What did you do in KSP1 today?

[Urus28]

I'm testing a 30t rover on the mun with a rocker bogie configuration. It works extremely well, I can easily move in the sharp borders of craters.

[Azimech]

25 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

Impressive.

I did disable the motor, and the problem was the opposite -- it built up too much revs; I'd need to limit it somehow. It was a very simple design, just three Junos directly on the drive shaft. The limit wasn't power but that it shook itself apart after it 300 rpm or so.  

Right now though as I said I'm not all that concerned with power, the electrics have all the oomph I need for now. The thing I'm struggling with is control. I can brute-force it with reaction wheels of course but I very much prefer aerodynamic control. The contrarotating BAK-52 and BAK-12 fly rather nicely through aerodynamic control, but I got there entirely through trial-and-error tuning. Basically, I can't figure out why some of my choppers have no or almost no roll or pitch control, while others are super roll- or pitch-happy?

Your Asura has superb roll, pitch, and yaw control, so I would very much appreciate any pointers on this score actually!

This is my current single-main-rotor testbed, and while I got the torques roughly balanced the aerodynamic control is garbage, it was barely flyable and then the control inputs seemed to do more or less random things depending on... I don't know what. I brute-forced it with a bunch of reaction wheels to make it flyable but that is distinctly unsatisfactory.

Another way, but even more brute force is how Cronus and Rhea do it. But it depends on how much power you feed the system.

If a chopper is lacking control, the cause can be the CoL too high above the CoM.

[Frozen_Heart]

 

Christ these things are easy with the new parts. Threw one together this morning in 10 mins.

Edited June 2, 2019 by Frozen_Heart

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Azimech said:

Another way, but even more brute force is how Cronus and Rhea do it. But it depends on how much power you feed the system.

I disassembled Azura. That is some seriously impressive engineering there. I also appreciate the simplicity of the turbine. I guess the bearing was the hardest part? Now that we have stock bearings that ought to be solved. It does look like you got that superb control mostly by piling on lots of reaction wheels though.

-- In other news I did some very light tuning of BAK-12 and explored the limits of its envelope. It broke 10500 meters on hover which is way more than I expected!

[purpleivan]

Various things played with over the last few days, using the robotic parts from Breaking Ground, all involving unusual vehicle configurations.

Amphibio (a rover boat) headed out to the mountains West of the KSC.

Where I broke it.

After that I spent some time putting together a much improved (compared with the one from Kerbin Sorta-Circumnavigation) and then a transporter plane for it. The rover went through a few iterations, but I've got something I think Bill's happy with now.
Early version up in those mountains again.

Spoiler

 

Finished version with deployed science package.

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Lining up the rover.

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Rover loaded and ready for takeoff.

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Wibbly wobbly docking ports.

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View from the cab.

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Returning safely.

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The transporter is really easy to fly, especially to land, which is good as I'm not much of a pilot. However it is pretty slow, so I'll be making some changes to fix that.

[Azimech]

5 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

I disassembled Azura. That is some seriously impressive engineering there. I also appreciate the simplicity of the turbine. I guess the bearing was the hardest part? Now that we have stock bearings that ought to be solved. It does look like you got that superb control mostly by piling on lots of reaction wheels though.

-- In other news I did some very light tuning of BAK-12 and explored the limits of its envelope. It broke 10500 meters on hover which is way more than I expected!

That's pretty good for a helicopter ... It's higher than my first coaxial (which was also the first ever ;-) )
 

 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Frozen_Heart said:

Christ these things are easy with the new parts. Threw one together this morning in 10 mins.

Maybe for you lot who have been making these for years. Took me a lot longer to come up with a working autogyro and I looked at yours pretty hard!

[Jett_Quasar]

Craft Files have been uploaded

P-51 Mustang

Spiff

Rodder

Bell -X1 Carrier plane

 

 

See it in action here:

Download it here: https://kerbalx.com/Jett_Quasar/craft
On Steam Workshop: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198183100066/myworkshopfiles/?appid=220200

 - Jett

Edited June 2, 2019 by Jett_Quasar

[Frozen_Heart]

1 hour ago, Brikoleur said:

Maybe for you lot who have been making these for years. Took me a lot longer to come up with a working autogyro and I looked at yours pretty hard!

Tilt the entire rotor assembly backwards by 10 degrees. It's the air moving through the rotor which causes it to spin, and this doesn't happen in KSP when it's not angled slightly backwards.

[Guest]

Thanks @Frozen_Heart, that explains why take-off is a bit nerve-wracking. I'll do that!

In the meantime, I made another dual-rotor, this one with a bit of a different layout. It handles really well. CoM is also exactly centred on the cargo bay which is useful in case you want to transport something.

https://kerbalx.com/Brikoleur/BAK-47-Kadzook

[Triop]

3 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

In the meantime, I made another dual-rotor

Beautifully smooth design, cool.

[NorthernDevo]

Starting anew...again...because reasons.

Following the usual progress; ignoring the usual "conduct a focused ground survey" missions, because I hate them.

I like money; so the moment I can poop off a rocket with an untrained rich dude in it, off I go! 

Problem: launching VIPs one-by-one takes time, so I decided to shorten things up a little.

I'd managed to upgrade both the VAB and the Pad one level each, and had obtained a couple of four-Kerbal VIP suborbital sightseeing flights.

Now - as I said, shooting them off one by one would be boring, so I did it the Kerbal way.

