early career "Perform visual surveys on surface" how to

[g.koster]

we all have seen the surveys land side missions. and look at them seeing good revenue as money and science. But even if you were able to land close how do you find the spot.

So this you can do with you first to sciences.

first the ship that is a parachute on the command pot on a LF-t100 tank on a LV909 engine and a tr 18a decoupler on a rt-10 solid fuel booster. This give you a reasonable range in which more than 50% of the early (pre moon) survey's fall. normally I keep the first 5000 meters with a small deviation and then tip it to 45 degrees. ad 20000 meter I decouple and use the small engine to fine adjust. With this you should be able to get into 5 Km from target.

So what now. finding primary directions. you can use sun, milky way (runs from east to west), mountains or see as primary direction finders. go to eva and walk 500 meters into about the right direction. Now go back to your craft using ] en go into orbital view. Now you want to line up the mid bottom of you craft and the mid of you kerbal and the point of your target into one line. Go back to you kerbal in eva using ] and try to correct to get this line. Always have you craft in view so a lot of movement are done with S walk do this a couple of times till you are on course. Then start walking from the craft aligning you self with the craft walking backwards with S.

At the 2Km point stop. go to you craft with ] and check orbital view. Check you alignment for the last time and check distances. Now you can get a good idée if you target is 3, 3.5 of 6 Km away. This normally get me perfect through the target.

After reaching the first target you have a line that can be used to get to the next target. But always keep the craft in view. This is your orientation point.

One comment if you can place a flag. This can also be used to see the orbital view by using ] this can help if you are about loss or need an extra orientation point. from the flag you can use the same tricks as from the craft.