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Description
A science packed single seat single engine jet. Although not the fastest plane out there, it can hold its own quite well, and four sets of droptanks give it remarkable range for an aircraft of its size.
Having said that, thanx to its afterburning Panther engine and small size, it does go pretty fast under the right conditions, as demonstrated in flight testing (these tests were all performed in a clean configuration after running through all the droptanks, with the Panther in wet mode and feeding from the fuselage tanks):
The FV10B reached a top speed of 837 m/s cruise-climbing from 1.5 to 8.5 km altitude; with about 500 units of fuel remaining, it then pulled up into a zoom climb which peaked at 29,752 meters AMSL (high enough for the engine to flame out from lack of air as it passed through 25 km), before pushing over into a dive where its speed reached 866 m/s. (This test run is the source of the last three of the attached images; some earlier climbing and diving is also visible in some of the earlier images.)
Later in the same flight, the FV10B cruise-climbed to 7.5 km, reaching 841 m/s, and then, with about 200 units of fuel still on board, zoom-climbed to 37,194 km (high enough for the navball to automatically switch over from surface-relative to inertial reference frames, which happens at 36 km on ascent from Kerbin), before a zero-G power dive to 874 m/s.
During the pullout (occurring in the vicinity of 1 km altitude) from the dive at the end of the latter test, the acceleration loads on the airframe topped out at 94.5 G, which the plane survived without difficulty (thank goodness for solid Kerbal engineering). No, I didn’t have the Unbreakable Joints
cheat turned on; yes, I specifically checked to make sure that it was turned off. (As for Hanfry, situations like this are why I generally play with Kerbal G-limits off.)
With the short LY-10 landing gear, its arrangement (the nose gear is under the cockpit, while the main gear is mounted in the wingtips; the main gear’s higher mounting causes the aircraft to sit appreciably nose-high and tail-low, the latter being accentuated by the main gear’s location well forward of the tail), and the underslung droptanks, the FV10 has very low ground clearance (especially during takeoff), making it necessary to use considerable care to avoid dragging something on the ground during takeoff rotation. The central droptank, which has the lowest clearance (due to being mounted under the fuselage instead of the slightly-higher wings), has an LY-05 wheel partially embedded in it to act as a protective bumper.
During landing, the Panther’s high thrust even at low power settings (and its lack of thrust reversers), combined with the FV10’s very clean aerodynamics - even with the landing gear down - when at light weight with the droptanks gone, make it necessary to use a very long, nearly-flat approach with the throttle almost closed in order to bleed off speed and keep its speed from building back up again; otherwise, attempting to flare for landing could easily result in the plane floating down the entire length of the runway without touching down.
A stock aircraft called FV10B. Built with 77 of the finest parts, its root part is Mark2Cockpit.
Built in the SPH in KSP version 1.10.0.
Details
- Type: SPH
- Class: aircraft
- Part Count: 77
- Pure Stock
- KSP: 1.10.0
