Kerbodyne SSTO Division: Omnibus Thread

[Wanderfound]

Need a budget aircraft? Restarted your career game and haven't unlocked much tech yet? Looking for a fun little flight trainer while you adapt to Ferram?

Come fly a Kerbodyne Avian V. Very cheap, very tough, very easy to fly, and no tech beyond tier 5.

Smooth handling.

Absurdly easy takeoffs.

Aerobatic specialist.

Perfect balance.

Self-launching.

Quite agile.

Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/aj52dcz2868m57b/Kerbodyne%20Avian%20V.craft?dl=0

All stock.

[Wanderfound]

Any chance you could edit that list to include all the relevant airplane parts, old and new? Intakes, aircraft-appropriate engines (jets, aerospikes, nukes, those small radials) etc.

It'd be a handy resource while designing.

[Wingblaze]

Edited per your wishes. I stuck to what I considered "plane parts" and didn't get into things like batteries, solar panels, and that kind of thing. I think I got it all

[Wanderfound]

Cool, muchas gracias.

[Wanderfound]

The current version of FAR has massively beefed up wing strength but also massively beefed up wing weight.

The end result of this is that small aerobatic things are much easier to build, but large heavy lift things are much harder to build. Fighter-strength wings are no use on a hypersonic cargo plane.

There's a patch in the works to make the wing weight/strength tradeoff tweakable, but until it drops there'll be a lot of FAR flyers struggling to make those lovely new cargo bays usable. For now, expect a lot of small planes and air-breathing vertical SSTOs, but less in the way of big wing stuff.

However, Kerbodyne does have something for you if you're itching to get a cargo bay flying. If flown right, it'll get to orbit with half full tanks as usual. However, it's not quite as fast as our usual fare, and it requires active piloting throughout the flight. Keep the nose close to prograde, expect to have to do a climb & bounce while you build speed, and turn the Vernors on whenever the handling gets tricky.

Anyway: the Kerbodyne Velociraptor XXV.

Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/lmk9qnt9kyhtn7y/Kerbodyne%20Velociraptor%20XXV.craft?dl=0

[Jovus]

If it's any comfort, you're not the only one waiting for FAR to allow tweaking wing weight. Low atmosphere loops at Mach 3 are fun and all, but ultimately I want my planes to go to space - else I'd be playing a flight simulator.

As a stopgap, I'm cheating and going into the FARAeroData.cfg file and changing massPerWingAreaSupported from 0.065 to 0.03. It's not realistic, but it should work as a stopgap for personal use.

Edited October 10, 2014 by Jovus

[Wingblaze]

I only vaguely understand what happened but I don't understand why they changed it so radically.

[Jovus]

My understanding is that some drastic change or other usually comes along for the ride with any FAR update, so you takes your luck and runs your chances.

[Wanderfound]

I only vaguely understand what happened but I don't understand why they changed it so radically.

Because people have been whining to Ferram about aero failures for years, usually with some variation of "but fighter planes can do it!". Methinks Ferram is making a point: he gave us fighter-strong wings, but also fighter-heavy wings.

There's a bit in the current dev build to turn the weight/strength thing into a tweakable. Hopefully shouldn't take too long to hit the main release.

[Wanderfound]

FAR dev build with tweakable wing weight available at https://github.com/ferram4/Ferram-Aerospace-Research

[Wanderfound]

I highly recommend that you all grab the dev version; the tweakable wing mass thing is brilliant.

Easy way to calibrate: test fly and do something suicidal. If your wings don't break, they're too strong. I'm finding .25 to still be very solid.

(note, however: dev build. Niggles still being sorted out)

Edited October 11, 2014 by Wanderfound

[Wanderfound]

Got something good in the works. High-tech and expensive, but very ​effective.

[Wanderfound]

Okay; I'm not producing any official Kerbodyne product until the situation with Ferram stabilizes, but I do have something for you in the meantime.

Kerby I. Requires the latest dev build of Ferram, wing strength set to 0.15. Minimal in-game tech requirement, assuming a player who prioritizes aircraft bits; this was built in my early-stage career save, where I've just returned from Minmus for the first time.

