm considering to switch to plasma for my final design, and probably a DT engine if my power budget allows.

I'm pretty sure if he saw a DT Vista in the challenge, and saw the kind of Thrust and ISP it gets, he would squawk and lay an egg, and ban it. I'm pretty sure if *I* saw somebody use one, *I* would squawk. Not only are you irradiating the planet surface with MASSIVE amounts of gamma radiation (if not many long-lived particles), but you're also using something that's a suspicious lot like fuel in combination with a reactor with those...

And for sandbox thing: Its only a testbed which I test if 4 random engines slapped into a giant metal box could fly. And it could.

So why not perform those tests in Career Mode? I find it adds extra challenge to try and complete the same insane goals with limited technology. AND, if you happen to crash-land somewhere you haven't quite exhausted the Science pool yet, and all your Kerbals survive (I tend to revert truly catastrophic incidents killing my Kerbals, personally, as "simulations"- as they usually could have easily been predicted and were due to obvious design flaws that never would have made it through the engineering division IRL), you can get some Science out of the recovery mission!

Regards,

Northstar

[Northstar1989]

Fengist, if you see this even thoguh you're out of town on your laptop. I was reading the rules carefully- and it bans use of electric rotors for non-Tesla designs: and yet your own craft used them for the continuous-circumnavigation award.

Could you at least be fair about the implementation of the rules, and allow us to utilize solar-electrics for the non-Tesla category, like you did?

Also, in a similar spirit, what about utilizing Phased Beam Microwave Arrays to power helicopters for the circumnavigation, with the beamed power coming FROM SOLAR POWER ONLY?

That could easily be used in some exploitative ways (there's theoretically no limit to the electricity available through a single receiver that way), but as long as we're not allowed to HyperEdit solar farms into orbit, and perhaps if there were some upper-limit on the amount of electricity we were allowed to transmit (this can be controlled by de-activating transmitters when their transmitter part is selected, if you had more than the limit already in orbit, FYI), it could be reasonably fair. What I'm hoping for, specifically, is the ability to utilize this solar power transmitter station I put in orbit some time ago (but haven't seen much use for) for the circumnavigation part of the challenge, with an otherwise LiquidFueled craft:

It only beams about 60-74 kW (that's EC/s, for those of you unfamiliar with how KSP-Intestellar classifies power consumption) to a craft flying in Kerbin's upper atmosphere (32 km and above), and LESS closer to the surface- due both to increased distance and increased losses to the thick atmosphere above. And, of course, its transmitter has to be faced within 90 degrees of the craft it is powering (I usually point it towards the north pole- as most of my craft flying a tiny bit north of the equator, due to the KSC being located at 5' north of the equator), which requires a tiny bit of setup each time I use it to correct for gravity rotating the craft before I can even use the thing at all. (it was poorly designed in that it only has one transmitter, on a plane with the solar panels instead of facing at a right angle towards the equator.

Eventually, I should try and move it to a polar orbit with a tug, now that I have some experience using KAS winches to tow things (if only in-atmosphere), which is what it is best designed for (in a polar orbit it could face its transmitter towards a relay further out which could then it turn beam power, after the additional transmission losses, to the surface. The advantage of this is that for a portion of the year, a craft in polar orbit doesn't experience day-night cycles).

I wouldn't call use of this Microwave Power Transmitter exploitative or overpowered- it barely even beams enough power to run a single electric rotor at full throttle near altitude ceiling (where the reduced thrust means rotors consume less power), can only be used in semi-level flight or flight inclined towards the transmitter as it passes overhead (only about 4-5 minutes on each 34.5-minute orbital pass), and doesn't weigh a heck of a lot less than the equivalent power in solar panels at this transmission power (and is actually LESS efficient considering that power is only available a fraction of the time). Its main advantage would be the ability to extend the operating range of a lightweight (2-3 rotors) solar-electric circumnavigation variant of one of my (yet un-designed) LiquidFuel designs towards dawn and dusk: where the solar panels on the ground won't be producing much, but the transmitter would be in full sunlight. This would allow me to launch an electric circumnavigation-variant helicopter at dawn, heading East.

Oh, and how would I manage solar panel part-count? With the Multipanels mod, which adds scaled-up versions of the stock static solar panels, at exactly the same power/weight ration (making them basically fused versions of the normal ones, with the slight extra advantage of being able to placed perpendicular to a relatively narrow support structure only a couple static panels wide- which is actually realistic considering the degree of structural reinforcement that is part of real-life panel weight.)

Regards,

Northstar

Edited February 5, 2014 by Northstar1989

[Northstar1989]

The start of my Ultimate VTOL circumnavigation-run for the Moller Distinction with the K-5 Blackbird.

