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Hi all. It has been a while since I posted a craft, but Breaking Ground has brought me back from another hiatus. Today I present the Vertitrace three bladed helicopter. Essentially, I wanted to see if I could implement an R/C three channel helicopter design with the new Breaking Ground parts. As in real life, it was never meant to represent the most efficient or advanced use of helicopter technology. Rather, I was mainly just curious to see how it would work in Kerbal. As such, it is not fast and has a few quirks, but overall the craft can be said to be flyable. If you choose to download and try it out, keep in mind the following: -Rear rotor is bound to pitch axis. -Custom 1 cuts power to and brakes the rear rotor. You must do this if you intend to enter into a hover and/or land the craft. -Custom 2 enables motors with 100% torque. Throttle controls RPM only on main rotors. It is more stable when two small reaction wheels are added to the lower railings (line of fuel tanks that connect to the landing skids), but I wanted to build something that did not need wheels in order to fly. Here is a link to the .craft file for any interested parties: Vertitrace Thanks for reading! Please let me know if you have any questions. *Update: Custom 1 no longer has effect. Rear rotor rpm is tied to pitch. Old version had rpm and torque tied to pitch.

I'm trying to build VTOL crafts using new helicopter blades from Breaking ground DLC. But always when I'm building it, these crafts start crazy rotation or even don't take off. I know that real helis requires propellers on a tail to kill rotation, but how the physics works in KSP?

Here's my Mil Mi-24 Hind I made with the new breaking ground/1.7.3 parts, I hope you enjoy! Parts: 161 Weight: 21.613t Length: 18.8m Top Speed (asl): 50 m/s KerbalX Link Flight instructions notes First, start the Fuel cell with AG1 and turn on SAS. Next, the heli's rotors are the control point, so control the heli's vertical power with the rotor deploy angle (this control system is sensitive to changes). Set the throttle to roughly 30%, let the rotors spool up, and you're up! AG2 controls the juno engines in rotor assembly, and are used for higher straight line speed, and are not necessary to standard hover flight. My other russian aircraft replicas

I'm creating a V-22 Osprey replica with the new robotic parts (incredibly original idea, I know). I am using the largest helicopter blades and the R7000 turboshaft engine. The vehicle lifts off fine, albeit with some help from vernor engines, but the second I enter it into "plane" mode the engines are massively too weak to propel it, capping at about 35m/s. The vehicle weighs 66,5 tonnes. Is there any way of improving the thrust/weight ratio without adding more rotor/jet engines? Why is it that they have enough power to lift the whole thing off the ground, but not to propel it? Since I'm new here and couldn't figure out how to insert images into my post, here's an imgur link: https://imgur.com/a/msRQ73z

This post is to share some tips at improving the efficiency of turboshaft engines, driving propeller blades (airplanes) or rotor blades (helicopters). The concepts should apply equally to electric rotors driving propellers or heli-blades. I'm using 1.7.3, the electric rotors, turboshaft engines, and propeller/heli blades are new to stock KSP, so in later versions some of this info might become outdated. It's easy to focus on either the Turboshaft Engine, or the Prop/Heli blades when troubleshooting 'why doesn't my vessel work'. The reality is you need to look at both elements to make a functioning prop-airplane or helicopter. The engine produces torque, which spins a shaft. This is important, torque produces zero thrust. Add all the torque you want, it will not produce any thrust- until it is coupled to a lifting device, such as a propeller blade or heli blade. On the other hand, the prop/heli blade also produces no thrust unless it is moving. You can angle the blades any way you want, they will produce no thrust unless they are moving. The movement is provided by the Turboshaft Engine (or electric rotor). As of 1.7.3, the stock engines can rotate at a maximum rate of 460 rpm, which is evidently a Unity limitation. Adding torque will increase rotational speed (rpm) up to that limit of 460 rpm. What happens if you are already at 460 rpm, and increase torque? That's an important question. What happens (in 1.7.3) is you increase the Fuel Flow (or EC draw), but do not get any increase in rpm. Beyond 460 rpm, adding torque is simply wasting fuel. In the following examples, we're going to experiment with turboshaft engines. There are two variables we are going to adjust, and unfortunately they are on two different parts. One is the Torque of the Turboshaft Engine, the other is the Authority Limiter of the prop/heli blades. To make things easy, I like to assign these values to action groups. I assign Engine Torque to the Main Throttle, and the Blade Authority Limiter I assign to Translate Forward/Back (usually 'H' and 'N'). Okay, lets get started. Here's a turboshaft engine we're going to play with. It's in the 'propeller' configuration, but the idea is the same for helicopters. Ok, we have an engine built on a stand, let's play with it to see how Torque, Blade Authority, RPM, Fuel Flow, and Thrust are related. In the next spoiler window, I'll play with Torque and Blade Authority Limit, to see what happens to rpm and Fuel Flow. Keep in mind that Thrust is only dependent on rpm and blade angle. If my rpm and blade angle stay constant, but my Fuel Flow increases, I have not increased my thrust. I'm just wasting fuel at that point. So, one goal is to find the minimum Fuel Flow which will maintain a specific rpm at a specific blade angle. Here goes. In the next spoiler window, I'll demonstrate an actual aircraft, making adjustments to torque (and Prop Authority) to reduce fuel burn. Ideally I'd use a single-engine airplane to keep things simple. However, counter-acting the torque effects of a single-engine are difficult to design for, and fly efficiently. It's easier to just make a plane with two counter-rotating engines and propellers. Then, it flies quite easily just like a jet, with no nasty torque effects. The takeaway here is that to get the most out of the turboshaft engines and propeller or helicopter blades, you need to look at more than just the engine or just the blades. Both elements need to be adjusted for optimum performance. Ideally, you need to be able to adjust both Torque and Blade Authority Limit in flight, to adjust for varying conditions. Regarding efficiency, the big takeaway is that adding Torque beyond what is required to maintain rpm is just wasting fuel, and lots of it. As of 1.7.3, I believe the concept is the same for electric rotors driving propellers or heli blades- adding torque beyond what is required is only wasting EC.

