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Airplane Plus Powerful stockalike parts for aircraft enthusiasts. Feedbacks would be helpful. And if you have time, please take the Poll: Click here to vote on what part do you want to be added Download at: Spacedock · Curseforge Github Want to support me? You can on either of these: PATREON User Patches: Tweakscale Compatibility RPM Compatibility AJE Compatibility F-16 Cockpit RPM Remotetech Config Community Tech Tree Sound Issue Workaround is under "Issues" Below If you want assist in hovering, I recommend this mod I'm using Craft Files (Click Image): Release 22-24: Release 20: Old Files: Extra Images: Old Part Selection Images: -- Collection of Aircraft Photos: https://imgur.com/a/ySFgL Old Album: http://imgur.com/a/6kDLM -- APU in Action: Huey in Action: Machbuster Video: Extra: Demonstration of the Tilt-Rotor function, assisted VTOL landing and New Diagonal Gear Other videos: Latest Changelog: Installation: Remove old folder if there's an old installation. Copy the GameData folder into your root folder. -Included in the pack are AirplanePlus and Firespitter folders. It also packs ModuleManager* *I do not own these mods, I merely packed them in for Airplane Plus to be functional and avoid linking downloads for dependencies. Big thanks to their Authors. FAQ: License: *I only take credit on my parts. Firespitter and Modulemanager which are included in the pack are made by different authors with their own licenses. Most performance configs powered by @Tanner Rawlings Shout out and big thanks to @acc for doing a test run back then. @kiwinanday helped a lot on producing important info in reconfiguring performance, thanks a lot!

License: CC-BY-SA-4.0 Link https://spacedock.info/mod/3065/Hind MI-24 and MI-17 parts pack. Hi. This is a parts pack that uses the half size MK3 parts system like can be found in Airplane plus and is compatible with those parts. Provided are parts to make the equivalent of an MI-24 Hind attack helicopter and an MI-17 troop or cargo helicopter with a loading ramp. You can mix and match to make several variations. Included are rocket pods and a missile rack that use the fireworks system, and you should adjust them once attached to get the effect you want. There are also 2 sizes of auxilary fuel tanks that have the ability to be jettisoned. Remember to turn off staging for them when attached, to stop from accidentally dropping them just after launch. The engine base that sits on top of the main fuselage is a hinge and requires that "Breaking Ground"be installed for functionality. The main rotor attaches to it's top node and this allows the rotor to be tilted in flight for stable horizontal flight. The tail planes are fully functional and as such create drag on vertical movement when rising and descending. The turret (gun or camera) is designed to exactly counter the drag at the other end and needs to be attached when the tailplanes are so that the craft doesnt pitch violently when moving vertically. The turret and the tail sections also have adjustable ballast so that once you have built your craft you can balance it so that the centre of thrust from the rotor goes straight through the centre of mass. Being that they are heavy helicopters the rotor has a small spool up and down delay and so when taking off and landing you should allow for the time it takes to react, especially for landing so that you don't hit the ground hard by waiting too long before throttling up to slow your descent. Half throttle is usually enough to get most loads off the ground. I will include some premade craft in a SPH folder inside the main folder. Just type in "hind" to have all the parts come up. I hope you will have some fun with this.

A heli I built a while back but never posted. Hovers around 700 parts depending on the version and it isnt fully 1:1 (has some issues with the dimensions that I cant fix) but i tried my best and Im very satisfied with the end result. Features working doors! KerbalX link: https://kerbalx.com/trollkowski/Bell-AH-1Z-Viper Part count: 766

