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Itty Bitty Aeroplanes!


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Words to live by!

It's all good. I had fun and I'm not here to step on anybody's fun. :)

Oh. I thought it said 40:00.

Yeah, while the Highest Speed Over Land shown is 2186 m/s which would be about right if that was ground relative speed. I may have to dig around the forums or do some experiments regarding the flight log.

Thanks again.

well i didnt cheat or resetted anything but you are right with the distance, i did some in flihgt calculations and i hink i would get to 4000km+ with the fuel consumption

so i tested a little bit and i think the flight result window is bugged or higher in the atmosphere there are happening weird things with the measurements

so i guess sal_vager could change my max distance to a calculated distance.

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I'm suddenly suspicious of an entrant....
Did you notice that with Mini1 I had a Kerbal stood next to me when I launched and after I'd flown 38Km away from him got an flight result showing 92Km? The target is visible in all the screenshots. I also reached a max speed (navball) of just over 65m/s in a steep climb and then slowed for the rest of the flight, speed over land should be lower but it's indicated as 103m/s in flight results. I don't think it can be used to make backward calculations about what actually happened during the flight, just hope it makes equal "adjustments" for every entrant :) I don't think it does though, don't you get different results depending on the direction you flew and Kerbins rotation somehow affects them?
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Total distance travelled over land is fine and it's what I've used when I could see it on peoples entries, It's a bit surprising that it's possible to circumnavigate Kerbin with so little fuel though, I never got more than a quarter of the way with similar craft myself :)

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Total distance travelled over land is fine and it's what I've used when I could see it on peoples entries, It's a bit surprising that it's possible to circumnavigate Kerbin with so little fuel though, I never got more than a quarter of the way with similar craft myself :)

The stratospheric hop technique I used extends your range massively; it was the trick intended to be used by the Silbervogel in WWII to allow it to fly from Germany to America. It's related to why dolphins repeatedly launch themselves into the air while travelling long distances; the low drag at the top of the hop outweighs the energy cost of generating the hop in the first place, as much of that energy is recovered at the bottom.

It's also vaguely comparable to how kangaroos work; they store energy in highly flexible tendons, so that most of the power for each hop is recovered from the landing of the previous hop.

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I can't seem to put together a plane smaller than this and have it stable enough to fly. So for now I'll toss in this entry, which is a slight modification to another

. Sadly the flight ended over water, but pilot did survive!

100% Stock Stats are:

Mass: 3.3t (-33 pts)

Parts: 13 (-13 pts)

3.6m H (-36 pts)

4.1m W (-41 pts)

5.5m L (-55 pts)

Entry (+100 pts)

1 Kerbal (+1 pts)

Ground Distance Covered 1,688,762m (+1688 pts)

If my calculations are correct, that should be 1611 pts

Wisp%20SPH_zpsp2to1vcl.png

Wisp%20Landing_zpsf9jokaom.png

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It's a bit surprising that it's possible to circumnavigate Kerbin with so little fuel though

I fly spaceplanes a lot. Once you are at essentially orbital velocity and somewhere over 30 km or 40 km, you throttle back and the turbojets keep you at speed in the high thin air using only teaspoons of fuel at a time. On my attempt, I managed to 'circularize' my pseudo-orbit at about 50 km. The turbojets were throttled back to one notch or so. I took screenshots after one circuit and after two. I used only 4.36 fuel for the entire circimnavigation. Almost all my fuel use in the challenge was getting up to speed.

The craft has two shock cone intakes. Some people seem to consider that intake spamming.

@Tank2333 - Didn't mean to imply any intent on your part. Out of curiosity, what was your flight path?

As far as the Flight Status panel goes, I haven't found out anything concrete except that the 'Ground Distance Covered' value is wildly inaccurate. However, I'm sure the devs have slightly more pressing matters to think about at this time. :)

Edited by Starhawk
punctuation
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@Tank2333 - Didn't mean to imply any intent on your part. Out of curiosity, what was your flight path?

hm i think i flew west

i did turn 180 after lift off to test the flight stability and i think i sticked to it

maybe that was causing the extra km? because i flew agains kerbins rotation?

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Apologies if this has been asked before, but does a non-stable suborbital track that puts you into space make you 'not airborne' per the rules?

