Icarus High Altitude Airplane

The Icarus by Solara is a very high altitude experimental aircraft. Designed to push the limits of physics, this remarkable beast can fly at a maximum altitude of 46.2km and at a speed of Mach 2.8, and can cruise as high as 40km.

It features two extremely powerful afterburning turbojet engines mounted on the fuselage with massive air ducts to feed them. Much like the real life U2, it uses two retractable main landing gears in the center and uses 2 detachable wheels on the wingtips for takeoff stability. The wing gear is released immediately after lift off and the main gear retracts. On landing, the wings are held level as much as possible, and the wingtips are reinforced to handle sliding on the ground until the plane stops. Also in order to assist in high altitude flight, the elevators feature adjustable trim of up to 2.5 degrees up or down. This combats the aircraft's tendency to pitch down as it apporaches extremely high altitudes. Controlled via Slider 1.

Everything is controlled via AG and sliders. Do not use the stage button.

Instructions:
1. Take off using 50% throttle. During roll, use the sticks to keep the wings level and lift off at about 60m/s. Immediately after lift off, retract gear and detatch the wing gear using AG 2 (Outer Gear Release).

1. Throttle up to 85% and pitch up to 15-20 degrees (Use nav spphere lock) Climb to 10km, then level off and throttle up to 100%. Let speed build up, to increase engine thrust.

2. Once you break Mach 1, pitch up to 5 degrees. As you get to higher altitudes and start losing engine power, pitch down 1 degree at a time to maintain positive acceleration.

3. Using the nav sphere, watch to make sure your set pitch mark and your actual pitch arrow stay aligned. As you cross 30km, you will see the nose start to dip below the set pitch. Use Slider 1 and move it down to trim the elevators up so that it can hold the set pitch. Above 40km just set it all the way to -100.

4. The highest altitude it can sustain flight is 40km. It can do bursts up to 46.2km (or higher) by holding the stick all the way back. But the air is just too thin to fly any higher than that, and the engines make no power.

5. During descent, use the brake slider and throttle the engines up to use reverse thrust and slow down if necessary.

6. When landing, keep wings level as long as possible.