[0.15 + Damned Aerospace] Colmo-Korp Aeronautics

[colmo]

I think I\'ve got my rocket designs down, so I turned my hand to the planes. They\'re hard to design well, and thus hard to fly.

One became two, then three, until an entire fleet emerged. This is their story.

Colmo-Korp\'s new series of 0.16 aircraft will appear soon.

0.15 compliant aircraft

[table]

[tr][td]CK BiplaneXL MkII

I\'ve aborted the BiplaneXL MkI due to the fuel issue, and created a slimmed down, twin-prop MkII - it did 235km on half it\'s fuel load before I got bored! The fuselage behind the cockpit is not fuel, as I didn\'t want the balance of the plane to change markedly during flight. It flies much like it\'s smaller sibling, doing very well at very low throttle.

I\'m working on a more sophisticated naming system, along the lines of the real aeroplane manufacturers (or my interpretation thereof!)

[/td][td]

CK Biplane MkII

Just tried the first one, beautiful plane. Had to remove the lower set of ailerons due to silly amounts of roll authority though, and the central wing gear seemed redundant (and collided with the prop, hurting my OCD) so I got rid of that too.

Flies great, good job balancing it.

Thanks - I couldn\'t have done it without your props, (I give you props for your props...I\'m sorry, I can\'t resist saying puns out loud).

Here\'s a MkII with the alterations you suggested. I also fixed the slightly buck-toothed outer landing gear.

[/td][/tr]

[tr][td]

CK Jet Biplane MkI

And now my first successful jet - completely stock.

[/td][td]

CK Torque-twist Helicopter MkIIb

I present to you, the Colmo-Korp Torque-Twist Helicopter! Very few Kerbals were harmed in the development of this product.

Accompanying this release is the Colmo-Korp modified Damned Robotics Fast Rotatron, necessary to make the Torque-twist device work. Just unzip the contents into your Parts directory.

It\'s still brutally hard to hover motionless - a hair of forward momentum is still much easier to control. With the Torque-twist device, you can however arrest those previously fatal low-altitude flat spinouts, allowing more precision on low-speed, if not dead-drop, landings.

[/td][/tr]

[tr][td]

CK Helicopter MkIII

CK Helicopter MkIII

The continued evolution of this long-range, medium-large helicopter sees a radical overhaul of winglets, and the sacrifice of a 75kg fuel tank for an ASAS unit. I\'ve found no long-range helicopter should be without ASAS. Requires Damned Aerospace and the floodlights from the Bigtrak mod.

[/td]

[td]

CK Recon Helicopter MkI

A slightly smaller model, though still retaining three fuel tanks, and equipped with ASAS and landing floodlights, means this model will score high on efficiency and range. Requires Damned Aerospace and the floodlights from the Bigtrak mod.

[/td][/tr]

[tr][td]

CK Scout Helicopter MkI

A small, lightweight model for short range purposes, forgoing the weight of an ASAS unit while being nimble enough to be landed by any reasonably skilled pilot. Required Damned Aerospace and Damned Robotics parts.

[/td]

[td]

CK SuperHeli MkI

I\'ve been wanting to do a dual-rotor chopper for some time, and I finally came up with this. Note that the interleaving rotors never touch.

This dual-rotor model is designed to transport heavy loads slung underneath.

This craft is actually remarkably easy to land. A wee bit of care is required at take-off because it has a lot of power - one-third throttle is enough to effortlessly take to the skies. It\'s a good idea to use ASAS to maintain attitude, though you will note that you can do that using throttle too - under 1/3 throttle, and it flies nose-down, over 1/3, and the nose comes up.

Initial plans are for a Bigtrak carrier, with variations for landed or parachute deployment. It probably has adequate power for the Truck from Tosh\'s Cart mod also. Future plans are for a long-range model with extra fuel tanks.

[/td][/tr]

[tr][td]

CK Sea HeliRescue MkII

SasquatchM\'s

Probe Retrieval challenge prompted the design of this rescue vehicle, based on an adaptation of the CK SuperHeli :

Controls are rotors only for flight, prop only for water and land, normal directional controls work on all surfaces, and to reverse the claw towards the probe, blip the main rotors with S pressed.