Part count: 61 Length: 5.5m Width: 1.2m Mass: 1.15t CRAFT FILE: https://kerbalx.com/BellinsonHelicopters/Bellinson-Hurricane-Y DESCRIPTION: Stable helicopter for career without reaction wheels with working Mehjeb autopilot. Endless flight during the day, at night the batteries last for 18 minutes of flight. Maximum speed 65 m/s (without FARc about 35 m/s). Maximum flight altitude 3.2km. 2 flight modes (normal and slow for precision landing). ADVANTAGES: 1. Small size. 2. Very low electricity consumption. 3. Accommodates 2 kerbonauts. 4. Ability to land anywhere. 5. Working autopilot. 6. High speed for a helicopter of this type. 7. Possibility of landing on autorotation when the batteries are low. 8. Spotlight has 2 directional modes for comfortable landing at night. 9. Slow mode provides maximum control when landing and hovering. 10. No reaction wheels, everything is set up through control units. 11. There is scientific equipment. ACTION GROUPS: 1 - engine start 2 - engine off 3 - slow mode 4 - normal mode 5 - spotlight direction 7 - navigation lights on/off 8 - spotlight on/off MODS: Ferram Aerospace Research Continued Restock Rocket Sound Enhancement IMPORTANT: Be sure to put the kerbonauts in the seat before loading on the runway (if the kerbonaut is alone, put him in the left seat). START UP: Press 1 and then 4, wait 460 RPM, then press 3 and you can take off. LANDING: After landing, be sure to switch to normal mode (4) if you landed in slow mode, then turn off the engine (2). AUTOROTATION LANDING: If you run out of power during flight, immediately reduce thrust to 0%, the propeller will maintain its RPM thanks to the airflow. MECHJEB SETUP: Open the airplane autopilot and press show PID. Vertical Speed Limit: 4m/s. Roll Limit: 20° VertSpeed: Kp 20 i 0.4 Roll: Kp 1 i 0.02. You can change course and altitude yourself (altitude up to 3.2km, then the autopilot fails).

License: CC-BY-SA-4.0 Link https://spacedock.info/mod/3072/Huey and Chinook Helicopter parts pack. Updated to 1.0.1 As pointed out to me by @Caerfinon and @doctorbai My part variations were pointing to my Hind mod and so if that was not installed then no textures showed up, this has now been fixed. Hi. This is a parts pack that uses the half size MK3 parts system like can be found in Airplane plus and is compatible with those parts. Provided are parts to make the equivalent of a Huey helicopter and a Chinook troop or cargo helicopter with a loading ramp. You can mix and match to make several variations. Included is a rocket pod that uses the fireworks system, and you should adjust it once attached to get the effect you want. The engine bases that sits on top of the fuselages are a hinge and require that "Breaking Ground" be installed for functionality. The main rotor attaches to it's top node and this allows the rotor to be tilted in flight for stable horizontal flight. The tail planes are fully functional and as such create drag on vertical movement when rising and descending. The Huey nose is designed to exactly counter the drag at the other end and needs to be attached when the tailplanes are so that the craft doesnt pitch violently when moving vertically. The nose and the tail sections also have adjustable ballast so that once you have built your craft you can balance it so that the centre of thrust from the rotor goes straight through the centre of mass. The Chinook doesn't have tail planes and empty is usually balanced, the cargo tail has the ballast system. The external fuel tank that attaches to the bottom and gives the fuselage the Chinook look is also a lifting surface, but as it is central, it doesn't cause the uneven drag. Having some lifting drag on the helicopters has been found to make them more stable. Being that the Chinook is a heavy helicopter, it's rotor has a small spool up and down delay and so when taking off and landing you should allow for the time it takes to react, especially for landing so that you don't hit the ground hard by waiting too long before throttling up to slow your descent. Half throttle is usually enough to get most loads off the ground. The Huey rotor is a bit more responsive but not as powerful. Everything has nodes for click and connect. Be sure to check the Centre of mass and thrust before launch and adjust so they are through each other. Type Huey in the part search for all the Huey parts and Chinook for all the Chinook parts. I hope you will have some fun with this.

Propellers popped up in Dakota's Top Ten Requests thread a few times and I got to thinking about them. I really enjoyed making propeller and rotorcraft in KSP1 but I thought they were really fiddly and I think they need to be re-thought for KSP2, if they decide to implement them. Here's how I'd go about it! We should still have torque It's an important design consideration and getting rid of it would make propellers too similar to jet engines! Blades should be parameters Instead of attaching blades to motors and then fiddling with them, the critical things should be parameters on the motor: Number of blades Size of blade Rotation direction (affects both blade variant and motor direction so they always match) Reverse rotation switch (for backward-facing props) These should have a sensible default for each motor size. Blades should have auto-pitch as the default option We've had constant-speed propellers with automatic pitch for ages and ages and I think we should have them in KSP as well. There should be an option to switch to manual pitch as well because sometimes you want to. Default axis binds for torque and pitch Throttle controls engine torque Up/Down controls blade pitch (if not set to automatic/constant-speed) You could reassign these but you shouldn't have to assign them manually every time. Handle helicopter main rotors separately You would have to explicitly choose to make a propeller a helicopter rotor. This would change its axis/keybinds and behavior. These could be entirely different parts, or a switch you can flip on a part. Constant-speed/automatic pitch would be removed The up/down axis would control pitch The roll and pitch axes (QE/WS) would control cyclic Handle helicopter tail rotors separately Like for the main rotor, the tail rotor should be either a designated part or a mode/switch you can flip. It has auto-torque to keep it constant speed The yaw axis (AD) will control pitch SAS will automatically adjust it to keep the craft's orientation stable In sum If they were designed this way, making a functional propeller plane would be almost as easy as making a jet plane, as you'd only have to deal with torque. Making a functional helicopter would be fairly straightforward too: install a main rotor and tail rotor (or two counterrotating main rotors), and off you go. I know that this may sound too much like "easy mode" for some people, but I really think they were too difficult to get into for most people, and even when you knew how they worked, they needed too much manual tweaking to fly. Single main rotor helicopters in particular were really hard to build and even when built right were really squirrelly. I think that with this kind of approach, lots more people would use them, and you'd still be able to set them to "full manual" if you wanted the advanced stuff. What do you think?

