FlipNascar

Probably build something odd that makes use of the new wheel physics... What sort of contraption can I make? Wonder what it'll do to bearings.

Make it green? Sorry dude. I know nothing about rockets. It looks nice. It looks like one. I'd download it and crash it into the island airfield.

V2? Looks like one to me. But that's probably the only rocket I actually know...

I can do one again, but it seems a bit soon for me to do another. Sign me up for next week if nobody else can. But do add me to the reserve list. I just need a bit of notice because of my current school/work schedule. Mainly because I test as many of them as possible.

Dead.

I got one of my stock autogyros to a usable state where you don't need jedi skills to fly it! Craft file in sig link, just click the lil grandma.

That't pretty cool! Have some rep.

Thanks! They cause chaos when you crash though!! And you'll crash... It's the fun part of KSP. Crashing. Mmm explosions. I love them almost as much as pointless contraptions...

So, some of you have flown it already, some of you have seen the WIP of the next version... But here's one that's good to go out of the box. The Colibri MkF offers zero practicality, but makes up for that with huge amounts of giggles. Seriously, this thing is fun. But, because it's got fixed blades you're limited to around 50m/s top speed. Handling is best between 30 and 40m/s. But hey, who am I to stop you from having your fun with it. Take note, that if you have the Take Command mod installed, this craft will NOT work properly. Take Command does weird things to bearings. So to operate this little baby, climb aboard, stage and remember to engage SAS. It's just not fun without out, and frankly is impossible to fly without SAS. While a true autogyro's rotor disc does spin much faster, and has a far shallower mast angle, this is about as good as we can get with a low part count (120 in the air!) in KSP. It provides a suitable mix of spinning blades, yet still capable of behaving. And with all the reaction wheels to counteract the torque you can do some fun stunts with it. Full power, and go. Sometimes the blades don't start spinning until you've lifted the nose. But most of the the time it works all the time. The only thing left to be said, is you really should try it for yourself... Because next up is the hinged version featuring fully flapping independently articulated blades, coming soonâ„¢... Thanks to Rune for some suggestions way back near the end of September on mast+blade angles, and thanks to BlueCanary for some test flying. Criticisms, comments and suggestions welcomed! Direct download from KerballX

Yes! More stuff that is completely pointless. Looks awesome! Oh.. You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Yukon0009 again.

Ditto that!

Pure stock, pure unpowered rotor. It doesn't truly autogyro, because the rotor rpm is slow. So it's more "homage". I have two flying prototypes. One that uses fixed blades but suffers from huge amounts of asymmetrical lift once you get above 50m/s. Currently tweaking and testing blade/mast angles to provide maximum fun, and bearable handling niggles. The hinged, which you see there, has a much flatter angle, and you can really watch the blades flap up, down, left and right. Just like real blades. But the blades spin far too slowly. However, because of all the reaction wheels to counteract the torque reactions, they are an absolute blast to tootle around the KSC with. Who cares that you can't go faster than 50m/s... I want to get them more stable, and to the point where you don't need the reactions of a cat on friggin steroids to fly the thing. And then I shall upload them. Because I promise you, you may lose a Kerbal or two, but you'll be grinning from ear to ear while you read them their last rites. An earlier prototype in action, more proof of concept, now trying to add it to something with aesthetic considerations: I really need more time in my day to finish these two.

This was a very early build in my KSPing. So I hadn't yet figured out the way to make stock bearings work. I revisited the truck idea briefly in August so I tinkered with a bunch of different designs and I found that the simplest one works best for me. No moving parts, just put the peg in the hole sort of thing, and uses the airbrakes to lift the trailer - those things can lift a decent tonnage. It can handle turns up to about 18/19ms and can haul I think it was around 18t. Ignore the ramp, I never did finish that... Edit: I am on tenterhooks for the rover wheel update. I expect it will probably kill every design I have that uses bearings, but hey, that's the cost of progress right?

Awesome!

Surprisingly this wasn't catastrophic straight away... The rotor disc kept spinning, albeit not that smoothly. Got at least another minute of flight before it finally went its own way. Getting closer to something that will be more reliable... I probably should rebuild the rotor hinge mechanism from scratch...

But surely the scanners' direction can't be changed...?

Nice... But how do you get them to reverse their direction to make it go down again? Of course there's the argument that one should never go backwards and only forwards...

Awesome! But the donwload link doesn't work... One has to request access... Please? I want to try this contraption!

^ Landing legs and spider engines (lots of 'em)? Push 'em around a bit. Probably a bad idea...

Awwww yeah. Apparently flying faster makes this one work better....

Confirmed. I think that's also maybe why when you tried my Autogyro it didn't work for you - did you try it on an install with or without Take Command? Anyhoos, now I need to completely rebuild the hinged rotor system now... Yay![/sarcasm]

Has anyone else noticed some sort of correlation between bearings becoming floppy and the addition of a command seat to their craft? Picking up the Autogyro craft I started a few weeks back because I decided it was time to make them prettier... Built a brand new bearing, tested it. Flew perfectly. Added a Command Seat and a Kerbal, bam - bearing flops about all over the place like a wet noodle. I need to try it with some of my other bearings to see if the command seat makes them floppy... Am I losing the plot? And then during one of the failed bearing attempts this popped up.... The attachment points definitely seem legit right?

Funny, because I got to 209 when I started a new save... And current sandbox is pushing 169. A nice selection of craft, congratulations to those featured this week.

I wonder if the new smaller jets will be more suitable for this when 1.0.5 drops? Anyhoos... Downloaded and will take her for a spin. And to be honest, I had expected there to be a stock hinge mechanism...

I think the issue with coaxials and production is cost. More complicated, and a helicopter is complicated enough from a maintenance point of view. It probably boils down to a huge increase in operating cost vs "traditional". And on the civil market, DOCs are hella important. But don't forget that while not coaxial... There's the Kaman KMax with its intermeshing rotors - http://www.kaman.com/aerospace/aerosystems/air-vehicles-mro/products-services/k-max/