FOREWORD After Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl NPP exploded, large amounts of rubble, graphite moderator and other radioactive material from the destroyed reactor were ejected onto the roofs of power plant facilities. Radiation on some parts of the roof was so severe that unprotected circuitry used in remote-controlled robots failed near-immediately. To continue cleanup works rubble needed to be removed from the rooftops. Since the radiation levels would give human workers lethal doses in a matter of minutes, robotic solutions were in high demand. One of such solutions was a repurposed lunar rover (named STR-1), a remnant of the Lunokhod program outfitted with dosimetry equipment and a bulldozer blade. It's circuitry was already hardened against cosmic radiation, and such it could be quickly modified and deployed into the containment zone. Even with this protection, it only managed to clean up a couple dozen square meters of the roof before succumbing to the extreme radiation. In this challenge, you will take on this exact task. You will develop a rover with limited operation time which will help remove graphite rubble from the power plant site along with a delivery method. THE CHALLENGE The cleanup operation will consist of four major phases. 1. Rover delivery Taking off the KSC airfield, you will need to deliver the rover to the disaster site. Time will be counted with the in-game clock from the mission start to the moment, where you come within 150m of the reactor (when the distance marker disappears). In this case, the quicker the better. Point assignment rules will be elaborated on in the next section. 2. Landing your rover on the roof Since the radiation levels near the core are extremely high, you will need to minimize your time in the proximity of the reactor. From the moment of your arrival within 150m of the reactor you will have two minutes in-game time to deploy the rover onto the roof and leave the 150m perimeter. 3. Retrieving the carrier craft This section will not be timed, albeit additional points will be awarded if you can return your carrier craft to the KSC unscathed. 4. Cleaning up the roof After your carrier vehicle has landed (or crashed horribly) you can begin your operation. This section is not timed - the only limit being your battery life (to simulate radiation exposure). Points will be awarded based on how many of the 10 graphite blocks (Oscar-B fuel tanks) situated on the roof you can remove before your battery dies. The blocks are supposed to be pushed off the edge of the roof into the destroyed reactor building where they will not pose a threat. The challenge ends after your rover battery dies. RULES As with all challenges, here are some rules: 1. Your carrier craft can be a VTOL aircraft, a helicopter or even a land-based vehicle. The choice is yours in that regard and creativity in the delivery method department is greatly encouraged! 2. Your rover's only power source can be a single Z-400 battery. All other power sources such as your control modules are prohibited and need to be emptied in the hangar. 3. You may not use any power producing parts such as solar panels, fuel cells and RTGs. 4. The rover has to be delivered onto the roof via the carrier craft, e.g. it may not be deployed outside of the 150m perimeter and flown or driven onto the roof. 5. Albeit the graphite blocks may explode after being dropped into the reactor, they may not be exploded directly on the roof as a mean of their removal. 6. Using kraken drives to propel your rover is prohibited, as the whole point of this challenge is dealing with the problems within time and resource constraints. 7. Please let me know if your submission is stock + DLC or uses some other mods for ease of organization 8. For obvious reasons, the rover must be unmanned. No Kerbals can come close to the reactor, they are already green enough as they are. The points for each section will be awarded according to these rules: Section 1 - Delivery Number of points is the value of the following function: ceil(max(300 - your_time [sec], 0) / 2) Section 2 - Landing the rover Number of points is the value of the following function ceil(max(120 - your_time [sec], 0) * 4) Section 3 - Returning the carrier craft Number of points awarded is 40 - if the carrier aircraft is landed undamaged at the KSC 0 - otherwise Section 4 - Clearing the roof Number of points is the value of the following function 100 * blocks_removed HOW TO SUBMIT YOUR ENTRY First, you should download the savefile containing the powerplant set up in the correct spot. It can be found here: https://filebin.net/h67zuoh36flmrfpz Afterwards, after creating your entry you should either film your run, or document it via screenshots. If you choose to go with the screenshot route, please provide the following: 1. Screenshot of your crafts on the KSC runway at the beginning of the mission 2. Screenshot of your arrival within the 150m perimeter with the HUD enabled 3. Screenshot of your carrier craft departure with HUD enabled (if you choose to retrieve it) with the rover on the roof visible in the shot, or just a picture of the rover on the roof if your delivery method is expendable 4. Screenshot of your carrier craft landed (if you choose to retrieve it) with HUD enabled 5. Screenshot of your rover on the roof with amount of electric charge remaining at the beginning of cleanup visible 6. Screenshot of the roof after your electric charge runs out with all remaining graphite blocks visible If you have any questions regarding this challenge, feel free to ask them via messages or here in the thread itself. Have fun and good luck on your journey. If you feel that any of the rules or point awarding mechanisms need tweaking please let me know! Be wary that the power plant building contains almost 1100 parts so you may experience quite a bit of lag. This is kind of offset by the fact that the model is static and the game does not seem to lag quite as much as with most mobile spawned high-partcount crafts. With a GTX1050 and 8GB of RAM I was able to keep the FPS at about 20-25 at all times and I could execute the mission without too many lag-related issues. I will prepare a proper badge for all participants and will post it here in a few hours. Cheers. c: STOCK LEADERBOARD 1. Cela1 - 1594 pts (134 + 420 + 40 + 1000) 2. jinnantonix - 1532 pts (140 + 352 + 40 + 1000) 3. ----------------------------------------------- 4. ----------------------------------------------- 5. ----------------------------------------------- 6. ----------------------------------------------- 7. ----------------------------------------------- MODDED LEADERBOARD 1. ----------------------------------------------- 2. ----------------------------------------------- 3. ----------------------------------------------- 4. ----------------------------------------------- 5. ----------------------------------------------- 6. ----------------------------------------------- 7. -----------------------------------------------

