Skorpion VTOL Trainer

[CitizenAerospace]

Skorpion VTOL Trainer

This is a fun little VTOL I built, it uses Cupcake's rocket-assisted throttle lag control idea (RATL?) and is incredibly maneuverable and easy to fly. I have had a lot of fun flying this thing....

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Flight Tips

The impact tolerance for this thing is surprisingly high, being a horrible VTOL pilot i consistently land this thing with brutal force, most of my landings I stick at 10m/s or so. it doesn't have any emergency chutes or anything, but they really aren't needed; in the last photo, I had purposefully crashed the trainer in the ground at around 60m/s and the capsule still survived.

If your really having trouble flying VTOL's, this thing is for sure your best bet at learning. If you really need to, putting infinity fuel on will allow you to abuse the RATL feature as much as you want. A hint for using this craft; make sure you make use of the interesting behavior of shutting and reactivating engines. Jet engines normally take a while to spool down, but by pressing 1 you can kill all thrust immediately. However, the engines continue to spool down in the background, meaning you can quickly reactivate it for almost the same thrust level as where you left off, meaning no spool up time! This is very helpful with landing; you can set it to full throttle and repetitively toggle the engines on and off in order to slow down your landing without the hassle of throttle lag. Also, don't forget your RATL!

Action Groups:

[1] Toggle the 4 jet engines.

[2] Toggle the 4 rocket engines.

Features:

- Incredible Maneuverability

- Can carry up to 10 tons to the old run way.

- Unshifting COM

- High TWR (IIRC, the engines have the thrust limit on 28.... Set it on 100 and I have no doubt that you'll be easily able to fly 20 ton payloads.)

- Incorporates RATL (Thanks Cupcake!!)

- Great training craft

- Capable of flying to the old runway and back with ease (possibly multiple times in a row, haven't really tested it.)

- High Impact Tolerance

- Low Part Count: 31 Parts.

It does have a little bit of part clipping, but hardly any (Two clipped in reaction wheels at the front, but the mk2 adapters have undervalued fuel storage so technically there should be some 'free space' in there). Nothing that uses the debug menu. This thing is also a little different from traditional VTOL Trainers; it also includes the capacity for sky-crane training and cargo transportation; the unshifting COM allows the addition of a docking port located at the bottom, and the exceptionally high TWR of the jet engines means this thing has payload capacity to boot. Up to 10 tons to the old run way, in fact!

Got to admit I'm pretty happy with this little thing. If you guys want I'll link in a download, last craft I uploaded got no interest so I'll only post a download if there is interest this time.

Edited April 7, 2015 by CitizenAerospace

[Guest]

Delete the spaces in the imgur code, then it will work a lot better!

[CitizenAerospace]

Haha thanks, got it working now!

[CitizenAerospace]

Updated the craft, now includes better ground clearance and sky crane capabilities....

[CitizenAerospace]

Bump. No feedback?

[Cupcake...]

Skorpion VTOL Trainer

This is a fun little VTOL I built, it uses Cupcake's rocket-assisted throttle lag control idea (RATL?) and is incredibly maneuverable and easy to fly. I have had a lot of fun flying this thing....

http://imgur.com/a/OjSML

Flight Tips

The impact tolerance for this thing is surprisingly high, being a horrible VTOL pilot i consistently land this thing with brutal force, most of my landings I stick at 10m/s or so. it doesn't have any emergency chutes or anything, but they really aren't needed; in the last photo, I had purposefully crashed the trainer in the ground at around 60m/s and the capsule still survived.

If your really having trouble flying VTOL's, this thing is for sure your best bet at learning. If you really need to, putting infinity fuel on will allow you to abuse the RATL feature as much as you want. A hint for using this craft; make sure you make use of the interesting behavior of shutting and reactivating engines. Jet engines normally take a while to spool down, but by pressing 1 you can kill all thrust immediately. However, the engines continue to spool down in the background, meaning you can quickly reactivate it for almost the same thrust level as where you left off, meaning no spool up time! This is very helpful with landing; you can set it to full throttle and repetitively toggle the engines on and off in order to slow down your landing without the hassle of throttle lag. Also, don't forget your RATL!

Action Groups:

[1] Toggle the 4 jet engines.

[2] Toggle the 4 rocket engines.

Features:

- Incredible Maneuverability

- Can carry up to 10 tons to the old run way.

- Unshifting COM

- High TWR (IIRC, the engines have the thrust limit on 28.... Set it on 100 and I have no doubt that you'll be easily able to fly 20 ton payloads.)

- Incorporates RATL (Thanks Cupcake!!)

- Great training craft

- Capable of flying to the old runway and back with ease (possibly multiple times in a row, haven't really tested it.)

- High Impact Tolerance

- Low Part Count: 31 Parts.

It does have a little bit of part clipping, but hardly any (Two clipped in reaction wheels at the front, but the mk2 adapters have undervalued fuel storage so technically there should be some 'free space' in there). Nothing that uses the debug menu. This thing is also a little different from traditional VTOL Trainers; it also includes the capacity for sky-crane training and cargo transportation; the unshifting COM allows the addition of a docking port located at the bottom, and the exceptionally high TWR of the jet engines means this thing has payload capacity to boot. Up to 10 tons to the old run way, in fact!

Got to admit I'm pretty happy with this little thing. If you guys want I'll link in a download, last craft I uploaded got no interest so I'll only post a download if there is interest this time.

That's a good effort, well done. I think in the next version it may be worth just using two jet engines as four is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much thrust for the amount of weight you're hauling. Good job on the rocket assist BTW, it does make things easier doesn't it? It may be worth spacing them out a bit more though as at the moment they're going to burn holes in whatever you're hauling from the cargo port.

Lastly it may be worth attaching the engines to the end fuel tank, that way you can just copy the part across for the other side and you'll know it'll be perfectly balanced. Hope this helps.

Cupcake...

Edited April 8, 2015 by Cupcake...