Tech Level One Aircraft
Feb. 13th, 2024 06:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_sky_callsThe Tech Level 1.4 node Light Aviation has pretty much all you need to build and fly simple aircraft. The game even thoughtfully gives you the stock Ares K2 that you can’t actually fly because it uses TL2 parts. But, if you pull the Mk1 "Raven" cockpit off and replace it with the Mk1 "Peregrine" cockpit, pull the XM-G50 Radial Air Intake off the bottom and replace it with a Circular Intake on the front, you have a perfectly serviceable TL1 aircraft.
I also replaced the LY-05 Steerable Landing Gear with a LY-10 Small Landing Gear and changed the split tail fin to a single fin.
At full throttle, it’s nose up off the runway and under 50 m/s. In short order, you cane get up to low level flight a little above Mach 1 (334 m/s). In KSP1 I did try some flying with a joystick but flying with WASD keyboard commands is not too difficult, if you are not doing anything too ambitious.
I figure taking a short flight out to explore the old Island Airfield would not too ambitious. After a first pass, I cam around, dropped my throttle down, and tried to land.
That was apparently too ambitious for a first flight.
But while I’m there, I did some exploration. Before KSP1 v0.22, the airfield was a grass strip with three quonset hut hangers and a tower. After that, the airfield was upgraded to a much larger tower, hangers, and some other structures or remains of structures. In KSP2 it has returned to its early days with two quonset hut hangers (with the doors closed now) and a water tower. It doesn’t even rate it’s own microbiome, but you can score some mountain biome science if you haven’t gone there yet.
Having wrecked my first plane, I went back to the VAB to try again. This time I added three Mk2-R Radial-Mount Parachutes. Why bother putting gear down and landing when you can just drop straight down at a comfortable speed?
This time I flew west. Directly west of the Space Center in KSP1 there was a mountain chain with a finger-like spire above 6,000 m in elevation. West of KSC in KSP2 there is nothing so impressive. Highlands with some high hills reaching maybe 1,500 meters, but nothing that even reaches above the cloud level.
I turned and flew north for a while but still didn’t find any real mountains. West again, I flew to the desert biome on the coast to try my landing with parachutes.
When the gear hit the ground, the whole thing bounced and then flipped. Nothing broke but upside down it was not taking off from there.
According to developers, Kerbin has a number of Easter Eggs, large structures or features like KSP1’s monoliths or the desert temple complex of Tut-Un Jeb-Ahn. Recent updates are said to include dozens of discoverables, smaller features, to be found. I imagine one would need to do a lot of flying or rover driving to find them. That, or wait for someone else to find them and post directions on the web.
At some future time I think I will do some more flying and see what I can find, starting with the locations previously occupied by KSP1 Easter eggs, though it is probably too much to hope that developers put things in the same places.
I also replaced the LY-05 Steerable Landing Gear with a LY-10 Small Landing Gear and changed the split tail fin to a single fin.
At full throttle, it’s nose up off the runway and under 50 m/s. In short order, you cane get up to low level flight a little above Mach 1 (334 m/s). In KSP1 I did try some flying with a joystick but flying with WASD keyboard commands is not too difficult, if you are not doing anything too ambitious.
I figure taking a short flight out to explore the old Island Airfield would not too ambitious. After a first pass, I cam around, dropped my throttle down, and tried to land.
That was apparently too ambitious for a first flight.
But while I’m there, I did some exploration. Before KSP1 v0.22, the airfield was a grass strip with three quonset hut hangers and a tower. After that, the airfield was upgraded to a much larger tower, hangers, and some other structures or remains of structures. In KSP2 it has returned to its early days with two quonset hut hangers (with the doors closed now) and a water tower. It doesn’t even rate it’s own microbiome, but you can score some mountain biome science if you haven’t gone there yet.
Having wrecked my first plane, I went back to the VAB to try again. This time I added three Mk2-R Radial-Mount Parachutes. Why bother putting gear down and landing when you can just drop straight down at a comfortable speed?
This time I flew west. Directly west of the Space Center in KSP1 there was a mountain chain with a finger-like spire above 6,000 m in elevation. West of KSC in KSP2 there is nothing so impressive. Highlands with some high hills reaching maybe 1,500 meters, but nothing that even reaches above the cloud level.
I turned and flew north for a while but still didn’t find any real mountains. West again, I flew to the desert biome on the coast to try my landing with parachutes.
When the gear hit the ground, the whole thing bounced and then flipped. Nothing broke but upside down it was not taking off from there.
According to developers, Kerbin has a number of Easter Eggs, large structures or features like KSP1’s monoliths or the desert temple complex of Tut-Un Jeb-Ahn. Recent updates are said to include dozens of discoverables, smaller features, to be found. I imagine one would need to do a lot of flying or rover driving to find them. That, or wait for someone else to find them and post directions on the web.
At some future time I think I will do some more flying and see what I can find, starting with the locations previously occupied by KSP1 Easter eggs, though it is probably too much to hope that developers put things in the same places.