Note in particular the IVA visuals from B9 Aerospace in screenshots 4, 5 and 6. This thing is wicked-cool, just saying

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No secrets here- I'm using MechJeb ASAS to save micromanagement of heading and AoA in-flight, as it is explicitly allowed in the rules for the "non-stop circumnavigation challenge".

Regards,

Northstar

Edited February 5, 2014 by Northstar1989

[Ryu Gemini]

Well, here is another VTOL. Its small and nimble, but not too special otherwise.

Unless you count where it is landed at.

Balloons are probably against the "proper spirit" of this VTOL thread, but at least I had a proper VTOL take off from it. For as large as it looked though, it can only fit the tiniest of planes inside it.

This was also my very first attempt at doing some very basic video editing (throwing on some music and text). Speaking of which, does anyone know a good place for some more old timey free domain music?

.

Edited February 14, 2014 by Ryu Gemini

[Andrew Hansen]

Speaking of which, does anyone know a good place for some more old timey free domain music?

Awesome floating aircraft carrier! I tried making one on my channel (linked in my signature), but didn't have as much success as you. Danny2624 and many other YouTubers use incompetech.com for their main source of music. I highly recommend that website. You can use it for YouTube videos and monetize with that sound no problem.

[Northstar1989]

OK, so the flight itself want pretty smoothly, and I kept pushing to see how fast I could take the K-5 (by the end of its flight, it was STILL accelerating and gaining altitude, albeit very slowly)

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But I came in WAY too fast, and things got pretty hairy on the approach when I attempted to slow down. The K-5 ended up in all sorts of uncontrolled acrobatics that almost got the crew killed- but I managed to regain control in the end, and approached the KSC from the EAST, having overshot on my initial approach:

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Unfortunately, I managed to overshoot that too, and so ended up doing numerous circles gliding gradually downwards around the KSC (the idea was to activate the VTOL engines at the last second, having killed most of my forward velocity and come to a low altitude- as all the fuel I had burned off had made the K-5 tail-heavy):

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Unfortunately, on what should have been one of the last gliding passes, I got a little careless on the controls, and caused the K-5 to lawn-dart at low altitude. The plane survived- for the most part- and nobody was hurt or killed (the crash was rather gentle- though it destroyed a number of parts. The 19.2 G's I pulled was earlier, during the aerial "acrobatics" after overshooting the KSC).

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SO, I'm not sure if this counts for the circumnavigation challenge. Clearly the K-5 has the ability to perform the mission, but through my own carelessness and boredom (the gliding circles had to be performed manually, of course- MechJeb could never have done them) I managed to crash the plane at the last second, right when I was about to turn on the VTOL engines...

Fengist- you be the judge. Do I get the award? I *REALLY* don't want to have to do this all over again. Even though the game clock says it only took an hour, it was at least 3-4 hours with framerate-slowdown of time due to my slow computer (I can't run at many more steps per frame- it causes my planes and rockets to jump around uncontrollably...)

Regards,

Northstar

Edited February 21, 2014 by Northstar1989

[Northstar1989]

Well, here is another VTOL. Its small and nimble, but not too special otherwise.

http://i.imgur.com/WmtIjAs.jpg

Unless you count where it is landed at.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2vMA2rBSoc

Balloons are probably against the "proper spirit" of this VTOL thread, but at least I had a proper VTOL take off from it. For as large as it looked though, it can only fit the tiniest of planes inside it.

This was also my very first attempt at doing some very basic video editing (throwing on some music and text). Speaking of which, does anyone know a good place for some more old timey free domain music?

.

Nice carrier by the way. What mods did you use to build that?

[Fengist]

Fengist, if you see this even thoguh you're out of town on your laptop. I was reading the rules carefully- and it bans use of electric rotors for non-Tesla designs: and yet your own craft used them for the continuous-circumnavigation award.

Regards,

Northstar

Please show me where I completed, on this or the Helo, any circumnavigation. My helo probably never will and the one I'm working on for this challenge will use jets.

[Fengist]

Balloons are probably against the "proper spirit" of this VTOL thread, but at least I had a proper VTOL take off from it. For as large as it looked though, it can only fit the tiniest of planes inside it.

.

Ummm yea. Balloons are out.

This was also my very first attempt at doing some very basic video editing (throwing on some music and text). Speaking of which, does anyone know a good place for some more old timey free domain music?

Try this site. http://audionautix.com/

[Fengist]

After many, many iterations! I present V-STS-C-Firefly (VTOL Space Transport System - Cargo).

So ummm... Swifty? You want me to put you down for this plane or Hummingbird? Or are you just having fun?

[Fengist]

The start of my Ultimate VTOL circumnavigation-run for the Moller Distinction with the K-5 Blackbird.

As with the Helo challenge, let me know when you're done which you qualified for. That way I don't have to look over a dozen posts to figure it out.

[SSSPutnik]

Wouldn't a basic rocket lander qualify for this?