...but there ain't nothing stopping you from spending the trip bouncing between 25,000 and 40,000m. Not a lot of drag up there. :)

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I would like to hereby formally withdraw my challenge to Tank2333's entry. I believe inaccurate information provided by the game interface led to an incorrect value for distance and that the error is entirely innocent.

I would like to request that the 'suspicious entry' tag for Tank's entry be removed from the front page.

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Here's my entry for the spirit of the challenge...

http://imgur.com/a/8Q34F

I did use the launch stability assist to take off, but they are not necessary. You can take off direct from the runway without, its just a bit hit and miss so I preferred not to.

Therefore:

5 parts (-5)

2.9t (-29)

1.5m height

3.6m width

5.5m length

Total dimensions: 10.6m (-106)

400km travelled (+400)

Entered challenge (+100)

One kerbal (+1)

Total score: 361

Personally I think your scoring system places too little weight on part count, but your challenge, your rules!

Fun challenge :)

I'm going to add a little bit and see if I can't circumnavigate a few times.

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All righty. Used a somewhat modified version of the same plane I used for Wanderfound's island touch-and-go challenge a while back, mostly because it's my favorite in-atmosphere plane I've made and I think it looks cool.;)

She weighs 3.8 tons.

7988b620523992ecaa2c689c86476dbe.jpg

As Wanderfound guessed, I got her up to 15,000 meters and would boost up to about 40-45 K meters and repeated this until I'd circumnavigated the planet with a little distance there at the end due to missing KSC.

b9a29cee61d2cfac23243b31916ea2d4.jpg

I put her down on the large round island northeast of KSC with no fuel left.

72d13856621271a074fd8b38cb262fe0.jpg

Weight (full fuel) : 3.8 tons (-38 points).

Length: 7.7 meters (-77 points).

Width: 6.9 points (-69 points).

Height: 3.7 meters (-37 meters).

Parks: 23 (-23 points).

Overall penalty: -244 points.

Seat for Jeb: +1.

Entering Challenge: +100 points.

Total distance: 4,967 km (+4,967).

Overall credits: 5,068.

Total: 4,824 points.

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I'm not sure what to think of these 40K + suborbital hops people are doing. It seems to me that my engines will flame out around 27K, should anything above 30K really count as 'flight'?

Anyways, here is another entry.

VC9opbn.png

Took off straight from the runway this time.

http://imgur.com/a/JIpT3

1.3H + 3.1W + 5.5L = -99

3.5T = -35

7 Parts = -7

5,941km travelled, +5941

Entry +100

One Kerbal = +1

Total = 5900 points

Oh, and while I am nitpicking your rules...

ub79m06.png

http://imgur.com/a/FRyRp

I'm cool with rounding my score for this entry down to 50 billion :D

(50,060,410,837 - 10,000 - 464 - 194 - 13 = 50,060,400,166)

Edited by Bluejayek
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Heh thanks Raincrafter :)

Starhawk, suspicion removed!

Bluejayek, yeah I thought the most a player could reach with a small plane was a lot less than this, next time I'll change things a bit to keep distances within sane levels as I believe retroactive rules changes are a bad thing, actually too many rules is a bad thing which is why I tried doing it as negative points rather than rigid rules.

Launch clamps are fine though.

Added all the entries ;)

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Entry! My craft is simply called the, "Tiny Plane".

n2mNd0E.png

Also, SPH image!

lbGD7lW.png

Using this, we can know that I got the 100 inductive points plus 4 for 4K (image later in post), plus one for a kerbal. Also, I had to subtract 13 for mass, 26 for Height, 36 for width, 17 for Length, and 7 for part count. What is the number that came out of that mess? Six.

(I don't feel bad, but I know that people did so much better than me.) Cheers, rainup9.

xNADv2P.png

EDIT: I know there's another plane with a similar name in this thread, but that doesn't have a space in it like mine.

EDIT2: Why did sal not judge mine?

Edited by RAINCRAFTER
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To admit it, this is my first challenge, so i made this little thing to participate: Skyler-1.It's completely stock.This album "tells it's story".Enjoy! :)

Javascript is disabled. View full album

The final distance before crashing was 14.5km and flight time of 4 minutes and 12 seconds.I wanted to build a version with a seat, but i was worried too much about weight.

In case you can't see it's size, it is: 0.7m tall, 3.7m wide and 2.3m long.

Edited by Candlelight
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