The normal plan for a retrieval is to fly out to the object (with an aggressive pitch forward and full throttle, it can do 170m/s), land, manoeuvre (A and D to steer), grab with the claw, lift clear of water (if the object is too heavy, leave it, just go easy on the throttle) and sail back, then drag onto land. Flying with something in the claw is likely to cause a crash due to imbalance.

Requires HSTW pontoons and landing struts, Damned Aerospace and Damned Robotics. The MkII is identical to the MkI aside from a miniscule centring of the grab arm and the addition of winglets to aid control.

[/td]

[td]

CK VTOL-TwinTurbine MkI & MkII

It was time to take on the ultimate challenge in Kerbal aeronautics...a VTOL!

Based upon RavingManiac\'s opposing rotatron wing mount idea, used for his Owl VTOL, and the principals of balancing centre of mass with thrust for vertical flight, and with centre of mass with lift for horizontal flight, Colmo-Korp\'s first VTOL emerged.

It can take off and land both horizontally and vertically. The onboard ASAS unit means you can lock in your horizon to concentrate on controlling VTOL tilt and thrust for gentle landings. Conventional horizontal flight performance hasn\'t been ignored either, with a straight and true, attitude-neutral flight profile, excellent manoeuvrability, and plenty of power from the Damned Aerospace VjTurbine.

The MkII has increased ground clearance and a 4 point instead of 3 point landing gear setup to prevent the turbines contacting the ground on a hard vertical landing.

Requires Damned Aerospace and Damned Robotics mods for the VjTurbine and rotatron. Floodlights from the Bigtrak mod, mounted to the underside for vertical landings, are highly recommended - place them front and back to maintain weight balance.

[/td][/tr]

[tr][td]

CK Kotal SP Stock MkI Space Plane

(K prize finisher)

While it does not quite have the performance of the Kotal TwinTurbine model, it won\'t burst the bank by using commonly available parts. It has just enough fuel to achieve orbit, deorbit and land. Activate the rocket 2nd stage when the turbofan runs out of steam at around 15km (depending on your ascent angle)

[/td]

[td]

CK Kotal TwinTurbine MkII Space Plane

The first in the Kotal (Kerbal Orbital Take-Off And Landing) lineage is able to take-off well before the end of the runway, and with turbines that can take it to 18km before engaging the rocket 2nd stage, allowing shutdown of the turbines beyond 20km, achieve orbit, deorbit and land and still have 250kg plus of fuel to spare, this is a deluxe space plane. Further testing will be performed to establish if it can reach the Mun or Minimus.

Requires Damned Aerospace and the C7 bicoupler (not a stock item).

[/td][/tr]

[/table]

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Superceded models:

CK Biplane MkI

So when I downloaded DYK\'s Damned Aeronautics mod, I thought I\'d make a nice, simple biplane. The result was possibly the easiest to fly ship I\'ve ever made in the game, so I thought I\'d share.

Leave it at half-throttle, hit launch, and it\'ll take off at a nice, shallow angle without intervention, with a very slightly nose-up attitude, meaning you can run at almost zero throttle and fly around the KSC all day. You\'ll not need SAS to handle this beauty.

It took many attempts to get the wings positioned just so to give that beautiful, forgiving flight characteristic, and I\'m well pleased with the result.

My attempts with stunt and space planes have gone nowhere near as well, so I\'m seriously considering scaling this up into a space plane!

CK Helicopter MkII & MkIIb

The sacrifice of many, many Kerbals was not in vain as I finally designed a flyable chopper (which sometime successfully lands too).

I think the fuel hoses have bugged it, giving infinite fuel. Considering how hard choppers are to fly in the game currently (0.15.2), not having to worry about changing weight balance due to rear-forwards fuel consumption is a small bonus.

MkI had the lateral tanks on trusses - the removal of the trusses centralised mass and made the helicopter much easier to handle.

MkIIb has corrected fuel hose layout for optimal balance for the majority of the flight.

Requires the Damned Aeronautics mod (for the main rotor, obviously) and floodlights from the Bigtrak mod - this is highly recommended as the downward facing beams give you a much better idea of where the ground is on landing.

[Joshmo]

It\'s beautiful!

[Commander Zoom]

That is, in fact, surprisingly beautiful.

[madmat]

Looks terrific Colmo. I\'ll be joyflighting before you know it. Cheers

[Steve5451]

That looks amazing. I can\'t wait to fly it.