I created a feedback report explaining the situation in detail. https://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/24853

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!

The KDF OH-69 Djinn is The KDF’s latest Light Observation Helicopter. Capable of Flight on most planetary bodies with atmospheres. Armed with twin cannons to provide rapid-fire support. This craft Is fully stock only requires DLC Single passenger Comes with a fully interactive cockpit full of instrument clusters and levers. Action Groups Space Bar - Fire Cannons AG1 - Control form Command Seat. AG2 - Control from Probe. RCS TRIM KEYS I, K - Trim Top Propellers J, L - Trim Rear Propellers H, N - Tilt Rotor Forward/Back Flight Details Main Throttle will control the RPM of the Motor Rotorblade Pitch Cluster - Optimal flight is set marked by a red marker on the Instrument cluster. Try to stay in this mode for the best flight. Lower than red will put you into hover mode. Full engagement will send you into a high incline. Use full throttle when you want to gain high altitude Download here https://kerbalx.com/InterstellarKev/KDF-OH-69-Djinn https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2936514208 Details Type: SPH Class: aircraft Part Count: 184 Pure Stock KSP: 1.12.5

License: All Rights Reserved This is for the .mu files, everything else is open for use. Link: https://spacedock.info/mod/3128/The Belafonte Hi and welcome to "The Belafonte". This a companion mod for @Caerfinons "The Life Aquatic" mission packs mod. https://spacedock.info/mod/2808/Kerbin%20Side%20Remastered%20-%20The%20Life%20Aquatic Included are the ship "The Belafonte", The mini sub "Deep Search", The small helicopter "Zelicopter", A "Resue Boat" , a Deck Crane and cable that use the BREAKING GROUND system, 3 types of grabbers: A magnet for the crane to pick up the sub, A heli pad grabber to secure the Zelicopter and a boat grabbing frame to retrieve the rescue boat. The boat and the frame have a decouple on the nodes that first connect them so that the boat can be included when building. You then decouple and use the grabber from then on. Remember to unstage all decouplers if you don't want them to immediately decouple when first staging. There is a marine engine for the Belafonte and there are 2 nodes on the bottom rear for 2 of them to attach to. They will not work above sea level. The boat motor has a reverse toggle, as do the sub and the Belafontes marine engines. There is a docking plate that has a node on deck to attach to, in front of the crane, it is for the sub to dock to. Just undock right before grabbing with the magnet and then crane the sub to the water. On return drop the sub just above it and the sub will usually vibrate itself back to being docked. The sub and boat have a ballast system. The boat should spawn half full, this is because to get the balance between not going under at full load and not looking like it is hovering above the water it needs to be balanced. It should look right at first but if you full load you will probably need to empty some. There is built Belafonte in a SPH folder in the main folder, minus the Zelicopter. The Zelicopter is all one piece so you just spawn and it is ready to go. The top 2 staircases never would climb out right so you need climb till you are above the deck and then let go. Type Belafonte for all pieces. There is also a custom category if you have the Community Categories mod. I hope you have some fun with this.

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. -----------------------------------------------

After more research and testing, I would like to share what I have learned about designing and flying helicopters in the game.