KSP 1.7.2(Now 1.7.3) and TweakScale used. I've played this game more than 3 years and that helicopter and it's swashplate are my best work. Almost 6 month ago I created a helicopter with Infernal Robotics and huge internal swashplate, but it was difficult to fly because of incremental control and some freezes of the game. Breaking Grounds inspired new life in this old vehicle... EY-30 It's kind of a semi-copy of Mi-26 Parts: 180-186 Main rotor diameter - 25.8 m (8 blades) 110-140 rpm Tail rotor diameter - 6.3 m (6 blades) 160-220 rpm Total Length - 33 m Dry weight - 29.1 ton Max takeoff weight - 40 ton Max speed - 50 m/s Max altitude - 5000 m Fuel - 134, oxidizer - 164(3 tons) Power exchange: Fuel+oxidizer --> generating electric energy --> battery --> rotations Consumption - about 0.03/s Controls: 1 - start engines Throttle - angle of blades and motor speed of main and tail rotor Q-E roll W-S pitch A-D turn Recomended to use joystick! Changes: 15.07.2019 - main rotor limit 150 rpm - tail rotor 180-210 rpm - max payload 9 tons, possible to lift above 500 m - increased strength of axles due to changes in 1.7.3, so maybe bigger helicopter comes next. 05.09.2019 - 5-bladed tail rotor - Improved swachplate - 2 KAL group controlles for main and tail rotor separatly(inside cargo bay) - 3 tiny J-20 on main rotor axis for sound and air flow imitation. (Squad, why robotic parts and air surfaces are completely silent?) 1.7.3 Craft file

Hi folks, I'm new to the forum but playing for a while now but now I ran into something very weird. After I got Breaking Ground I started a new game and at some point I decided to make a helicopter/drone using the new motors I watched some tutorials and then tried to do my own but I ran into something I find very weird. As I increased the torque the propellers did spin faster but no lift, only a lot of vibration. I then opened the debug tools and enabled display of aero forces. The weird thing I noticed was that as the propellers were spinning the lifting force kept alternating up and down instead of only being up. At some point I got one that worked ok but no clue how to do it again or what's wrong. I tried with Elevon 5, FAT-455 Aeroplane Control Surface and even a few wings with the same thing happening Also how can I add screenshots on this forum? I only found a button to Insert image from URL Any help is greatly appreciated!

So, I spent the afternoon building this: It's using two of the largest rotors in a contra-rotating arrangement, with four fuel cells as power. My problem is, it stubbornly refuses to leave the ground, at least without tipping over and ripping the rotor blades off. I suspect this is something to do with the contra-rotating rotors cancelling each others' motion out, but I'm not sure. Since I've seen a lot of successful helicopters being build since BG released, I'm asking the experts how to get my chopper into the air safely.

