My first successful flight! Woo-hoo!

[pincushionman]

I've had a heck of a time getting aircraft to fly at all, let alone well. Well, here's my first truly successful attempt:

Jebidiah is jumping for joy, because I didn't flip out and crash him.

It's a slight modification of a plane I made for some nearby survey contracts I wanted to do. I say this one is "first successful" because at the time I didn't have landing gear available, so it needed a Separatron-assisted clamp takeoff and a chute landing onto legs, which doesn't really count. But with the landing gear unlocked, I was pretty proud of its performance.

So some tweaking and here's the rev. A:

I moved the intakes around so there wasn't one scraping the ground anymore. In-game, it appeared to clip into the ground when I retracted the gear, so it may not actually have changed any behavior. But it seemed silly. There's an extra intake to increase thrust - not for extra speed, for extra run-time! It's thrust limited to 40%, but there's plenty of power in there.

I haven't unlocked "mobility enhancers" yet, but if I retract the gear after landing and roll to one side Jeb can run up the wing and onto the cockpit to get back in. It tips back on its tail when I do that, but that's nothing a little thrust with the brakes on can't fix.

Vto = 70 m/s

Vmax = 350 m/s @ 11,000 m (roughly terminal velocity at that altitude)

Range = 284 km (round-trip; assuming 5 minutes of full-power takeoff and climb, and un-powered glide descent and landing)

The center of mass moves very little during flight - maybe about 25 cm or so.

It flies all right, as far as I'm concerned - assuming there's an SAS-capable pilot in there. Without, it seems to suffer from the same problems I run into with any other plane while flying with the keyboard. The ability to apply trim would be nice. It is longitudinally stable, though, and the dihedral helps roll stability.

Here's the .craft file, if anyone wants to take a look and give suggestions.

QUESTIONS:

- Is there a way to disable the reaction wheels in the VAB/SPH? The only way I've been able to do it is during the flight scene.

- Is there a way to apply trim? The only way to trim I've found is by using SAS, which is not exactly trimming, in my opinion, and doesn't help if I want to fly with, say, a Scientist instead of a pilot. It may not be a big deal with proper input devices, but the joystick I have isn't compatible with Win7x64, and flying with the keyboard means all-or nothing elevator input. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Tidus Klein]

Trimming... You could use fine controls, just hit caps lock.

Or if you want real trim hold down ALT and tap the direction key you want trim in, hold alt and press X to disable all trim. Hope that helps...owww and pro tip, you can use trim in docking mod as a type of cruze control on rovers.

[pincushionman]

Trimming... You could use fine controls, just hit caps lock.

Or if you want real trim hold down ALT and tap the direction key you want trim in, hold alt and press X to disable all trim. Hope that helps...owww and pro tip, you can use trim in docking mod as a type of cruze control on rovers.

That's the info I was looking for, man. I've tried fine control, but normal control is way too much authority (particularly in pitch) while fine is pretty sluggish, in my experience. Will try the mod+elevator key combo. Here's some rep!

[Tidus Klein]

NO problem man, here is my survey plane, if you just want some inspiration.

But I use FAR and AJE so mine works a bit different.

Speed, Cruise: mach 1.2-1.4, TOP: mach 2.3

Ceiling, On cruise, 8,000-11,000M ON AB 17,000. HIGHEST HOP, 22,000

Special stuff,

Cockpit angled down at 5 degrees, really helps with IVA landings and looks cool.

Leading edge surfaces on the wing, angle into wind steam during heavy maneuvers, allowing almost 50 degrees of attack before stall.

also one more thing the mod tweakable everything has a feature to alow you to turn of reaction wheels in the editor, happy trails

Edited January 2, 2015 by Tidus Klein

[Voculus]

Always good to see another fixed wing pilot in the KSP ranks. It just gets better, and a lot more fun from here on out.