KerbalX

Description

A science plane I made several career-mode games ago, in a game where I was focussing overwhelmingly on rockets and using aircraft only for atmospheric and surface contracts and science on Kerbin. It’s stuffed to the gills with scientific instrumentation, and features a second, rear cockpit for a scientist in order to have someone to reset single-use goo and materials experiments.

With four Wheesley engines, it has a very respectable thrust-to-weight ratio at low altitudes, being able to gain speed even while climbing at fairly steep angles. Two of the engines are in outer-wing nacelles, with the other two engine nacelles being mounted on the sides of the tail; the tail-mounted engines can be reversed to help slow the plane for approach, landing, or unauthorised aerobatic shenanigans, using the Abort action group (which also toggles the airbrakes on the upper surfaces of the outer-wing nacelles).

The Buzzer One is a five-surface aircraft, with wings, canards, small wing fins on the sides of the rear cockpit, and a biplane tail. (You’d need a time machine to know the reasoning behind the biplane tail, as I myself don’t remember why I made it like that; I’m fairly certain that the small auxiliary wing fins were added to move the aircraft’s center of lift slightly forwards, though.) It’s quite well balanced, and flies very nicely and responsively. Fairly light on the control forces, but not dangerously so. It can fall into a tailslide and spin if pitched extremely far up or down (to an angle of attack more than about ±120° or so from neutral), but normal flying should never require pitch inputs this aggressive.

Has more landing gear than one would normally expect for a plane of its size, with an aft nose gear under the rear cockpit and a tail gear approximately in line with the main wing’s trailing edge (but shifted aft slightly). As the tail gear is somewhat further aft than the main gear, the aircraft can sometimes be a bit unsteady as it rears up on the tail gear during takeoff rotation. I think I added the tail gear to keep the tail from striking the ground during overrotated takeoffs or overly-flared landings (the Buzzer One has fairly low ground clearance, due to its relatively-small LY-10 landing gear), but I can’t be 100% certain on this point. To prevent instability on touchdown, landings should be made in a fairly flat pitch attitude, using airbrakes and reverse thrust, rather than a large landing flare, to slow the aircraft.

Finally, it has a spotlight mounted under the forward cockpit to illuminate potential landing sites, prank dark-adapted astronomers, and possibly provide some last-ditch warning of impending terrain.

A stock aircraft called Buzzer One. Built with 125 of the finest parts, its root part is Mark1Cockpit.

Built in the SPH in KSP version 1.10.1.

Details

• Type: SPH
• Class: aircraft
• Part Count: 125
• Pure Stock
• KSP: 1.10.1

In the event that you do get into an unrecoverable flight situation, or run out of fuel over hostile terrain, or just don’t have the patience and/or skill necessary to safely land the plane horizontally on its wheels, the forward fuselage (including both cockpits and all the SCIENCE!!!!!) can be detached and parachute to a soft landing. This is a two-or-three-step process (plus the time needed for the parachutes to deploy, disreef, and slow the craft), and, thus, should generally be initiated before the OH &#*@ I’M ABOUT TO CRASH IN LIKE TWO SECONDS point.