EpicSpaceTroll139

Been working on that cyclic script. I've managed to get a basic thing running that will cyclically change the pitch of blades, but that's the easy part. I need to make it so that that it is actually controlled by the pilot, and compensates for rotation speed. On the latter I might end up having to combine it with a collective because it would be a lot simpler if the rotor spins at a constant speed.

It has 346 parts. Only the front bit has engines, the rest is the orange part of mk2 drogue chutes. I don't know exactly how many engines it has. Anyways: @Cunjo Carl and @EBOSHI nice cups of tea haha! I'm hoping to get a few more entries before I put anything on the leaderboard.

I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say there...

I've been working on a helicopter that flies more like a plane. It should theoretically be really, really, really, loud when traveling at speed because the advancing blade tips break the sound barrier, meaning it produces about 28 sonic booms per second. Good thing I don't have a mod that makes that actually happen.

seems cool, but won't airplanes make helicopter noises when they taxi then?

Ok so here's my example: the Oskar Mayer Weiner Mobile. Acts as a stylish ride and snack transport for Jeb.

This is basically a continuation of the original Kerbal Spice Program run by @Badie (this is with her permission). The goal is to create a craft that looks like food/something that looks like food. The rules are that: The parts should be stock (I might add a modded section later, but right now I'm trying to avoid mod pizzas and procedural corndogs). It should have some kind of (at least theoretical) purpose, however vague. Ex: flying advertisement, food stand, Mun rover, etc. The scoring system is kind of arbitrary.* I guess we can periodically update a set of categories. First entrant: @Cunjo Carl Cup of Tea Most detailed: @EBOSHI Cup of Tea Most (plausibly) useful: @martiplay28yt ISRU Popsicle *if anyone has a better idea for how to work this, please let me know. @ moderators If this should be somewhere else, feel free to move it.

Ok, I've done work on the rotor head that I showed earlier, and I've gotten it to work up to 130rpm. I have found this to be a sort of brick wall for this specific design unfortunately. Using a mod to slow down time, I have been able to trace the problem to something I mentioned earlier, which is that it doesn't have a teeter hinge to let the blades fly up and down. Because of the lack of this component, the blades exert a huge torque that tries to wrench them out of the hinge that allows them to change angle of incidence, so eventually it snaps and this happens. (note it was spinning a lot faster than 69rpm when it broke, my screenshot was a little late It might take me a while to design a new rotor head with this extra component, but I think I might be able to get higher rpm with it.

@klond These thermo rcs linkages are working miracles! My swashplate can now reach over 120rpm, which is actually fairly reasonable already, considering one of my lower disk loading helis operates its main rotors at about 60-70rpm. It's still less than half of what my higher disk loading helis work with though (300rpm, sometimes higher). (I'm here excluding the tiny ity bitty helicopters and tailrotors, which can go as high as 460rpm, and are obviously too small to add a contraption like this anyways). I can't wait to see what kinds of RPMs this thing works at once I've gotten the lower swashplate tilt mechanism smoothed out (currently it doesn't always keep it well centered, which means it can throw things out of whack).

Ah yes I removed those and replaced them with the control surfaces + ibeams. It didn't change how it worked though. Anyways, in a few minutes I'm going to modify it to use @klond's thermo rcs ball-socket style linkages. I get the feeling it will work much smoother.

Nice! I'd been thinking about trying out your thermo rcs bearing for this kinda thing. I wonder what would happen if you attached a turboshaft motor to it. On a side note, perhaps mine would work as well if I didn't put a probe core on every single component. I got in the habit of doing that because debris typically gets autodeleted on DMP servers

Oh it might be that I added those control surfaces on the short ibeams to demonstrate how it would be moved... if it worked... Unfortunately it does not

I think it might have some slight modifications (not sure), but nothing that made it work better or even differently.

Good luck. I've looked back through all my contraptions and this was the most "successful" (more like least bad) rotor head I made. It only has cyclic because giving it a true collective would mean I would have to separate the blades into 2 units instead of having them as one beam, thus pretty much guaranteeing they would come flying out due to centrifugal forces. Even though I put effort into making sure the COM of each component was on the axis of rotation, it only survives for a little while at around 15rpm, without having been moved from neutral position. It's also missing the important teeter hinge to allow the blades to fly up and down as lift distribution changes. However I'm worried that would also result in the blade separation problem I mentioned earlier

@_Rade @Gman_builder Both of you are right actually. The control is called the cyclic because it changes the pitch of the rotor blades cyclically. The result is to tilt the rotor disk in a particular direction, resulting in the helicopter moving in that direction. -Wikipedia

Been working on a heavy-lift helicopter that uses intermeshing rotors. ' It works great! Until it goes faster than 25-30m/s, at which point something happens, not sure what, that severely slows the rotors, and sometimes makes things explode, and the thing falls out of the sky.