High-speed, high-altitude stability.

Clean through the midrange as well.

Ludicrously easy takeoffs. Watch the tail.

Smooth at low speed.

And at high.

Clean across the range.

Level off by 20,000m.

Take it over 30 once you approach hypersonic.

And kick in the rocketry once the air runs low.

Plenty of fuel in orbit.

Comfortably sized cargo bay.

Simple, clean design.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w52zsbjzme3dc2h/Kerby%20I.craft?dl=0

Edited October 12, 2014 by Wanderfound

[Wanderfound]

The latest essential spaceplane pilot's mod: regex's PID tuner.

[Moderator removed defunct website link]

Gets rid of all of your wobbly SAS problems. I'd recommend starting by reducing pitch kp to 1/3 of default and pitch clamp to 1/2.

Edited August 28, 2022 by James Kerman
link removed

[Sakata]

Hey I have a question about how cargo-bays work on space-planes. Seems that when I flip the cargo-bay upside down, the craft acts stupid. Is that because of the cargo inside or is it something with the aerodynamic model of the part? I wanted to make it so that I could land, open the bay, and drill for kethane.

[Wanderfound]

Hey I have a question about how cargo-bays work on space-planes. Seems that when I flip the cargo-bay upside down, the craft acts stupid. Is that because of the cargo inside or is it something with the aerodynamic model of the part? I wanted to make it so that I could land, open the bay, and drill for kethane.

Can you define "acts stupid"? What's in the bay when you do it?

[Wingblaze]

So what's a PID and why would I want to tune it?

As an aside, some days I feel like we do everything we can to make things overly complicated and take the fun out of it. When I need 83 different mods interacting with each other and one patch breaks the whole thing, it makes me a sad panda.

[Wanderfound]

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller

Basically, it lets you fine-tune your SAS. A lot of folks post-update were having trouble with SAS-induced pitch oscillation. This can solve that.

[Wanderfound]

Okay: now that the situation with Ferram seems to have stabilised, it's time for Kerbodyne to go back into production.

So, first things first: the Kerbodyne Benchmark XXV.

Classic Kerbodyne balance.

Exceptional high-altitude stability.

Tolerates high AoA.

Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/lmk9qnt9kyhtn7y/Kerbodyne%20Velociraptor%20XXV.craft?dl=0

[Wingblaze]

No paintjob? All the paint booth guys must have gotten pulled into the aerodynamics labs. That or Ferram has drag increasing with paint now.

[Wanderfound]

No paintjob? All the paint booth guys must have gotten pulled into the aerodynamics labs. That or Ferram has drag increasing with paint now.

Getting sick of constant laptop crashes, and Kerbpaint appears to aggravate the problem. It's a mod in desperate need of update and overhaul.

[Wanderfound]

What I'm planning on sending up as a Mun station:

[davidpsummers]

So I have built a basic SSTO. (See below.) Getting to orbit is about all it can do.

-Any advice on scaling up?

-Any advice on trying to make my piloting more fuel efficient?

Edited October 17, 2014 by davidpsummers
For got pictures.

[Wanderfound]

So I have built a basic SSTO. (See below.) Getting to orbit is about all it can do.

-Any advice on scaling up?

-Any advice on trying to make my piloting more fuel efficient?http://i.imgur.com/oNk8YMP.png

1) NEAR, FAR or stock air?

2) Have you read posts #2 & #3 in this thread?

[davidpsummers]

1) NEAR, FAR or stock air?

2) Have you read posts #2 & #3 in this thread?

Stock. I've read the posts. I guess the question arises because my first and second attempt didn't have enough power an lift and making it smaller was how I got to something that worked. So going bigger will put me in the same boat again. Maybe I just need to put together more fuel tanks and simply keep strapping on lift an power until it works other than "it doesn't make it"?

Also, I have the basic approach to piloting down. But I have seen any tips on things like, for example, how to judge whether it is most efficient to push speed at, say, 22,000 m or let it climb a bit more before pushing speed.