There are Helicopters, and there are ROFLcopters. This is OMG!!! Mil V-12 Homer Super Heavy Copter

[Goddess Bhavani]

Update 7 Sep!

(Stock!!) Automatic Hover Function Active

Test Flight Video

Mil V-12 "Homer"

Super Heavy Helicopter

There are

There are

This is an OMGcopter.

For when your house moving involves moving the entire house.

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Work in progress. Environmentally-friendly Infernal Robotics Rework hybrid turbo-electric propulsion to allow use of high occupancy air lanes. Handling akin to piloting your house from the second floor balcony while lounging on an enormous beanbag.

Currently progressing through flight testing rituals in leisurely fashion. Superb hover stability and aerial presence. Not safe for public release due to absurdly complicated procedure to transition to forward flight, will misbehave at the slightest deviation from transition checklists, or with no warning at certain times of the month.

I know you'll want to get the craft file and have fun exploding all over the space center anyway, so let me have a couple days more to mess with it before I do a craft release, mmkay?

As a side bonus, the crashes are really, really epic with rapidly spinning blades of death slicing everything to bits, fuselage disintegrating everywhere, fires, sound, all sorts of industrial light and magic.

Play nice with this craft when you download, she'll bite

Bonus for anyone who actually read all the way here.

I'm actually taking orders for special VIP access flight tests, so hit me up with a comment or PM if you want to help with testing or doing mad stuff with this thing. Requires Infernal Robotics Rework Pre-release. Terms and conditions may or may not apply depending on mood.

Edited September 7, 2015 by pandoras kitten

[Shamus6200]

Like, OMG, this is fantastic lol!! Simply brilliant :-)

[Azimech]

I'd like to compare it with mine :-)

[BlueCanary]

Awesome. How much rotor speed does it need to take off? I wonder if it's possible to recreate this in stock.

[DMSP]

What a wonder.

[Azimech]

Awesome. How much rotor speed does it need to take off? I wonder if it's possible to recreate this in stock.

This was possible in 0.90, it might become possible again in 1.1 with the new jet engines.

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[BlueCanary]

This was possible in 0.90, it might become possible again in 1.1 with the new jet engines.

Could it be that because lift is now a function of the square of velocity, not linearly, a higher speed of rotation is needed to provide adequate lift? If so it might still be very difficult, even with new jet engines.

Also how would the efficiency be compared to directly using the same engines to VTOL? There must be losses somewhere in the system and the extra weight would make it worse too, assuming I'm not missing something obvious. Helicopters certainly couldn't VTOL if they used engines of the same power as their turboshafts for direct harrier style lift, so I guess I'm probably very wrong.

[Goddess Bhavani]

Awesome. How much rotor speed does it need to take off? I wonder if it's possible to recreate this in stock.

The Mi-12 does not have any of the vibration issues from earlier helicopters I built because its designed to use a very low rotor speed. It spins like a ceiling fan. It should be able to carry a useful load in 1.0.4 too, since a development test flight took off with a full fuel load by accident once because I forgot to offload the fuel for basic control tests. And that test model had a full complement of engines too unlike the current control test model.

It can run at a very low rotor RPM due to the length of the blades. Lifts the same hull mass with half the rotors and half the rotor RPM than the impractical V-44 I made some time ago.

Actually, take this V-12, flip the wings around, double the rotors and we would have a easy contender for a working super heavy quadcopter.

[Azimech]

Could it be that because lift is now a function of the square of velocity, not linearly, a higher speed of rotation is needed to provide adequate lift? If so it might still be very difficult, even with new jet engines.

Also how would the efficiency be compared to directly using the same engines to VTOL? There must be losses somewhere in the system and the extra weight would make it worse too, assuming I'm not missing something obvious. Helicopters certainly couldn't VTOL if they used engines of the same power as their turboshafts for direct harrier style lift, so I guess I'm probably very wrong.