[colmo]

Thanks for the kind words. While I did manage to get it looking good (I eliminated the gap between the swept wings by flipping them symmetrically, so they overlapped a little for a nice smooth join), everything primarily is functional - including the extra front wheel under the nose. Early designs ended up perched on the nose, so I added the extra landing gear, and once I had it flying perfectly, I was afraid to remove it and ruin the balance!

What I haven\'t tested is how it flies with little fuel left - I\'m not sure if that will alter the flight attitude much. I\'ll have to do a range and altitude test too.

[colmo]

Work has begun on the BiplaneXL MkI

It\'s nearly ready, but I\'m not happy with performance in long flights due to the serial, rather than parallel, use of of fuel, causing it to become nose-heavy. Once that is ironed out, it\'s good to go.

[colmo]

I\'ve aborted the BiplaneXL MkI due to the fuel issue, and created a slimmed down, twin-prop MkII - it did 235km on half it\'s fuel load before I got bored! The fuselage behind the cockpit is not fuel, as I didn\'t want the balance of the plane to change markedly during flight. It flies much like it\'s smaller sibling, doing very well at very low throttle.

I\'m working on a more sophisticated naming system, along the lines of the real aeroplane manufacturers (or my interpretation thereof!)

[DYJ]

Just tried the first one, beautiful plane. Had to remove the lower set of ailerons due to silly amounts of roll authority though, and the central wing gear seemed redundant (and collided with the prop, hurting my OCD) so I got rid of that too.

Flies great, good job balancing it.

[colmo]

Just tried the first one, beautiful plane. Had to remove the lower set of ailerons due to silly amounts of roll authority though, and the central wing gear seemed redundant (and collided with the prop, hurting my OCD) so I got rid of that too.

Flies great, good job balancing it.

Thanks - I couldn\'t have done it without your props, (I give you props for your props...I\'m sorry, I can\'t resist saying puns out loud).

Here\'s a MkII with the alterations you suggested. I also fixed the slightly buck-toothed outer landing gear.

[colmo]

And now my first successful jet - completely stock.

[colmo]

The sacrifice of many, many Kerbals was not in vain as I finally designed a flyable chopper (which sometime successfully lands too).

I think the fuel hoses have bugged it, giving infinite fuel. Considering how hard choppers are to fly in the game currently (0.15.2), not having to worry about changing weight balance due to rear-forwards fuel consumption is a small bonus. - Nope, fuel use is fine. It\'s just VERY parsimonious.

MkI had the lateral tanks on trusses - the removal of the trusses centralised mass and made the helicopter much easier to handle.

MkIIb has corrected fuel hose layout for optimal balance for the majority of the flight.

Requires Damned Aeronautics and floodlights from the Bigtrak mod - this is highly recommended as the downward facing beams give you a much better idea of where the ground is on landing.

[colmo]

Just a small note, there was a small fault with the landing gear on the Biplane MkII - I thought I\'d fixed it but apparently not. Now fixed.

[colmo]

The Colmo-Korp Helicopter MkII is possibly the first helicopter to land at KSC2.

It took about 2 hours, with a primary mission of delivering a Bigtrak to the mountains near KSC1 first. If I\'d held unto it, I\'d have a MechJebb equiped Bigtrak to roam KSC2. That bird used 275kg of fuel in all, and has 325kg left, ample for a return trip.

[Twinky827]

Uhh, you don\'t have to connect helicopter bladed with fuel lines. And damned aerospace parts use VEEERY little fuel.

[colmo]

Uhh, you don\'t have to connect helicopter bladed with fuel lines. And damned aerospace parts use VEEERY little fuel.

After a bit of testing, I\'ve figured that - I was trying to get tanks to drain in parallel, not series. A bugbear of mine with KSP. They\'re a bugger to remove (hard to get at the nodes, so not much of a priority. I\'ve attached a craft file with fixed hoses. This way, they drain from the side first, then the back.I can say that when about half full of fuel, as the rear tank drains first, it\'s very hard to hover! The landing was a rolling stop.

Really, really need a tail rotor. When hovering without surface velocity, there\'s nothing to stop a flat spin, as the upright winglets don\'t work.

[DYJ]

They do indeed use very little fuel. I had to reduce the fueldrain to match the new stock C7 parts, it really wouldn\'t make any sense if the stock turbojet was 10 times more efficient than the helicopter unit.

