KerbalX

Details

• Type: SPH
• Class: aircraft
• Part Count: 20
• Pure Stock

Description

The ‘DrAu Drava PEG’ (Personal Emergenc Glider) was created as a joint venture between the Royal Australian Air Force and Professor Dritsas T. Kerbinstien on behalf of the Kerbinian Air Force as a proof-of-concept for a parasite fighter. The Australians being far behind the Kerbinians in aviation technology, just flew about big ol’ zepplins and stuff. Because freaky upside-down worlds always have zepplins. The idea was that pre-flight 2 or 4 of these planes would be connected to the zepplins on exterior (and later interior) hangars, and once contact was made these would detatch from their master craft, fill the baddies with holes and dock back on.

That was until five Kerbinian test pilots and three cute koalas were injured while attempting to reconnect the Drava to the RAA Qantas commercial carrier that had been modified for testing. In the end the pilots survived but the zepplin pilot (MSgt T. C. Rainer, known as Rainman colloquially) had to make an emergency landing two times, and was later quoted with saying That’s it! No more zepplins, no more injured koalas! Rainman will not fly that damn zepplin! but reports suggest that biographer present may have taken some creative liberties. During once particular test, Manfred Von Kerman attempted to dock but sliced into the zepplins skin with his wing tip. Von Kerman immediately fell back but the pilot of the Drava who’d managed to dock on the other side was forced to quickly seperate again and use his Drava to land safely. It was at this point the Drava’s safer use became apparent to D. T. Kerbinstien: it could be used as an emergency glider in the event of failure during these tests. Unfortunately with the docking mechnaism being placed where it was, it was easier to just simply attach a powered Drava to the belly of the zepplin to act as an emergency option for the pilot instead of removing the engine and turning the whole thing into a glider.

At this point the both the RAAF and the KAF realised that this idea was only really viable in special circumstances and so created a few more prototypes before eventually calling the whole thing off. The Dr 224 ‘Drava’ as it was know to the air force, saw combat only once, when a zepplin bomber’s pilot was forced to escape using the Drava after during a spec-ops mission. It performed it’s job well but was mostly relegated to the sidelines until eventually the KAF sold the rights to the craft to C7 Aerospace, who mass produced it under the new name ‘DrAu Drava PEG’, giving it, quote, more pizzazz.

Built in version 1.3.1.
Want a banana? Here you go!
Wanna complain? Take a number pal.

PS: For any German speaking folks out there, I am aware that the word ‘Drau’, when translated into English is the name of the river Drava running through Austria, Slovenia and Croatia. The DrAu bit was something I came up with but in trrying to come up for a cool name for this I did some research and stumbled upon this fact. Hence the name Drava. Sorry to all the planophbes out there who just wanted to look at a nice KSP craft while sitting on the bank of a river somewhere in the Northern Balkans. :P