Already in 0.90 the turboshaft principle was horribly inefficient, in my big turboshaft topic there are more exact figures but I believe the first engines had an efficiency of 8%, and I evolved them to a max of around 28%. So for every blower (basic jet engine), there was a loss of 62% in the conversion. Still, I invented the principle because of my dislike of rocket engines/jet engines on rotor blades.

I already have a prototype 1.04 turboshaft capable of lifting itself at the surprisingly low speed of 11 rad/s but I'm fighting reliability issues at the moment.

Let's continue the discussion over there if you are interested in the subject. Link sits in my sig.

[BlueCanary]

New idea, would it be possible to mount the new 0.625m jet engines on rotor tips? How efficient would that be compared to normal VTOL?

[Goddess Bhavani]

Been there, done that.

1)

2) Just 3 days later... Probably the one and only 'orbital helicopter'

The problem with the first is figuring out dynamic stability from the (relatively) huge tip jets whirling around causing intense shaft bending and vibration issues. Note the old (weak) IR joints and rigid rotor system. I never bothered to make rotor articulation for that one. The gyroscopic forces from the heavy tip jets made maneuverability a big problem.

The second well, lets just say real life rotary rocket test pilots rate such tailsitting rotary wing designs the hardest ever aircraft to pilot.

Very few people test flew in the rotary rocket in KSP, as the prospect of having huge heavy blades spinning at insane RPMs made them all run away.

However it -is- capable of autorotating down from orbit and conducting unpowered landings without parachutes. With FAR even! How cool is that!

Edited September 5, 2015 by pandoras kitten

[BlueCanary]

Been there, done that.

1)

2) Just 3 days later... Probably the one and only 'orbital helicopter'

so would it have been able to do vertical takeoff if the same engines had instead been simply angled downwards?

[Goddess Bhavani]

No, in each case, the TWR would have been about 0.5, with the rotors acting as a sort of 'flow multiplier' by generating lift. The rotary rocket however can cruise on its tip jets in its trademark "X-Wing" mode, to a higher altitude where the rockets can produce maximum ISP. It's a bit of a 'mad scientist' experiment more complicated than any practical solution while giving a small percentage of extra capability. The rotors and thrust bearing structure do weigh something...

Rotary winged capsules with flip out wings for re-entry and autorotation should be easy on my next project through. Parachutes are so yesteryear

[BlueCanary]

Rotary winged capsules with flip out wings for re-entry and autorotation should be easy on my next project through. Parachutes are so yesteryear

Can't wait for this

[Goddess Bhavani]

Test Flight Showcase Video of Mi-12 / V-12

[Voculus]

This may be the most impressive KSP helicopter I've ever seen! I'm insanely jealous!

[Goddess Bhavani]

The Mi-12 is nearing production-ready status and will likely be sent for State acceptance trials soon, heralding possibility of serial production if near-historical vertical lift capability can be demonstrated.

Today the analog automatic hover function was tested, making the world's largest helicopter... the easiest VTOL to fly, ever. I'm not kidding. You could park this thing with inches to spare on the tiniest helipads, and not feel stress

[EdusacconBR]

the wings dont look like the real one

[Goddess Bhavani]

The rotor spin is also opposite from the historical example, due to issues with controllability under dynamic loads. I have two versions, one with historical and non historical gearbox direction and the "reversed" one is much more practical to operate over long durations.

KSP rotors don't behave like real ones in specific circumstances, that's because we rely on low speed airfoils generating relatively large amounts of lift if using stock aero.

That said, the wings and landing gear are a design compromise due to again, reasons of KSP practicality. We don't want another multi-rotor design with

do we

[boostedM]

This is awesome and I need one!

[Goddess Bhavani]

Today on Air Crash Investigation..

[GarrisonChisholm]

Today on Air Crash Investigation..

http://i.imgur.com/Oo6OUWq.jpg

*follows the caravan of lawyers out to the field...*