colmo

[Mods used - MechJeb, Damned Robotics, Bigtrak, and drewmacrea\'s Katerpillar-Wheels] I\'m trying to build a Munar Rescue vehicle using the hexagonal Cuttlefish deck. The deck is upside down with two liquid half-tanks attached underneath, that feed to a gimbal booster each. On top is the command module, and some robotic claws are slung below to grasp a stricken capsule. The cross-feed doesn\'t appear to work - it feeds one half tank first, then the other. This causes major instability and an inevitable crash, though this is from Kerbin, not the Mun. Is this a bug in the way cross-feeds work, the Cuttlefish part, or something else? Could I kludge it by running a cross-feed from the favoured tank to the unfavoured one?

I think I\'ve got my rocket designs down, so I turned my hand to the planes. They\'re hard to design well, and thus hard to fly. One became two, then three, until an entire fleet emerged. This is their story. Colmo-Korp\'s new series of 0.16 aircraft will appear soon. 0.15 compliant aircraft [table] [tr][td]CK BiplaneXL MkII I\'ve aborted the BiplaneXL MkI due to the fuel issue, and created a slimmed down, twin-prop MkII - it did 235km on half it\'s fuel load before I got bored! The fuselage behind the cockpit is not fuel, as I didn\'t want the balance of the plane to change markedly during flight. It flies much like it\'s smaller sibling, doing very well at very low throttle. I\'m working on a more sophisticated naming system, along the lines of the real aeroplane manufacturers (or my interpretation thereof!) [/td][td] CK Biplane MkII Thanks - I couldn\'t have done it without your props, (I give you props for your props...I\'m sorry, I can\'t resist saying puns out loud). Here\'s a MkII with the alterations you suggested. I also fixed the slightly buck-toothed outer landing gear. [/td][/tr] [tr][td] CK Jet Biplane MkI And now my first successful jet - completely stock. [/td][td] CK Torque-twist Helicopter MkIIb I present to you, the Colmo-Korp Torque-Twist Helicopter! Very few Kerbals were harmed in the development of this product. Accompanying this release is the Colmo-Korp modified Damned Robotics Fast Rotatron, necessary to make the Torque-twist device work. Just unzip the contents into your Parts directory. It\'s still brutally hard to hover motionless - a hair of forward momentum is still much easier to control. With the Torque-twist device, you can however arrest those previously fatal low-altitude flat spinouts, allowing more precision on low-speed, if not dead-drop, landings. [/td][/tr] [tr][td] CK Helicopter MkIII CK Helicopter MkIII The continued evolution of this long-range, medium-large helicopter sees a radical overhaul of winglets, and the sacrifice of a 75kg fuel tank for an ASAS unit. I\'ve found no long-range helicopter should be without ASAS. Requires Damned Aerospace and the floodlights from the Bigtrak mod. [/td] [td] CK Recon Helicopter MkI A slightly smaller model, though still retaining three fuel tanks, and equipped with ASAS and landing floodlights, means this model will score high on efficiency and range. Requires Damned Aerospace and the floodlights from the Bigtrak mod. [/td][/tr] [tr][td] CK Scout Helicopter MkI A small, lightweight model for short range purposes, forgoing the weight of an ASAS unit while being nimble enough to be landed by any reasonably skilled pilot. Required Damned Aerospace and Damned Robotics parts. [/td] [td] CK SuperHeli MkI I\'ve been wanting to do a dual-rotor chopper for some time, and I finally came up with this. Note that the interleaving rotors never touch. This dual-rotor model is designed to transport heavy loads slung underneath. This craft is actually remarkably easy to land. A wee bit of care is required at take-off because it has a lot of power - one-third throttle is enough to effortlessly take to the skies. It\'s a good idea to use ASAS to maintain attitude, though you will note that you can do that using throttle too - under 1/3 throttle, and it flies nose-down, over 1/3, and the nose comes up. Initial plans are for a Bigtrak carrier, with variations for landed or parachute deployment. It probably has adequate power for the Truck from Tosh\'s Cart mod also. Future plans are for a long-range model with extra fuel tanks. [/td][/tr] [tr][td] CK Sea HeliRescue MkII SasquatchM\'s Probe Retrieval challenge prompted the design of this rescue vehicle, based on an adaptation of the CK SuperHeli :Controls are rotors only for flight, prop only for water and land, normal directional controls work on all surfaces, and to reverse the claw towards the probe, blip the main rotors with S pressed. The normal plan for a retrieval is to fly out to the object (with an aggressive pitch forward and full throttle, it can do 170m/s), land, manoeuvre (A and D to steer), grab with the claw, lift clear of water (if the object is too heavy, leave it, just go easy on the throttle) and sail back, then drag onto land. Flying with something in the claw is likely to cause a crash due to imbalance. Requires HSTW pontoons and landing struts, Damned Aerospace and Damned Robotics. The MkII is identical to the MkI aside from a miniscule centring of the grab arm and the addition of winglets to aid control. [/td] [td] CK VTOL-TwinTurbine MkI & MkII It was time to take on the ultimate challenge in Kerbal aeronautics...a VTOL! Based upon RavingManiac\'s opposing rotatron wing mount idea, used for his Owl VTOL, and the principals of balancing centre of mass with thrust for vertical flight, and with centre of mass with lift for horizontal flight, Colmo-Korp\'s first VTOL emerged. It can take off and land both horizontally and vertically. The onboard ASAS unit means you can lock in your horizon to concentrate on controlling VTOL tilt and thrust for gentle landings. Conventional horizontal flight performance hasn\'t been ignored either, with a straight and true, attitude-neutral flight profile, excellent manoeuvrability, and plenty of power from the Damned Aerospace VjTurbine. The MkII has increased ground clearance and a 4 point instead of 3 point landing gear setup to prevent the turbines contacting the ground on a hard vertical landing. Requires Damned Aerospace and Damned Robotics mods for the VjTurbine and rotatron. Floodlights from the Bigtrak mod, mounted to the underside for vertical landings, are highly recommended - place them front and back to maintain weight balance. [/td][/tr] [tr][td] CK Kotal SP Stock MkI Space Plane (K prize finisher) While it does not quite have the performance of the Kotal TwinTurbine model, it won\'t burst the bank by using commonly available parts. It has just enough fuel to achieve orbit, deorbit and land. Activate the rocket 2nd stage when the turbofan runs out of steam at around 15km (depending on your ascent angle) [/td] [td] CK Kotal TwinTurbine MkII Space Plane The first in the Kotal (Kerbal Orbital Take-Off And Landing) lineage is able to take-off well before the end of the runway, and with turbines that can take it to 18km before engaging the rocket 2nd stage, allowing shutdown of the turbines beyond 20km, achieve orbit, deorbit and land and still have 250kg plus of fuel to spare, this is a deluxe space plane. Further testing will be performed to establish if it can reach the Mun or Minimus. Requires Damned Aerospace and the C7 bicoupler (not a stock item). [/td][/tr] [/table] Superceded models: CK Biplane MkI So when I downloaded DYK\'s Damned Aeronautics mod, I thought I\'d make a nice, simple biplane. The result was possibly the easiest to fly ship I\'ve ever made in the game, so I thought I\'d share. Leave it at half-throttle, hit launch, and it\'ll take off at a nice, shallow angle without intervention, with a very slightly nose-up attitude, meaning you can run at almost zero throttle and fly around the KSC all day. You\'ll not need SAS to handle this beauty. It took many attempts to get the wings positioned just so to give that beautiful, forgiving flight characteristic, and I\'m well pleased with the result. My attempts with stunt and space planes have gone nowhere near as well, so I\'m seriously considering scaling this up into a space plane! CK Helicopter MkII & MkIIb The sacrifice of many, many Kerbals was not in vain as I finally designed a flyable chopper (which sometime successfully lands too). I think the fuel hoses have bugged it, giving infinite fuel. Considering how hard choppers are to fly in the game currently (0.15.2), not having to worry about changing weight balance due to rear-forwards fuel consumption is a small bonus. MkI had the lateral tanks on trusses - the removal of the trusses centralised mass and made the helicopter much easier to handle. MkIIb has corrected fuel hose layout for optimal balance for the majority of the flight. Requires the Damned Aeronautics mod (for the main rotor, obviously) and floodlights from the Bigtrak mod - this is highly recommended as the downward facing beams give you a much better idea of where the ground is on landing.

