Aerial cranes with MechJeb

[MaverickSawyer]

I've got this idea the won't leave me alone: using a flying crane to retrieve discarded boosters from the ocean near the KSC. I've got KAS, so the winches are no problem, and I have MechJeb, so that I can attempt to hover over the part to be retrieved... It's just that there's no way that MechJeb's altitude hold can handle the slow spool-up time of the air-breathing engines I'm using.

Does anyone know of a better way to maintain a given altitude with air-breathing engines?

[BlueCanary]

Maybe look at the Mechjeb/KER TWR readout and get it to read 1.0, and then use rcs to adjust altitude after that, or try one of the other vtol control mods.

[FleshJeb]

Take a look at Cupcake's thread: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/27424-Cupcake-s-Dropship-Dealership?p=691402&viewfull=1#post691402

He builds very responsive VTOLs by supplementing the jets with small bursts from rockets.

If you go with strict air-breathing, you'll just have to fly very carefully, and always be thinking 30-60 seconds in advance. That can actually be a fun challenge.

EDITED link above to his retired craft: Looks like he quit doing airbreathers because 1.x is not fun. ;-) However, the low-altitude performance is still similar.

Edited June 16, 2015 by FleshJeb

[rofltehcat]

Can't you adjust the number and thrust limiter of air breathing engines so your twr is 1? Then do altitude changes with rcs.

[Mic_n]

Grab Firespitter.

Not only does it have helicopter parts, there's also floats, so you could make a seaplane to land on the water at/over the object and retrieve it like that. Put a cargo bay facing downwards with a KAS winch in there and pull the part in, dock it, and close your bay back up again before taking off and heading back to base.

I haven't mucked with the options lately, I know they mucked with the stock part buoyancy recently.. Used to be you could use the radial mount intakes as floats, but I've heard they changed that. Not sure about the girder segments and/or octo struts though. Waaaaayyy back I built a command-pod recovery VSTOL all stock with a little crane gantry thing based around landing gear rolling along straight wing segments with docking ports to lock it in and the radial rockets to move it along.

Otherwise, yeah.. jets and a slow and steady hand, and RCS can help with the fine tuning rather than trying to spool up and down laggy turbines.

[BlueCanary]

As far as I can tell the situation with stock seaplanes is this:

-Floaty radial intakes have lost their floaty.

-Everything else is now way less floaty.

-The best floats seem to be structural fuselages, they have 70m/s impact tolerance so water landings of planes are reasonably easy.

-Wing parts are also good, but still break easily.

This is the best 1.0.2 seaplane I have, it weighs about 10 tonnes and even with lots of floats barely clears the water:

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