Level: Intermediate/Advanced Craft used to illustrate this tutorial: BAK-52NS Version history: 1.2 - Updated with a note on 1.7.3 built-in rotor and propeller blades 1.1 - Updated with better rotors, thanks to a tip from @Hotel26 1.0 - Original version About this tutorial This tutorial is a basic primer on stock helicopters made with parts from the Breaking Ground DLC. It does not discuss pre-Breaking Ground stock rotary motors, nor helicopters made with mod parts. I have limited experience with both and it would expand the scope of the tutorial rather too much. I also do not claim to being the inventor of any of the construction techniques or principles discussed here; a quite a bit I have discovered on my own, and a quite a bit I have picked up around the forums. If you feel you ought to be credited, please say so and I'll add you. What's a helicopter? A helicopter is an aircraft that flies by producing lift from one or more powered rotary wings, or rotors. If the rotor is not powered it is not a helicopter, it is an autogyro; they are also very cool but out of scope of this tutorial. And if the rotor is not used to produce lift but for some other purpose -- thrust, for example -- then it is not a helicopter either. Helicopters can have other forms of propulsion as well: real-life choppers with jet engines bolted on exist and work well. If it's necessary to make the distinction, they are known as compound helicopters. This is a helicopter. It's the BAK-52NS. This variant uses hydraulically sprung and damped landing skids instead of wheels, making precision landings easy...ish. How is it different from an airplane? Airplanes fly by producing lift from airflow around wings. They need to be moving forward to do this and stay in the air. With helicopters, the spinning rotor moves the lifting surface through the air, producing lift. This allows them to hover. However, the big rotating propeller on top of the craft produces a whole set of complications, many of which are shared by kerbal helicopters and human ones; others however are specific to one or the other because kerbal physics aren't quite like real-life physics, and stock kerbals lack certain highly useful bits and pieces used to make human choppers more manageable. On the other hand, kerbals have some amazingly powerful components to build with. Cyclic and Collective Another obvious difference between a plane and a helicopter is how they're controlled. Planes are controlled by moving control surfaces -- rudder, ailerons, elevators, and canards -- which modify the lift produced by each lifting surface, applying forces to the plane and causing it to turn. Pull the stick back, and the control surfaces move to produce more lift near the nose and less lift near the tail, pitching the nose up; push it right, and port control surfaces move to produce more lift while starboard ones produce less, causing the plane to roll to the right. Since helicopters need to be controllable even when they're hovering, they work differently. The primary controls on a chopper are cyclic and collective. Cyclic means adjusting the pitch of the rotor blades differently depending where they are in the cycle of rotation. Imagine that your chopper sits in the middle of a clock face, nose pointing at 12 o'clock. Now, if you want to pitch up, you will want the blades to increase their pitch as they near the 12 o'clock position, and decrease their pitch as they near six o'clock, thereby producing more lift towards the front and less towards the back. You'll also want to adjust cyclic as you start going faster: if your rotor spins counterclockwise, the blades at three o'clock will have a faster airflow over them than the blades at 9 o'clock, because the airflow from your forward motion will get added to the airflow produced by the rotor's rotation. This means you'll want increased pitch around 9 o'clock and decreased pitch around 3 o'clock, or else your craft will roll to the left. This makes helicopters rather hard to fly in real life as well as on Kerbin. What's more, kerbals have no direct control over cyclic: instead, when you adjust the pitch, yaw, or roll, the magic control surfaces try to figure out what you want them to do. This works acceptably with regular aircraft; with helicopters, not so much. So cyclic control on Kerbin is crude at best and you will need partial or total workarounds for this. ~ * ~ UPDATE: FooFighter has built a working swash plate with collective and cyclic control. If you want to make a realistic helicopter that is controlled without reaction wheels, now it's possible! https://kerbalx.com/FooFighter/Swashplate ~ * ~ Collective is a much simpler proposition: it just means the average blade pitch on the rotor. Increase collective and the rotor produces more lift, causing you to gain altitude. Increase it more and your motor will run out of torque to spin the rotor: the RPM will drop and eventually the rotor won't be able to produce any more lift. You'll leap up and then drop down again. Increase it too much, and your rotor will stall, causing you to plummet rather precipitately. And conversely, decrease collective to descend and reduce the torque needed to spin the rotor, allowing it to rotate faster. Collective gives really fine control over hover, and makes a helicopter extremely responsive in vertical motion, comparable in KSP only to a wildly overpowered rocket-powered VTOL. Thankfully, it is possible to make a really nice collective in kerbal helicopters. Perhaps surprisingly, hover on a helicopter isn't actually controlled by throttle. The motor's job is just to keep the rotor spinning; collective and cyclic do the rest. Torque effects In addition to the asymmetrical aerodynamic effects described above, rotorcraft have one more issue to contend with: torque. Spinning up a rotor and, when flying, pushing against the air to produce lift requires torque. Because Sir Isaac Newton is no fun with his laws of motion, this torque will have to get transferred somewhere in an equal but opposing manner. If you don't want your helicopter to spin in the opposite direction of the rotor, you will have to find some way to balance out the torque produced by spinning the rotor. Most real-life helicopters do this with a tail rotor: the helicopter has a pretty long tail which works like a lever arm, and at the tip of the tail is a propeller producing thrust in the opposite direction of the main rotor's torque. The pilot controls the pitch of the tail rotor using yaw controls, and will in fact be continuously adjusting it in different flight conditions (unless he has a computer to do it for him). Sadly, this does not work all that well in KSP. It is possible to make a smallish single-rotor/tail-rotor that is somewhat controllable, but it is hard, it won't be all that easy to fly, and it will very likely require a lot of reaction wheels to paper things over. That's why we're going to discuss a different type of helicopter here: one that flies with twin coaxial contra-rotating rotors. This solution neatly balances out the asymmetrical torque and aerodynamic effects, making for a stable, neutral basis for your craft. By all means attempt to make a conventional main rotor/tail rotor helicopter. Just expect it to be quite hard! This has real-life counterparts as well, notably the Soviet/Russian Kamov Ka-50 and its relatives, and the solution is used there for the same reason it works for kerbals. It makes the craft stabler and easier to fly. By Dmitriy Pichugin - http://www.airliners.net/photo/Russia---Air/Kamov-Ka-50/0920728/L/, GFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5896037 The coaxial contra-rotating twin rotor powertrain The simplest kerbal rotorcraft powertrain uses a similar solution as in the Ka-50. Kerbals have the advantage of having incredibly powerful, yet compact electric motors that can be placed anywhere, so that's what we're going to do. The powertrain only consists of two parts: at the top a motor (the standard or heavy electric rotor work well for most craft), and below it, a flat servo with its motor disengaged (with no motor at all). The rotor blades attach to the motor above, and the freewheeling servo (or the bottom half of the