Azimech

I think you need to PM me.

Showed this to EJ_SA yesterday. One of his old planes being transported on the back of my Azi42. He loved it. An entry into the Elcano Challenge should be a good way to test the reliability of my Vapula RS engine. Engine max lift is 172t at sea level so I have a little too much fuel for a 45 degree mountain slope. Driving down is easy, just reverse prop pitch (and observe max allowed engine RPM, which I didn't --> damage).

The chain is made of the new separators, which are partially hollow.

I didn't, it's no rope :-)

Hey Squad, a bit late but thanks for the new separators!

Yeah apparently with Gfycat it's a hit or miss. This time it wouldn't load.

If you guys want to play with the swing, look here. https://gfycat.com/InsistentSpectacularHornet

If I ever need a poster, I'll know where to look. Cool stuff, @KerrMü!

Nothing short of hilarious. Yes, this happens too!

I think we have something here.

First I'll improve it. Maybe build a gigantic swing for Valentina. Or 50 kerbals. And when the chain breaks ...

Building a chain has never been easier.

I had to grin when I saw that price.

What @blakemw said and this is absolutely 100% true and the best way to prevent flipping: set Automatic Friction Control to "override". For low grav worlds I might set the friction to as low as 0.1 or 0.3. This automatic system seems like some kind of weird "AI" that tries to understand what the player wants. In the meantime the player expects a certain behaviour but gets ridiculous results.

Link to post elsewhere ... you guys might like this.

That's a fantastic view, @Gargamel

Finally ... I have the DLC. A gift by @quitessa and @Yargnit who are awesome! A few days ago I was watching a Twitch stream by @EJ_SA, who is awesome as well. He was trying to build a stock helicopter with a reduction gearbox but was unable to get it into the air. Fascinated by the encountered problems I started work on a gearbox which should be able to transfer the needed torque of the turbine to the secondary shaft and so I remembered the real world solutions. The strongest, most reliable way to do so is by using a epicylic gear train, also known as a planetary gearbox. I used no DLC parts on this one. As is commonly known with anyone with experience building gears in KSP, there's a max rotational speed before the physics engines starts to skip frames and the tendency to slip or more commonly RUD. The solution was to simply reduce the speed of the engine. But to produce the required lift it has to be compensated at the other end. One can either: increase blade length, which can cause flapping blades, lift reversal or kraken attacks, increase the amount of blades, which makes the helicopter harder to control due to gyroscopic precession and puts a larger strain on the bearings, increase blade angle, which limits forward motion due to the higher susceptibility to retreating blade stall, also there's a hard limit, above a certain angle lift drops and drag increases. Eventually I chose 8 blades with a blade angle of 10 degrees, more lift than 5 and 15 degrees - this is exceptionally high, my normal helicopters have an angle between 2 and 4 degrees and rarely use more than 3 blades. I could've fine-tuned the angle to 0.5 degrees increments but wanted quick & dirty results. The epicylic transmission is a simple 2:1, this made it possible to easily double the amount of planetary gear if needed. The sun gear uses 16 "teeth", the planetary gears use 8 and the annulus uses 32. Also, since the arrangement is perfectly symmetrical, it means that the required torque would be evenly transferred through both or all four planetary gears and also stabilizes both the primary and secondary shaft. With two Wheesley's and the already complex arrangement I wasn't able to produce enough lift. Me being me I decided to make it at least work and decided to put another rotor on there but with a 5 degree blade angle, this time a direct drive from the turbine. This solution looks a lot like the Kamov helicopters, with the big difference the secondary rotor runs at half the speed and produces half the lift. This animation shows it hovering, on the left side you see the top, direct drive rotor lift values. I chose a 0.5 sec timestep so you could at least read the numbers - if the encoding didn't make it all too blurry. And this animation shows the driven parts. Lots of RCS balls. Now the big question: is it useful for anything else than a demo? I think not. The complexity, the physics limitations, part count, mass, size and drag makes sure it cannot compete with a direct drive at this time. And turboprops with gears will fly just as much as airplanes using piston engines - not at all. Can it be improved upon? Probably ... but how much? Even if we double the efficiency of this design, we still have the problem of it not being a useful, controllable helicopter capable of speed or range. But it is indeed very interesting experiment. This is the first flying stock helicopter using a reduction gearbox (that I know of), even if it doesn't carry the full load. Also my first planetary gearbox after my 2014 experiments using mods. I have the intention to finally build a working car transmission using this tech, something I have been dreaming about for the last 4 years. I also made a tiny turboprop using DLC parts, inspired by the Merlin mounted on the Lancaster. It uses 9 Juno's and produces a mere 36kN static thrust. However, I've used every aerodynamic trick in the KSP book so with two or four of them it might be nice for a replica and produce a decent speed. Part count is pretty high for such a small thing: 58. I over-engineered the bearings so part count might drop to 40-ish. One can remove the dummy exhaust stacks. With tank empty it weighs 4.6t. At least it has variable prop pitch. This post might be interesting to other krakenheads/turboheads as well, I was thinking of @luizopiloto and @klond.

Because I'm going to fight with the claw today (building a stock tiltrotor mechanism). Also, showing my age.

I'm bored to tears with the stock - lack of colours.

I see you're using the tiny wings as blades ... not being able to change your prop pitch isn't really going to help with achieving a better speed, unfortunately.

@Delay ... "hazard-ish's hinges"? Can you give me an example?

Made a variant with a "normal" cargo bay. Tuned the engines and made other, numerous improvements to the airframe. Even without reaction wheels it has fabulous control in both helicopter and airplane mode. Can take off and land in taildragger mode and normal mode. Taildragger is for loading/unloading cargo. Some figures, helicopter mode. Empty mass: 156t. Fuel mass: 57t. Max payload: 177t. Max gross mass: 390t. Airplane mode top speed (no payload, tanks full): 116m/s.

I am interested :-) And I can send you my engines just beware ... they're overbuilt so ... heavy, large part count, huge. Not the best for turboprops but ideal for helicopters!

You guys might remember my Azi24 Cronus and Azi31 Rhea, the largest stock helicopters ever IRL or KSP. Today I started work on a very ambitious project: A tiltrotor craft. Never done this before and ... the tiltrotor mechanism isn't functional yet. What is functional: a craft that's even larger than the Cronus, now larger than the 747-8 in every dimension (80x70x27), and with a cargo hold far surpassing that of the AN-225 (2146m3 vs 1300m3). It uses the Vapula RS engine which uses just 6 blowers to produce 1720kN of thrust on the rotors. With some work it can be upgraded to ~3000kN and still be reliable. Regardless of the tiltrotor mechanism, it can take off as a normal airplane in taildragger mode, be an STOL or VTOL. Just a matter of changing the angle in the editor. To be honest ... the airframe is 95% finished and quite the performer. It's the tilt mechanism I'm scared about. Control is not a problem because for the first time I used the Boost Flaps for something else than cars. I can get rid of 75 - 100% of the reaction wheels this way. It's a lot more responsive but therefore also a lot more nervous. And it really reduces the pilot's workload (no more tapping action groups like with the Cronus and Rhea). Tunnel vision!