So: from the "Shut up, it works!" file I give you...

Octo-Kerbie!

('Kerbie' is the name I give to all my first solid-fuel ships.)

Giggle - I can't believe it actually worked, but it did.

Remarkably stable as well.

And - to my delight - it made a lovely picture following separation:

Hehe - kewl!

 

[Cavscout74]

After a few attempts tinkering with the new robotics, I took something for the headache & started a new career in 1.7.1.  I slapped together a new low-tech science plane that I like better than any previous attempt:

I also fired off a bunch of sounding rockets for contracts, then finally put Jeb into LKO.  Got a nice shot of him coming down in the ocean west of KSC:

I also rebuilt my Jabbit 2 stage & a half launcher, which gives a good bit more dV than the basic single Swivel-powered Jabbit 1

Finally, I put up my first polar comsat for a contract:

 

[Guest]

@Azimech thanks for the hint about rotors being too high above CoM. It worked! I made some tweaks to rotor height and CoM on a few of my choppers and handling improved! The BAK-52N and BAK-12 in particular are now really pleasant to fly. I notice that the limiting factor now is my piloting skills, not craft controllability, which is a nice change. 

[panzer1b]

messin around with DLC stuff, after trying for quite a while to make mechs (and failing), i decided to try the other major aspect of the DLC, planes.

A really bad coaxial FW190ish thing that handles like a dead cow strapped to a barn door, and unable to break 70m/s in level flight (those engines are really really neat, but dont come close to the performance and capabilities of the old styled bearings which can easily break 200m/s).

Ofc dissapointed with performance, i tried to refit it with a conventional bearing, and well it kept exploding on the launchpad (i prolly should not have stuck 30 reaction wheels into it but i wanted performance to be through the roof).

Guess what, i failed hard at that as well, and eventually ended up making something that super vaguely resembles a HL2 alien gunship.  Given that thing should NEVER be flyable as the engine is mounted on the arss (aparently the art designers for that game never heard of physics, alien tech or not), it actually handles quite well and can shoot pretty well too (managed to nail a building from a considerable altitude).

And yeah, after firing the last bit of ammo something exploded (no idea why, prolly recoil/missile engine damage), and the thing flipped upside down and well you know what happened next...

[qromodynmc]

Revisiting and upgrading old vehicles.

if everything goes according to plan, i can get new dlc and put stock servos on this baby.

[Triop]

Learning new things every day...

 

Edited June 2, 2019 by Triop

[Urus28]

Hello little crater ! There are some interesting features on Mun.

[Triop]

1 hour ago, Urus28 said:

Hello little crater ! There are some interesting features on Mun.

Really, the first thing I thought of :

[Pipcard]

Y42, D292 - The first six Kerbals to live on Duna arrive on the Tachi Maru

Founding of Akagi Base

Edited June 3, 2019 by Pipcard

[Guest]

I made a little airport crew lift, on a prompt from @Hotel26. This was the first time I used a robotics controller -- the hinges would work without it but the cabin won't stay level during the ascent/descent as the bottom hinges have half the angle of the centre one but they open at the same rate (degrees/second). The big red button is just in front of Jeb. (I limited these to 45/90 for aesthetic reasons but there's no reason it couldn't go all the way to 90/180 for maximum extension.)

BTW does anyone know if it's possible to bind controller scripts to action groups/axes? It'd be nice to bind the raise/lower script to translate up/down. If it is I couldn't figure it out...

Will publish the craft later today CET.

 

Edited June 3, 2019 by Guest

[The Aziz]

Any Horizon: Zero Dawn fans here? I just built a Watcher.

More pictures here:

https://imgur.com/gallery/9yp36Ux

 

Edited June 3, 2019 by The Aziz

[Guest]

I'm tooling around with various suspension setups and I'm missing a component: springs. Anyone figure out if there's a component in there that can be purposed to the job? @KerrMü your beautiful rover would appear to require some or the payload would flop around; I tried to build a rocker-bogie rig as well and couldn't figure that part out, it works nicely otherwise.

For lack of springs the best off-road suspension I managed to build was a simple six-wheel solid-axle job, with the payload fixed to the centre axle so it levels with it. But obviously that's not as nice as the independent suspension you get with the rocker bogie.

[Noir]

2 minutes ago, Brikoleur said:

-snip-

Not sure if this is what you are after, but I managed to create a makeshift leaf spring suspension.

 

An alligator hinge is connected to a G-00 hinge, which is than repeated on the other side. On one of the G-00 hinges is a cubic strut which the wheel sits on. The G-00 hinge that the centre cubic strut is not connected to, is strutted together with a normal strut connector. This image may help. Keeping the motors turned on, but with a very low output, means the hinge will want to return to it's target angle, which in turn creates a suspension/springy like result. It's not a best, and the numbers need tweaking, but it works.

[Azimech]

12 minutes ago, Noir said:

Not sure if this is what you are after, but I managed to create a makeshift leaf spring suspension.

 

An alligator hinge is connected to a G-00 hinge, which is than repeated on the other side. On one of the G-00 hinges is a cubic strut which the wheel sits on. The G-00 hinge that the centre cubic strut is not connected to, is strutted together with a normal strut connector. This image may help. Keeping the motors turned on, but with a very low output, means the hinge will want to return to it's target angle, which in turn creates a suspension/springy like result. It's not a best, and the numbers need tweaking, but it works.

That is seriously impressive.