motor) below. When you spin up the motor, the torque will be evenly split between the two rotors, which will start spinning in opposite directions. Note: this isn't the only way to make a contra-rotating powertrain; you can also use two electric motors surface-mounted to a base, then gizmoed into being coaxial; in this case, each motor will be spinning its own rotor. It has twice the power. For most purposes, the single-motor/freewheel solution is sufficient, however, and has the advantage of being simpler and stabler. Collective Since KSP 1.7.3, Breaking Ground includes propeller and rotor blades as parts. Clip them onto a motor, deploy them, and bind their authority limit to an axis group to control collective (e.g. up/down). Note that they come in clockwise and counterclockwise variants: if building a contra-rotating powertrain, be sure to use mirrored variants for each rotor so that the marking decals point the same way on each, and set the deploy direction on each of them so that adjusting collective up increases pitch on both of them. When building your own rotors (see below), mount an elevon on a servo as pictured above, limit the servo's angle to some relatively sane values, and bind it to an axis group as above. Rotor design The built-in rotor and propeller blades differ greatly in performance from ones made from elevons. They are much more powerful in the lower atmosphere, producing a great deal more thrust/lift. However, their performance drops off much more abruptly and their service ceiling is much lower. A craft powered with a rotor made from elevons can reach 20 km on Kerbin and operate easily on Duna. Therefore, for such special off-world uses, hand-built rotors still have a niche. With rotors, light weight is everything, so use the lightest components available for the job. Your rotor blades should be control surfaces -- FAT-455 for bigger rotors, elevons of various sizes for smaller ones. Here's the best way I know to make a rotor: Place servos onto the motor or the freewheel in radial symmetry. Small ones work most of the time; for very big rotors you might want to use larger sizes. Attach a control surface to the servo and rotate it to the correct orientation. Hold down the shift key and offset it outwards to your desired radius. Set the angle restrictions on the servo. Values of about 12 to about 35 degrees depending on rotor size work for me. If making a bigger rotor, add a second control surface and repeat step 3 for it. Optional: add a strut connector from the servo to the nearest control surface. It won't do anything much but it will make it look better. Copy the entire blade assembly onto your other power element and turn it upside down. Assign servo angle on both sets of servos to up/down, reversing one of them. Important: Disable yaw control on all the control surfaces on your rotor, leaving pitch and roll enabled. Powering it Rotorcraft require electricity to run the powertrain (and also operate collective). Small craft like the BAK-52NS "Kranefly" above could actually run just on a pair of the larger solar panels, or you could bring enough batteries to give you the endurance you want, but the all-around easiest solution is to use fuel cells as above: the golden tank contains enough fuel to fly the Kranefly for probably longer than you have patience, and it only needs a few cells to run. For the heavy rotors you pretty much have to use fuel cells; a pair of large fuel cell arrays is sufficient to power a single heavy electric motor. Controlling it You can set up whatever control scheme you like of course, but I have found the following to work for most things: Action group 1 Toggle fuel cells and engage motor(s) Main throttle[1] Adjust engine torque (you'll want this at maximum most of the time) Up/Down axis Adjust collective (K increases pitch, I decreases pitch -- this places them at the same positions on your right hand as pitch on your left) [1] Since 1.7.2, F/B in 1.7.0-1.7.1 Additionally, brake will apply brake on the motor driving the rotor. Because you have a freewheel between the rotors and the craft's body, this means you can stop the rotor very quickly by disengaging the motor (action group 1) and hitting the brakes -- both rotors will stop with the torque canceled out between them. The magic of reaction wheels Kerbals may not have cyclic but by the Kraken's tentacles they have reaction wheels. You can paper over minor misbehaviours in the craft by adding some reaction wheels... sometimes quite a lot really. Don't feel bad, it's a kerbal solution. Tuning it The powertrain described above is fairly docile and you can stick it on top of the centre of mass of pretty much any craft light enough for it to lift, and it will fly and hover. Getting it to fly well is a different kettle of fish altogether. If there is a science to tuning kerbal rotorcraft I haven't discovered it -- all of my tuning has been through trial and error. I suspect the unpredictability is due to the way KSP translates control inputs into control surface positions on the rotor, which is a bit on the flaky side: Change the number of rotor blades. I've had good results with rotors from 2 to 6 blades. More blades require more power but run smoother. Adjust blade length. Larger rotors are more efficient but less stable unless you feed them with more power. Move rotor forward/aft. Moving it forward and back changes the craft's tendency to pitch forward or back as you increase/decrease collective; it also changes its sensitivity to roll and yaw controls although I have no idea exactly why and how. Even tiny adjustments can make massive differences; less than a "click" of snap-to motion can completely change the handling characteristics of a chopper. I suspect this is due to the way the rotor blades respond to your control inputs. Move rotor up/down. Up tends to make the chopper more stable but less responsive to control inputs, down does the opposite. It's quite possible to make a really numb chopper that only goes up and down and barely even responds to pitch, roll, or yaw controls! Tilt rotor forward. It does something so it's worth a try. Adjust control authority. Less authority means less judder but less control; more does the opposite (and might cause blade stalls which is no fun at all). Adjust the craft's centre of mass. Generally speaking you will want a high centre of mass, close to the rotor: this is why the fuel tank is right below the powertrain in the BAK-52 above. Add or remove reaction wheels. Tip: Tune with SAS off. You might find that your chopper flies rather pleasantly without it in fact! Flying it To fly a helicopter, spin up the rotors with collective at zero, engines at maximum torque. Then increase collective until it takes off. Pitch to accelerate, slow down, or fly backwards; roll to fly sideways, yaw to spin around. When you're moving forward at a decent pace airplane-like aerodynamics start to enter the picture which is fun and different. Developing it further The basic Ka-50 style craft plan is just one possibility among many. Once you've got the power train figured out, you can make bigger ones and smaller ones, choppers powered by more than one set of rotors in a variety of configurations, tilt rotors with heavy servos making for an Osprey-style VTOL craft, and so on. You can stick on a jet or two just below the rotor assembly to make it go faster -- making fast choppers is a completely different and much harder challenge than making fast planes, since the limiting factor is stability rather than thrust to weight ratio; you will need to design rather different rotors for choppers that go very fast. You can also attempt different solutions altogether, like with non-coaxial contra-rotating rotors, or even attempting a main rotor/tail rotor style craft. There's a lot of room for tuning in rotor design as well, and if you feel the stock electrics don't quite produce the oomph you want, research turboprops and start breaking records (ht: @Azimech). You might have to get creative to find a practical use for helicopters in career missions but they are a lot of fun to build and, eventually, to fly. There are at least two helipads on the KSC just begging to be used, so go out and use them!

