VTOL with minimal tech, Hard Career Mode

[FunkyHoratio]

I have been trying out the Career mode on hard, and realised I needed some way to get to the surface survey EVA locations, and the surface survey Crew Report locations easily. The obvious answer is planes! But the problem was that I hadn't upgraded the runway yet, and didn't even have anything that that could roll as landing gear! So the solution I tried for was a Vertical Take Of and Landing craft, a VTOL. It's a single use only, so I basically try to capture all of the crew report portions of a contract first, in a particular area, then come down for a landing and do a single EVA report, then recover and start again. Once I've got a ladder I could feasibly climb back up to the cockpit, reset the parachutes, and start flying again. I've only done a few landings in this thing so far, and they're hairy to say the least! But it gets the job done, and always gets down in 1 piece.

Flight is pretty simple to fly, with SAS on, and it flys pretty level, slightly nose-down. I'm going to work on balancing it out as my next task, so it's easier to fly without SAS. Take-off is straightforward: SAS on, full throttle, ignite engine, takeoff and push down on the stick until level flight.

Let me know what you think, and where you can see improvements could be made.

Craft File

[Freak80MC]

It's funny to compare this to my career mode plane that I use for survey contracts. I went for an actual plane design, but since I didn't have landing gear wheels I just made like skis out of some girder pieces. (I have since now upgraded the plane to include some wheels) Only thing that sucks is I still don't have ladders and thus once the kerbals out on the surface, the mission has to end. (this really sucked when I had two survey contracts near to each other )

[FunkyHoratio]

Only thing that sucks is I still don't have ladders and thus once the kerbals out on the surface, the mission has to end. (this really sucked when I had two survey contracts near to each other )

Yeah, that is really the only thing stopping this from being a multi-use lander. I've found that you can actually walk from site to site, when it's the Alpha/Beta type surveys - they are usually only 5 minutes run apart, at 4x time acceleration!

How did you go with the skis? were they slidey enough to land in most places? I'll have to play around with that...