my low mass craft 'drifts'; looses encounters, maneuver node dv mystery changes

[DBowman]

I'm using windows 0.24.2 64 bit, I've not done the trouble shooting steps yet. I will once I finish some stuff I'm in the midst of.

I couldn't find anything like this via forum search.

I made a minimal ion lander; ion + xenon + battery + command chair + mini probe + 8 * 1x6 solar panels + strut legs - maybe 600kg, high TTW. I was testing it around Jool - land and re-orbit Bop. On the placing circularization maneuver node I observed the dv required 'drifting' slowly (1 m/s /s maybe), but I could work around that ok. Next I did an escape burn and then set up a Pol encounter, again the node dv & marker drifted, so I stuck with the original marker and eye balled and tweaked the burn till I had an encounter & shut down the engine. After only a few real minutes (sorry cannot recall game time) the encounter disappeared. I established an new one, shut down the engine, and watched the encounter from within the Pol SOI I could see it drift off and out and be lost.

It was like the ship was under some small constant acceleration.

Has this kind of thing been see before?

I've using Engineer, MechJeb, Alarm Clock, RCS planner, & Hyper Edit. I'll retest later with x32 and HE only if I cannot reproduce in LKO or something.

Edited November 10, 2014 by DBowman