Helicopter 2 Download E plane 6 Download

Hello! Yesterday, I set myself a challenge to make a helicopter. It was really hard, but also rewarding when I saw my creation fly around. I've created several variants as well https://photos.app.goo.gl/PVZZXEQFBErbnBtz6 https://photos.app.goo.gl/7Qa86wSbgKUztXE3A https://photos.app.goo.gl/1eKCgYyZ5rgFqTBo6 https://photos.app.goo.gl/Gxd6pQyyx7SnQwWx7 https://photos.app.goo.gl/nNmrNzce1YQPZEo28 https://photos.app.goo.gl/WsHRJb6oxAKUEVjC8 https://photos.app.goo.gl/FQq6n7xxzXkN3EeC8 https://photos.app.goo.gl/EVHAJBbvPtNnS8aU6

This one have 2 variants Stock: https://kerbalx.com/luizopiloto/Hue-H7-Lynx kOS: https://kerbalx.com/luizopiloto/Hue-H7K-Lynx kOS variant uses a set of scripts to enable full cyclic controls, enabling the helicopter to be way more responsive/maneuverable.

Winch cable not included: https://kerbalx.com/luizopiloto/Hue-64b-SkyKrane

I'm mostly asking for help in this thread. I'm currently trying to develop vehicles I can deploy permanently in the field to support a career mode colonization effort. This means I need to set up mining facilities, SSTOs, and small towns on every planet. Perhaps the most difficult planet to set up such a colony with reusable technologies on is Eve. Thanks to its dense atmosphere, simply using aircraft to fly at faster than driving speeds between bases is a compelling option. However, jet engines obviously don't work inside Eve's atmosphere. So, I have to resort to stock electric propellers (unless I want gas guzzling rocket planes that are mostly fuel, and need to land and refuel multiple times in one trip). My difficulty is prototyping a stock electric propeller with the specifications I want. I wanted to make one out of .625 meter parts, to push the size and mass limits of stock propellers (and then scale up from there for larger planes). This means using .625 reaction wheels, and possibly using .625 meter decouplers in some manner as the bearings. Next, the prop needs to be able to redock to the mothership, since propellers tend to break easily whenever the game loads or unloads a vehicle with a propeller. And finally, the propeller needs to be a sub-assembly with a docking port, so that I can change out a broken engine in the field if I need to. No sense in condemning an aircraft I went through the trouble of getting to Eve if all that broke is the propeller. Anyway, I haven't had too much luck, a whole lot of friction between parts, and the prop breaking free of the different kinds of bearings I've designed. So I thought I'd turn to the KSP community for tips or tricks on designing props that aren't just for show, but are actually useful and utilitarian. The ability to redock is probably the part I care most about. I also have the making history pack, so I have those parts to draw from for making props as well. The structural tubes might be useful for 1.25 meter props and up.

