My World Record Attempt - Circumnavigation of Kerbin with a Cart!

[Randox]

Get this plugin. You might want to change the part moddels (I am planning on turning the engine into the smaller engine for a cart of my own, and maybe find some solar panels). It gives you solar pannels, a bettery and an ion engine. This way you can recharge your fuel tank on the go. The parts in that thread are for testing. Someone probably has a better set knocking around someplace though. I think I even saw folding solar panels someplace.

And I like the idea of wings for an island hopper, though that seems a bit like cheating. Or its just ingenuity.

[Phoxtane]

Sorry for the lack of updates folks, I\'ve been a little busy. Currently, I\'m flying a C7 plane to my current location. With luck, I can use it to scout out my path.

[Sabactus]

Sorry for the lack of updates folks, I\'ve been a little busy. Currently, I\'m flying a C7 plane to my current location. With luck, I can use it to scout out my path.

If you\'re talking about the mountains SE of the isthmus, head south than pass south of them along the coast. Its pretty much a straight shot and fairly level.

[Nooblet68]

I\'ve got to congratulate you for going so far.

[Phoxtane]

Good news! I\'ve finally managed to work out the kinks in the long-endurance flight plan (namely, don\'t put drop tanks on top of the plane body), and I\'ve got a picture to show you all:

I should give credit to BrownFox [iRC name; if your forum name is different, PM me!] for linking to a picture of his plane. I borrowed the design and gave it a makeover.

Edit:

This is a bittersweet moment. On one hand, I got there! On the other, little to no fuel left to do anything.

Here\'s one of the best shots I\'ve taken so far.

[AD-Edge]

Get this plugin. You might want to change the part moddels (I am planning on turning the engine into the smaller engine for a cart of my own, and maybe find some solar panels). It gives you solar pannels, a bettery and an ion engine. This way you can recharge your fuel tank on the go. The parts in that thread are for testing. Someone probably has a better set knocking around someplace though. I think I even saw folding solar panels someplace.

And I like the idea of wings for an island hopper, though that seems a bit like cheating. Or its just ingenuity.

Using wings and the physics built into the game to skill-fully jump from one continent to another hence missing a week long excursion to the north pole is considered cheating but attaching modded battery/ion engine/solar panels to have infinite recharging fuel is a legit suggestion?

*Edit* Having said that though, the cart mod at the moment does have infinite energy, as in the power to the wheels never runs out. Would be cool to take the mod further so you have to add batteries, which run out, which require a solar panel to recharge. Youd be stuck for a while on the dark side of a planet if you ran out of battery juice

[Phoxtane]

Using wings and the physics built into the game to skill-fully jump from one continent to another hence missing a week long excursion to the north pole is considered cheating but attaching modded battery/ion engine/solar panels to have infinite recharging fuel is a legit suggestion?

IMO, that isn\'t quite following the spirit of the challenge. The point is to DRIVE around Kerbin, not jump over it

I still can\'t work out why you\'d want an engine on your cart. It tends to unbalance it for me.

*Edit* Having said that though, the cart mod at the moment does have infinite energy, as in the power to the wheels never runs out. Would be cool to take the mod further so you have to add batteries, which run out, which require a solar panel to recharge. Youd be stuck for a while on the dark side of a planet if you ran out of battery juice

Ooh, I like this.

[AD-Edge]

IMO, that isn\'t quite following the spirit of the challenge. The point is to DRIVE around Kerbin, not jump over it

Yes thats very true, my mindset is to stick as close as possible to the equator, which unfortunately leaves a whole lot of interesting terrain out of the trip, but makes up for it with some island hopping

I still can\'t work out why you\'d want an engine on your cart. It tends to unbalance it for me.

It does lead to quite a bit of unbalancing, but since ive done hardly any driving with simply the cart, its what Im used to

Plus if anything, the wings make it a tiny bit easier to drive by distributing some of the weight to the sides, out over the wheels + the aerodynamics can hold it down to the ground like a spoiler on a fast car when turning (if you do it properly). So its better than just driving around with a stack of boosters on the back alone

Ill quote a more detailed explanation of some reasons why I enjoy this setup, which I wrote in a topic on reddit (cant be bothered rewriting at this moment!)

With the current setup, theres obviously 2 main sets of controls, you have your usual \'rocket\' controls with W,A,S,D (E&Q) and then the main cart controls I,J,K,L

It varies for the vehicle and design of course, but Ive found that angling the canards down (along with the flaps at the back) using the rocket controls does in fact slow it down a bit, but only if your not accelerating in any way. And more importantly you can use the canards and ailerons to push the nose of the vehicle upwards, meaning you can travel faster if you are accelerating, since turning on the booster pushes the nose downwards and can lead to a quick demise (havent got the booster centered it seems), but using the rocket controls you can usually even this out, or in contrast - take to the air (or plunge the nose into the ground at 100m/s if you choose to do nothing)

Its a tricky one, but its tribute to the game that this kind of dynamic interaction is possible. Things can get very complex (yet still work as you would imagine) when you add all of these things together, makes it very interesting!