Best way of recovering a vehicle with an aircraft.

[William516]

So here is my dilemma, i have gotten brave enough to start doing things the way it was done in real life.  I no longer want to use the recover button to recover crew and parts but would rather send out a rescue / recovery vehicle.  Recovering crew has been going great.  I have a patrol craft with a very small helipad on the back and use a small vtol to retrieve the crew and bring them back to the ship or KSC.  Once on the ship i will cheat and use the recover button to bring the crew home.  That leaves the capsule of the aircraft stuck wherever it landed.

i made a new vtol well modified an original design and added the winch system and a magnet to it.  Attempts to pick up the capsule with this have resulted in far more crashes then i would like to think about.  The problem is the capsule is such a small target and if you miss and the magnet touches the water the physics make it dig into the water and it pulls the aircraft out of the air hard into the water.  This is even using the TCA mods to hold altitude.  If by some chance you do manage to hit the target the magnet does not seem to hold or wont hold very long.  (Yes i have it turned on, i forgot the first time). Once the aircraft is attached to the capsule again the sudden coupling will cause unexpected results mostly crashes.

So i went back to the drawing board and created a new game in sandbox mode so i could use every single feature the TCA has to offer and also so i could get the couplings.  I imported my vtol lifter aircraft and put a mock capsule on the runway.  This time i hovered over the capsule and dropped the winch line down.  TCA kept the vehicle fairly stable as i switched out of the craft and selected my Kerala.  With KAS installed i grabbed the winch connector and plugged it into the port on the top of the capsule.  The second it was plugged in the capsule started smoking and fire effects (probably a mod) and the vtol aircraft went hard into the ground again.

tried setting the aircraft on the runways and connecting using the ports.  That way it would be like trying to start a swing load. Same thing with the effects the smoke and fire on the capsule.  The aircraft did not do anything though.  I thought it was good until i switched back to the vtol and tried to take off.  It seemed like it was solidly attached and the aircraft pulled hard to one side and crashed.  I made sure that it had slack on the winch lines but made no difference.

Does anyone have a good way of connecting to a ground object while hovering over it to retrieve it.  I would prefer to use a winch and not a solid connected magnet.

i have seen people in the video take off with sling loads but have yet to get it to work.

 

Any and all help is appreciated =.

Thanks 

Bill

[JohnnyPanzer]

How about a heavy seaplane with pontoons on stilts and a magnet on it's belly? Then you could land nearby and taxi out to the capsule untill you are directly above it, and phantom forces from The magnet should be less dangerous since you're not airborne.

[JoeNapalm]

 

Have Jeb EVA from the VTOL and plant demo charges.

It's the Kerbal version of a Viking funeral!

 

-Jn-

Edited April 26, 2017 by JoeNapalm

[Spacetraindriver]

Should be able to just use the Klaw, much more stable. Recovered a whole fusalage of an aircraft with it!

Edited April 26, 2017 by Spacetraindriver

[William516]

I have not tried the claw yet.  This is the one that comes with KAS?  My understanding of the claw and harpoon are that you must use the eject function or it wont have enough force to work.  How do you release the claw if you do use it?

 

thanks 

Bill

[William516]

I may have solved my own problem but i noticed that there are two options when plugging in the port.  I kept choosing plug docked.  I think if i change it to be simply be connected i may be fine.  I will see what happens and get back to you guys.

 

thanks

Bill

[suicidejunkie]

The claw is a stock part.

It is a round-nosed cylinder which opens up with four grabby fingers when deployed.   Touch the center of it to another vehicle to grab on.

[Numerlor]

Also small warning about claw, krakens like it