Thanks! It is indeed based off of yours, although I first tried other fuselage designs and then came to the conclusion that yours was the best for getting a somewhat rounded look with a flat floor. As for code I meant a script for K-OS. Creating a new plugin is way out of my league haha. Edit: Progress on the heavy-lift

I've been working on my own heavy-lift helicopter, and I accidentally discovered an effect that helps significantly with the problem of dissymmetry of lift, while ironically being caused by it. As I make the blades longer to help absorb more power (in this case 4 panthers), they are able to flex, riding upward as they get more lift and down as they get less. This greatly increases the speed I can go without rolling over compared to my smaller helis (even taking away the wings with the ailerons). However gyroscopic effects cause the blades to ride up in the forward region and down in the aft region, so some of the rotor lift is directed backwards, working against my forward speed. I need to do some testing to determine if this is enough to warrant using a tandem rigid rotor design instead. Also been working slowly on a preliminary base for a cyclic code. I now have a vague idea of how to translate pilot inputs into rotor flap movements. I have no idea how to give SAS any control in the matter though.

Haha great minds think alike! I made a very similar thing to that also based of Klond's tiny coaxial heli. It can fly, but usually within about 30 seconds of taking off, the synchronization gears (or something, I can't really tell) snags and either one or both rotors get ejected. I think my problem has to do with a vibration caused the power pulsing as each turbine in turn gets a bit of thrust from the engine. I'm thinking that it *might* be a better idea to have the gears separate and have the engine blowing on a turbine on just one of the shafts. Though now that I've made the tiny single rotor monoblower, the only benefit of this would be to null out the torque and thus make handling a little easier.

Presenting the lightest turboshaft helicopter to date! The Sub-ton Turbocopter! Weighing in at just 948kg, and based off of @klond's Tiny Coaxial Turbocopter,* this heli is ready to be taken wherever you want to fly. Flight time is about 5 minutes, however an engineer suggested another fuel tank could give it a greater endurance. But then it wouldn't be < 1 ton would it? But here's the best part! It fits in a 1 long + 1 short Mk2 spaceplane cargo bay! ^this picture is of an earlier version, and will be updated soonish *Released with Klond's permission.

@klond Also: you're right that coaxial or otherwise counter-rotating rotors help by cancelling out each other's gyroscopic effects. At significant forward speeds they can also help by cancelling out the assymetric lift that results from advancing rotor blades having a higher airspeed (rotational speed + heli airspeed) and thus getting more lift than the retreating blades which have a lower airspeed (rotational speed - heli airspeed).

@klond I suppose you are referring to my old Coax Mk1? If so that thing is definitely lighter. Yours is only 41% the mass of mine. It looks more compact too. Great job! I will have fun trying it out!

Ummm... that sounds similar what DMP does... Are you suggesting something like multiple persistence files, so that, say, if Player 2 wants to go to Duna with 7 and 8, he loads a onto a new save/game instead of launching there and syncing? I'm a little confused

Nice strawman argument. Have you even tried DMP? It gives the freedom to have different groups of people doing different things. You can have 2 people flying planes while 2 people build a space station and send it to Duna, and yes, one person can do his/her own thing if s/he so chooses. And it's far more than an online chat (even if it may seem like it at times due to lag-induced teleporting bugs getting in the way lol). I fail to see what's wrong with that. Many multiplayer games allow people in the gameworld to do different things.

I did in fact read what you posted. I simply disagree with the idea that people should have to consult other people before warping and/or follow some mission que. I think people should be able to do whatever they want whenever they want. Take a look at an example of a typical session on a DMP server: Player 1 is landing his first rocket on the Mun. Players 2 and 3 are designing turboshaft helicopters. Player 4 is learning how to build a plane from Players 5, Players 7 and 8 are building a base on Duna. In my humble opinion this is a nice way to have things, even with the occasional paradoxes. Maybe I am getting confused and missing your ideas completely (that might just be it, to be honest some parts are a little confusing to me), but what I'm reading in yours is that everybody will be in the same timeframe. Thus, taking the example above, Players 7, 8, and 1 would get annoyed at having to wait until players 2, 3, and possibly even 4 and 5 land so that they can warp. Likely it would end up with the helicopter/airplane people being made to leave or change over to flying rockets so the others can get on with their flights. Or maybe the other way around, but more likely the former, considering it's called Kerbal Space Program. Your multiplayer idea has here worked well at avoiding paradoxes. It has however herded players towards doing activities that require or at least allow significant amounts of warp. It's cooperative, but not necessarily by choice. In my opinion, this means it has not worked great overall. I'll admit DMP's system is not fantastic. There are paradoxes that can occur as mentioned before. However, it allows players to do whatever they want, whenever they want. Also: Sure it's a "NASA simulator." That hasn't stopped people from making helicopters, propeller planes, boats, submarines, blenders, fighter jets, cars, cannons... the list goes on. Anyways, I guess we just have different ideas of how things should work if it becomes an official thing. And that's ok! I hope we're not dragging this thing too off topic.