The Kraken Killer Somebody asked me if I could create a "futuristic" looking helicopter and this is my response! Drawing inspiration from all across the board, including the Halo Pelican, the Fallout Vertibird, the C&C Orca, the Aerospatiale SA-2 and so many more. Though it may look different, the VK-02 is a traditional Turboshaft vehicle. Pumping out about 270kN per rotor and with a top speed of around 115 m/s. The Kraken Killer is easily the most stable and fastest Kermansky Helicopter to date. Even the greenest beginner should be able to pilot this craft with little trouble! How to Operate: 1. Releases Rotors 2. Toggle VTOL engines 3. Toggle all Afterburners (craft will lift off if only VTOL is activated) 4. Toggle 2 of 4 Forward movement engines 5. Toggle the other 2 of 4 Forward engines

Hi Kerbonauts! As you all know, the evolution of stock propellers/rotors in KSP has come a very long way. Ever since legit aerodynamics crash - landed at Kerbin people have been trying to figure this thing out. I would like to see what people think of stock propellers, rotors, prop. planes, and helicopters. This post isn't a contest or a poll, just seeing how people approach this thing. Submitting You can submit anywhere from: pictures, gifs, tips, advice, troubles/problems, explanations, compliments to others, or constructive criticism. This post is short and straight to the point! remember, jebius explosius

Hello comrades I haven't been here for a long period of time. But now it's time to comeback. I thought it would be fantastic to fly this thing in KSP so I made one. Grab some screens: https://imgur.com/a/piQvFnp I hope you'll like it. Pros: Guns Badass look Cons: Too wide (I made it based on the side picture and I used my memory [back when I was playing Cod MW series] and it turned out to be too bulky) At least on my PC it has strange bug with Firespitter (I'll explain later) Not too authentic, because I added four small engines under the rotor so it could fly faster. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~DOWNLOAD~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ https://www.dropbox.com/s/d2mr8yddj1kauft/Mi24.craft?dl=0 ~~~~~~~~~REQUIRED MODS~~~~~~~~~ FIRESPITTER BDArmory Squad (KSP game) <<<MODPACK FOR Mi24 (1.3 KSP)>>> https://www.dropbox.com/s/rcaqtkhy1rhjzy3/MODS FOR Mi24 KSP 1.3.rar?dl=0 FIRESPITTER BUG: When you put power to max it'll has only 300RPM on the rotors. You have to adjust the throttle carefully.

Kermansky KM-60 KerbalX.craft file Borrowing a little bit from the looks of the Sikorsky MH-60, the KM-60 is the culmination of hours of trial and error and hours of taking apart other people's helicopters! Able to lift a total of about 60 tons. She uses 4 panther blowers to spin the 4 bladed rotor and a single panther with full gimbal enabled to counter the torque-spin and to help with unwanted roll at speed. Limited to about 40-50 m/s she isn't too quick but is user friendly. Controls: 1. Release Turboshaft 2. Toggle Main Engine 3. Toggle Wet Mode (lift off) 4. Toggle counter-steer engine

HUMMINGBIRD Stock propellor VTOL/HTOL Gyroplane* * I've no idea what this would be classified as, so I'm guessing it's that. A stock, 106 part turbo-jet powered dual propellor VTOL with the ability to fly like a plane too, so you don't just fall out of the sky when you run out of fuel. FLIGHT It's really like controlling a normal jet-engined craft, no vessel switching and with so little engine wobble as to make a brave kerbal weep. Simply stage, engage SAS, throttle up and fly. She does have a slight tendency to tilt backward (the CoM really should be shifted forwards) but meh, it keeps you on your toes this way. In forward flight, you can switch off the rotor engines and fly like a plane but getting those rotor engines started again can sometimes be a bit temperamental! Give the plane a little shake if one or both of the rotors fail to spool up. And do it quick! CONTROLS AG1 Toggle forward engines AG2 Toggle forward engines dry/wet AG3 Toggle rotor engines AG4 Toggle rotor engines dry/wet DOWNLOAD Hummingbird.craft 164Kb Hope you have fun with this. If you've got any questions about the craft, I'd be happy to answer them, most probably at great length and ksp-nerdiness.

Been inactive for a while, and need to take a break from counter-strike due to a major slump, so i decided to fire up ksp for some craft building. Making it mostly with pwing, as i have done with my other crafts. Will update with more pics as i build. For now, the further down you scroll, the more progress will be seen. I'm going to update the OP with recent pics a bit later Can't get kerbpaint to work properly, some pwing elements can be colored, some can't, and some only get updated with new colours when coloring another part (mostly when i add paint to a stock piece), if anyone can help me with this it would be greatly appreciated. Some additional angles and further progress: ------------------------------------------------------ OLD ------------------------------------------------------------ Decided the ejector seats (which actually work, just not right now because they get blocked by the dash, will fix though) didn't really look the part, so i modified them and replaced the existing ones. I do realise the upper seat part is slightly too long, but im going to focus on finishing the craft and deal with it later on, should be a pretty simple fix. Not really pleased with the way the turret section turned out, will smoothen and fix later on. It looks alot more 'blocky' than it actually is, the panels blend into each other in the screenshot. Some vent detail

