Best two hours in Orbiter i've ever had

[EliNaut]

Lately, i've had some bad luck with Orbiter.
Its been jumpy, and sometimes has been locking up completely.

But, my patience/annoyance has been well paid off.

I decided to take up a DGIV for a nice simple mission of delivering a container plus a few crew members to the ISS. I didn't even bother thinking of reentry, guessing Orbiter would bail out on me before I even skimmed the atmosphere. How horribly wrong I was.

I took off from Wideawake Intl., aligned planes, synched, auto-docked (I can't completely trust myself with manual docking atm ), EVA'd and transfered the container.

Then, with not much else to do, I gave reentry a shot. I undocked, closed most of the systems up, and fast forwarded to a decent decent window. Following what I learned from observing AutoFCS do its thing in the shuttle, I brought my PeA down to around 40, and glided along. My dynamic pressure ticked up to 0.001, and I could barely belive it. I got my attitude ap running and banked to the right to get a little more on target than I was. After one (intentional) skip, I dipped down for good and lo and behold, I'm closer to Africa than Wideawake.

Again, since I didnt think i'd make it this far, I didn't think to refuel just a bit when I was at the ISS - there it was around 30, now after deorbiting, around 23.5. I was in a pickle. I decided to wing it, so I flipped on the atmosphereic flight and went as high and as fast as I could westward, making it my goal to at least try to get WAI on my horizon. As my fuel depleted, I was aproaching the island and in an almost too perfect position. Here was my second challange. My airspeed was a tad low - 219, but it wouldn't last at the distance I was. Thank DanSteph that the RCS uses very little fuel. I still had nearly 75% left! So I cross-fed what I had into the main engines, giving me around 5% quantity. I only needed enough just to maintain at least 120 - so it would suffice.

When the 100m callout rang, the runway was beneath my belly almost perfectly aligned. A soft touchdown followed, however a bit late as I dragged off the end of the runway a little.

This is really a huge acomplishment for me - as I have never succeeded in reentering and actually landing at the desired base! The whole expirience was made all the better by being totally interrupted by anything for the whole flight. Not a speck of desktop.:speakcool:

Hopefully my luck will carry on! I plan to try this again, except with an XR2. Since the XR's have alot more keyboard buttons, its going to be alot cooler since I have my Saitek set up with nearly all of them.

You can never have too much immersion.

~EliNaut

 

[Star explorer]

wait theres an autodock mfd

 

[n122vu]

wait theres an autodock mfd

It's an autopilot program built into the DGIV. Tune NAV1 radio to the docking station frequency and it will dock you automatically. You can find details/brief instructions for this and all DGIV autopilot programs in the checklists found on the lower panel of the DGIV.


EliNaut - Congrats on the reentry!!! Not only did you successfully reenter the DGIV, but you did it without the DGIV reentry autopilot's assistance. :speakcool:

That's much more fun in my opinion, not to mention more challenging (have yet to accomplish this myself). Very impressive. Good luck with the XR2!

 

[Kaito]

Congrats!
Now thats what I call super luck, or super skill!

 

[Andy44]

Favorite experiences in Orbiter?

I think the first time I managed to navigate to Mars using the stock DG was one. I'll never forget that red globe growing in my windshield as I approached in time accel. One of the things I love about Orbiter is the continuity, the fact that you start off looking at buildings at KSC and without switching modes or views or anything, you go from that to seeing planets at a great distance to seeing the surfaces close up. It feels so real, and you feel so good at accomplishing it.

Manually re-entering a space shuttle was also a big thrill, and a major accomplishment. And of course, flying entire missions, such as Apollo 15, which I did with AMSO and managed to get almost all the burns very close to the historical timeline, even the surface EVA times were historical.

Recently I finished another addon in my system of lunar transfer vehicles, and I've been flying them, building the system rocket launch by rocket launch.

Orbiter is just the coolest thing. Sometimes I'm away from it for a while, busy with addons or with RL (real life), and I need to remind myself how fortunate we are to have this sim.

 

[cr1]

Wow, great news from you guys above!
I remember my best 2 hours was when I used DGIV taking-off at KSC, align plane and sync orbit and all that stuff, dock to ISS, and then undock, wait (time accelerate), deorbit, reentry (with PRO105SPEC40), then atmospheric flight AP to KSC back again; all this for the first time. I felt it really like an accomplishment...