Hello KSP community! This is my first mod I'm putting out for a test drive. This is a MAS-Enabled IVA for the Firespitter Apache cockpit. It is intended to be as accurate as the props i had available will allow. It's not perfect.. YET... But hopefully support for the functions of some props will come soon. This mod refreshes and brings FUN back to Firespitter! Plus i just love helicopters for some reason.... and I wanted a realistic cockpit to fly around in! Have fun everyone! Download Link: https://spacedock.info/mod/2993/Firespitter Apache IVA Upgrade

Hi folks, I recently decided to do a circumnavigation of Duna by plane or helicopter. After many hours of testing, I finally came up with a compact helicopter that flew pretty darn well! Here are its specs: - Weight: 1.24 tonne - Top speed: ~75 m/s (65 m/s on average) - Kerbal capacity: 2 meat bags - Power consumption: ~2.5 Electrical untis/s - Max air time: infinite - KSP Version: 1.9.1 with breaking ground My goal was to circumnavigate Duna and get as much biome-science as possible. I didn't want to visit every biome, but only land on the ones that were along the path of the circumnavigation. Since Duna's circumference is ~2.000 km and my average speed was around 65 m/s, this mission would take me at least 8,5 hours. I believe I flew over 3.000 km in the end, but I wasn't able to record it properly, so I could be wrong. I made a time-lapse video of the mission. You can check it out in the link below (~7:00). Hope you liked it. Some highlights from the mission:

I present my newest invention: Samson Mk 1.5! Inspired by the Samson Sa-2 from James Camerson's Avatar, this little helicopter is a vehicle of choice for the scouting parties both on Kerbin and other planets. Initially designed as a search-and-rescue craft by KAEC, which also made a combat prototype also known as "Samson 0", the KSCRD team upgraded it for exoplanet missions. It can carry up to 4 passengers (seats can be swapped for cargo holds), its engines can be easily tweaked for a thinner atmosphere, has an infinite range with the help of its 2 RTG generators, and thanks to its ability to fold the rotor blades, it can fit in the MK3 cargo bay, making it easy to transport. This craft has two modes: transit and lander (ACTION GROUP 5) Recommended engine speed for "lander" is 80%, for "transit" is 100% HOWEVER: before you fly the helicopter, make sure you have pressed ACTION GROUP 3 in order to make it work. It is highly recomended that you fly with SAS on, and that you take caution when performing maneuvers. Download from KerbalX (You need both expansions for this craft.) I am open for suggestions on how to improve the craft. If you feel there is something I really need to fix, please comment below and I will update the craft ASAP Known bugs: *Sometimes, when the craft is landed on a building, the lander legs clip through them when loaded FIXED *When opening the engines, there is a chance that one of them will go rogue. Revert to start/quickload to fix this.

So, I got this DLC wanting to make helicopters. I found out pretty fast that metaphorically bought the tool, but not the skill. Yet. The DLC has a few stock "helicopters" which are just ducted-fan VTOLs and flying platforms. However, I'm trying to make a "conventional helicopter" so to say. A helicopter with a main rotor and a smaller tail rotor. So far, my results have been far from desirable. My first rotor-tail rotor helicopter design (image links below) was awful. All it did was break itself. https://prnt.sc/tsxyu0 http://prntscr.com/tsxz61 What's the right way to make a rotor-tail rotor helicopter?

I've been thinking about this for a while now and I'm wondering with the new stuff with the robotic parts and the new helicopter blades, why not get ones with tip jets on them like the fairey rotordyne, reason being with the helicopter motor (R7000 turboshaft engine) produces a lot of toque and i don't want to do a duel rotor design, for mass issues as well.

The primary feature of the DLC is, of course, that you can assign some variables for rotors and servos, such as target angle, target RPM, target torque, etc. as dependent variables in the KAL-1000 controller, where the independent variable is the play position of the controller. It is also possible to slave the play position to any of the game's available axes (main throttle, translatory controls, standard flight controls, etc). I am curious as to whether this relationship can be inverted - that is, whether the play position of a controller can be determined by, chiefly, the current angle of a rotor or servo, though I'm sure the other variables would have some uses. If this is not possible in normal KSP, is there a mod that provides a similar function? I ask this because, if this is possible, it may finally allow some aspects of lift dissymmetry to be solved.

Most people like to think big: Go big or go home. But how about going small? I 've designed a small VTOL. Hoverbike, Skycycle, whatever you call it, it's small (barely one ton), fast (It can cruise at up to 62 m/s, although ~55 m/s is advised), and with excellent endurance. And it seats two kerbals! Running on batteries is how I got it so small. twin rotors and SAS wheels keep it stable. Truth is, it's got more power than you'll actually need. *edit* how do I attach images? *edit2* fixed with KerbalX mod Here's the lowrider on KerbalX: https://kerbalx.com/lucho/Lowrider