IA-1 Sunglider, ion-boosted sport craft

[Captain Vlad]

I was fiddling around last night, and, having never messed with the external command seats much until recently, decided I wanted to try making a powered glider fueled by monopropellant. That completely didn't work out the way I wanted it so I switched to ion engines and that ended up working surprisingly well.

So here's the Sunglider, my first Spacecraft Exchange aircraft. I'm sure someone else has posted something pretty similar before, but I don't care: If/when they did, I didn't see it, and built it all by myself and it can turn 180 degrees in an astonishingly short (from my perception) distance. I can sort of keep it in a continuous loop if I start out with enough altitude.

I'd intended to post the craft file, but...erm...how exactly do I do that?

Donby was rather happy with the thing.

Had to do the girder assembly off the back like that to keep it from tipping over when it spawned in. Gave me a great place to mount the tail, though.

I used the probe core for testing, but left it on as I was leery of messing with the weight distribution once I saw how agile it was in the air. Didn't wanna mess it up. Handy to turning on the brakes on spawn-in, though.

Edited October 16, 2014 by Captain Vlad

[Yellowburn10]

Looks like you've got a simple, but effective design there. Ion gliders are fun to fly, almost like RC planes. The next step is to see how well it flies on other planets.

[astropapi1]

Take it to Eve! You'll have lots of fun flying in its soup-like atmosphere with an ion glider. Just remember to pack lots of xenon.

[Captain Vlad]

Looks like you've got a simple, but effective design there. Ion gliders are fun to fly, almost like RC planes. The next step is to see how well it flies on other planets.

Simple but hopefully effective is what I usually go for. I'm not terribly good at lining up parts and my attempts at something big and elaborate usually wind up looking basically like I want, but then someone took a hammer to it. You and astropapi do have me thinking about sending it to Eve now...I've been intending on throwing an unmanned probe that way...never thought of having the probe be a tiny plane...

Also the second picture slipped in somehow, but it's of the early version that didn't have horizontal tailplanes and I later replaced the rudder with an actual moving control surface. Naughty pinterest.

Edited October 16, 2014 by Captain Vlad