Good job EliNaut! What would your next goal be?

 

[wehaveaproblem]

Grats Elinaut! I remember the first times i managed to do all the basics in orbiter..my first orbit insertion, my first align and dock, and yes my first landing. So I get your joy completely. Like Andy44 says, it;s easy to forget just how immersive and strangely rewarding orbiter can be. Kudos Martin!

I have to say though, my fave memory was the first time I reentered for Ascension touch down after I made V1 of the base. I clearly remember it emerging from the horizon, this tiny island in a world of blue... I was like" bugger me, that's a small target!".

One thing that is funny with the DGIV and XR ships, is that we can get complacent, as there is more redundancy built into the system compared to the shuttle. A good pilot should never forget how to do a completely unpowered approach and landing. Plus I think they are the coolest and most satisfying. 8km/s to 130m/s with nothing but air to break!

 

[EliNaut]

Gee whap, I guess it must have been even cooler to land on something you made yourself! =D

 

[wehaveaproblem]

There is a certain satisfaction in that, yeah Elinaut. So imagine how cool dbeachy1 must feel...

 

[EliNaut]

I finally made my first precision landing!

Starting out in AIA in an XR2, I acended with a 65 degree heading and achieved orbit. After some thought, I decided to not return to AIA, but land at Habana. A few simulated hours later the plane was lined up and I made the deorbit burn - down to 60 this time, since I knew it would drift downwords. As I scuffed the upper atmosphere, I utilized the Aerobrake MFD to guide me through the reentry. I was overwhelmed when the flames subsided and Habana's runways and facilites were in view. Gliding about at ~20km, I drifted my way down, this time without engine support. I turned into the runway for a nice touchdown, be it a little to the left of the markers of the runway, but easily tuned, of course.

Was a lovely flight - I did the whole reentry and landing sequence in full time, and I found out that Aerobrake is a huge asset in these subjects.

Now, if my memory serves right, the only thing left for me to master when it comes to basic orbit operations would be rendevous. Only trouble I have with that, is the "know when to"s. (When to start nullifying velocity for the most part). Also, what would be a big help is that, I noticed when running the autodock program on the DGIV, after nullifying relative velocity, it pointed twoards a "waypoint". I recognize that its a point within the "runway boxes" of the docking port, but I wondered if there were a way to get a specific visual on it. Or better yet, have a pointer like on IMFD's Burn View window to guide the way.

..And thanks for all the feedback so far!
Happy Holidays!

~EliNaut

 

[andysim]

I remeber once my first proper sync with the ISS and i got from 500K away down to 2K without touching any RCSs or engines -)

I just drifted to it :rofl: If i remeber i only need a 4 or 5 second thruster firing to null my speed.

I was pretty chuffed when I managed my first slingshot around jupiter with the Deepstar and plonked into an orbit round Saturn ofc I just had to have a nosy round the moons with a DGIV so I landed on Dione and then flew by Enceladus before returning to earth -).


Now i need to do all the gas giants in order.

 

[James.Denholm]

EliNaut, congratulations. Don't tell anyone, but I'm still yet to do a perfect re-entry... probably due to the fact that I suck at atmospheric flight. This may change tomorrow, though.

Anyway, the only way (currently) to visualise the docking squares is to use the Docking Hud, which you can switch to by pressing H, possibly multiple times, in order to cycle through the Surface and Orbital Huds.

 

[EliNaut]

Yeah I took the XR2 up to the ISS the other day, (first direct trip) and found that its a bit easier than I thought. Ended with a nice soft docking to port 1. And my synchronization and rendevous problems are nearly solved thanks to the Soyuz Guidance MFD. Made it really simple, although one thing - the program is made to bring you a hold a certain distance below the station - so that means if your approaching from the top, you'll fly right through the iss to the holding point. Another minor note - since the rendevous program initiates the process based on your leading angle to the ISS, the launch window provided by the XR2 scenarios stinks, since the ISS is right near KSC so you go past it, and have to wait until you catch up with it again before the jazz can start, so you reach the ISS on FD2, which isnt that bad, but still, if it were closer... =)