I\'m trying to build a Bigtrak capable of rescuing a stranded cockpit (the inline one, so quite a bit bigger than a standard capsule) on the Munar surface, and I\'m finding the forklift attachment is just too small to get under it in testing on Kerbin. Any ideas on how to do it? Also, any chance of a grab attachment?

I believe I had everything pretty well strutted. The rocket did roll, when the first stage started running low on fuel. I\'ll try it again with the struts even lower. Is it significant if you run fuel lines from or to the bottom, middle or top of a three-tank stack?

I\'ve been inspired by the Asparagus approach to fuel crossfeed to increase efficiency, but the moment I try scaling it up, the early stages destabilise the rocket when the outer tanks start running empty, even though the ship is radially symmetrical. Instead of 1 central section, and 6 outer, I used a tricoupler triple central section, and 9 outer (3x3). In each set of 3 outers, the first stage fed the second stage, the second fed the third, and the third fed the tricoupler. The rocket works from the 3rd stage onwards, but the first two stages do not - it\'s definitely the empty tanks that destabilise it, as it launches fine and flies ok for a while.

Thanks - I\'ll use Home/End as the mouse scroll wheel doesn\'t work in Wine/Linux.

I\'ve been building rockets since the weekend (no Mun landing yet, but it\'s close), and I run into trouble when I add too many stages - the icons go off the top of the screen and there\'s no easy means of getting at them. Is there a control to scroll up and down the stages?