(Edit: If you want to see the part about needing the bearings, go look at the more recent posts. March 9th or later). The time was in the middle of last summer. @Jon144 had built his beautiful helicopters while I had nothing to show for it (We've competed with designs in the past and I usually lost). I didn't really like the fact that stock KSP helicopters had to detach their rotors to work, requiring switching crafts to adjust throttle, and set about on the quest to see if a claw based bearing could work (tests in previous versions showed it couldn't, but I wanted to see if anything had changed). Forcing the claw to stand upright did not work, but then the entire rotor assembly tipped upside-down and started spinning like a charm. And thus I had my idea. The Clawjet Rotor So why did I call them "clawjets?" Simple. The claw is the most important part of the bearing and it uses tip-jets to spin the rotor. The Clawjet rotor's main advantage is that the power of the jets can be adjusted mid-flight without having to switch craft and lose control of the helicopter for a few moments. With a properly placed fuel tank its possible to fuel the rotor from fuel stores aboard the main craft, and the blades can clip through the main craft if you wish. The main disadvantage to it is that it's complex to set up prior to the flight and likes to break at every opportunity. That's the main reason why I never actually built a proper non-experimental helicopter using one to upload to the forums, and decided to just put the whole project on hold. So how does it work? Glad you asked and I didn't type out the exact response I wanted you to have in big blue text above this statement! The setup is effectively made up of 3 parts: The claw, the rotor, and the lock (which itself is made up of 3 parts). The rotor is placed upside-down directly above the claw. It is then detached, landing center on the claw. The claw is then set to "free pivot," allowing the rotor to tip upside-down (2 upside-downs makes a right-side up, so this is good). The rotor is then locked in place with the lock. Here's a picture: In this example the decoupler is between the fuel tank and the claw; its just that the decouper is actually attached to the structural support on the right side of the image and majorly offset over (more than the stock settings allow). Also notice how the claw is tipped back slightly. This is because the claw can't rotate fully upside-down, it just gets really close to doing so. I think this is the reason why the rotors destroy themselves at every opportunity. So then how does the lock work? Ok, the lock is divided into 3 parts, which I shall call the "rotor lock," the "detached lock," and the "attached lock." Here's the same picture with the lock parts highlighted instead: I've named the 3 lock parts in this format because it's descriptive of where they are. The rotor lock is attached to the rotor. The detached lock gets detached from the craft. The attached lock stays attached to the main craft. The attached lock and the detached lock form your typical bearing setup. The rotor lock winds up in the same place as the attached lock once the rotor has been rotated upside-down by the claw. The detached lock then detaches, locking the rotor lock and attached lock in the same place. Essentially the detached lock holds the rotor lock in place, while the attached lock holds the detached lock in place. The rotor lock is "locked" to the main craft, and thus the rotor shouldn't tip when the helicopter decides to lean. EDIT: Make sure to lock the pivot on the claw once the rotor is rotated into place. Free the pivot again when you detach the detached lock. This will make sure that the rotor lock locks properly with the detached lock. This lock setup will work with many types of bearings, and I have indeed experimented with many types of bearings. If you want to get especially creative you could have the rotor lock and attached lock be in different places; as long as the detached lock is locking the rotor in place and allowing it to spin while the attached lock is locking the detached lock in place you should be fine. Success? Flight was achieved with several prototypes, and at least 1 even landed, although they did all encounter many issues with the rotors breaking off when trying to pull maneuvers, along with the helicopters being practically uncontrollable. Eventually I settled on counter-rotating prop designs as the best option, but even that did not remedy the problem. Eventually I abandoned development because the challenges to overcome were greater than my interest in continuing development. Anyways, have some pictures: The Future? The game has gone through a couple of updates since I experimented with these rotor bearings, though I would think they'd still work in the current version. Autostrutting might do interesting things for the clawjets, and perhaps allow them to actually succeed. However, I'm definitely done with them after all the trouble they gave me and a waning interest in KSP. However, now that I'm no longer working on these things, I thought I should probably at least share my progress to the forums. So I guess that's where you guys come in. Try some things with these clawjet bearings and see if you can get them to work properly, or if the concept is so bad that it's unfeasible. And since it's the spacecraft exchange I better post a download link Below is the download for all of the experimental helicopters and rotor setups I have. All of my research into these rotors is in there, so hopefully you can go from where I left off. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/sjsjqxn4yh5xv9o/AACOVuObf-mRivggylhRmwsTa?dl=0

Hey guys! Im a noob in ksp but i've just build a ''helicopter'' that works pretty well,his unique problem is stability. I would like if you guys can make it better and post a craft file for it,thanks! This is the link for downloading it. Hope you like that: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B-EtYAa62qrdQklwbE1TVmpVXzA

Hey Guys, I have played a bit with the electric rotary motor and build a helicopter,now I'm stuck at the problem ,that my helicopter can't get over 35m/s without losing it's stability and of course it's speed.The problem shouldn't be the motor itself, since even with more power, it is stuck at that 35m/s limit.My quess is that there is a dissymmetry of lift, since the rotor blades are very static.It's a problem with real helicopters too ,but they compensate it with blade flapping. So does someone got a solution for doing blade flapping in KSP or something that can compensate for that? Thanks.

Just an experiment to see if I could create helicopter parts that do not require a plugin like firespliter. Kerbal doesnt like engines being on top of the center of mass so it freaks out if you leave the gimbals on. Also parts are not textured. Comes with- 2 blade commercial prop 4 blade industrial prop tail rotar Air intakes Skids http://spacedock.info/mod/1039/FASA Props