A Coaxial helicopter shouldn\'t need a tailrotor, the one in my pack is however extremely basic and lacks a lot of features , for example it has no yaw authority what so ever which explains most of its control issues at low speeds.

I\'d love to create a more realistic and useful rotor part, but that would need quite a bit of more code and I\'m no coder so that would require bugging r4m0n constantly for a week or so.

[colmo]

A Coaxial helicopter shouldn\'t need a tailrotor, the one in my pack is however extremely basic and lacks a lot of features , for example it has no yaw authority what so ever which explains most of its control issues at low speeds.

That would explain much. I did try using RCS to substitute and it just made for a very weird handling chopper. Planes and choppers are very reluctant to turn on the rudder - with this one, it actually mostly just causes it to bank the wrong way, which is why I\'ve given up using rudder much.

If we had multiple throttles, and engines with forward and reverse, that would mean we could have engines pointed in different directions doing different things. That way, a tiny prop on the back would be able to yaw the craft in both directions without the necessity of airspeed. I can imagine that would require mountains of work and break loads of things, though.....!

I\'ll see if I can make a MkIII that can hover successfully. All this would not be possible without your Dmaned Aerospace mod, DYJ, so thanks again :thumbup:

[colmo]

I\'ve invented a method of yaw control for the chopper blades.

I call it the Torque-twist Rotatron:

I made a fast rotatron (speed = 2000, which is a bit too much!), and attached winglets. The idea was to generate adjustable thrust sideways, but the torque twist was far greater, so I laid it down on the horizontal axis instead. It flicks the tail around like a cat.

The chopper needs to be rebalanced, so very much in the \'sacrifice many, many Kerbals\' stage, but the proof of concept works.

Ideally, I\'d use symmetrical attachments with no actual lift, to keep right-left lift symmetry perfect. The other downside is the digital nature of the device, not that those using keys will notice.

[colmo]

I present to you, the Colmo-Korp Torque-Twist Helicopter! Very few Kerbals were harmed in the development of this product.

Accompanying this release is the Colmo-Korp modified Damned Robotics Fast Rotatron, necessary to make the Torque-twist device work. Just unzip the contents into your Parts directory.

It\'s still brutally hard to hover motionless - a hair of forward momentum is still much easier to control. With the Torque-twist device, you can however arrest those previously fatal low-altitude flat spinouts, allowing more precision on low-speed, if not dead-drop, landings.

[colmo]

Three, yes three, new helicopters. Thanks to Alias, I re-evaluated how control surfaces work on helicopters, and discovered the value of ASAS.

CK Helicopter MkIII

The continued evolution of this long-range, medium-large helicopter sees a radical overhaul of winglets, and the sacrifice of a 75kg fuel tank for an ASAS unit. I\'ve found no long-range helicopter should be without ASAS. Requires Damned Aerospace and the floodlights from the Bigtrak mod.

CK Recon Helicopter MkI

A slightly smaller model, though still retaining three fuel tanks, and equipped with ASAS and landing floodlights, means this model will score high on efficiency and range. Requires Damned Aerospace and the floodlights from the Bigtrak mod.

CK Scout Helicopter MkI

A small, lightweight model for short range purposes, forgoing the weight of an ASAS unit while being nimble enough to be landed by any reasonably skilled pilot. Required Damned Aerospace and Damned Robotics parts.

[Cooly568]

Wow I can\'t make a helicopter for crap.

[Alias]

Very nice! I thought my design was good until flying these. GJ They handle amazing

[colmo]

I\'ve been wanting to do a dual-rotor chopper for some time, and I finally came up with this. Note that the interleaving rotors never touch.

CK SuperHeli MkI

This dual-rotor model is designed to transport heavy loads slung underneath.

This craft is actually remarkably easy to land. A wee bit of care is required at take-off because it has a lot of power - one-third throttle is enough to effortlessly take to the skies. It\'s a good idea to use ASAS to maintain attitude, though you will note that you can do that using throttle too - under 1/3 throttle, and it flies nose-down, over 1/3, and the nose comes up.

Initial plans are for a Bigtrak carrier, with variations for landed or parachute deployment. It probably has adequate power for the Truck from Tosh\'s Cart mod also. Future plans are for a long-range model with extra fuel tanks.

[Alias]

Awesome. I cant wait to see how she flies. but I am 1 hour into my testing of a extreme long range helicopter.