decouple inflatable 10m shield before open parachutes

[antipro]

hi there,

as you can see in this short video:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xxn43vcnulf889a/2017.07.01-10.40.mp4?dl=0

..I'm testing a ship on eve.

I'm just wondering how to avoid the misalign of the central fuel tanks axis when I time warp in atmosphere.
I've tried autostruts only, as+rigid attachment, several combinations of them.

So I thought it is better if I can turn the ship upsidedown and decouple the 10m shield before open parachutes, but I can't, don't know how.
suggests?

Edited July 1, 2017 by antipro

[Human Person]

The best thing is to wait until your main chutes are fully deployed  before decoupling the heat shield.

try using regular struts, they're much more rigid than autostruts.

Edited July 1, 2017 by Physics Student

[antipro]

I edited the ship so it no longer act like a snake when timewarp.
so noway to turn upsidedown the ship and decouple?
if only could be deflated...
ok, thx

[Jas0n]

Turning it upside down then decoupling the heat shield before deploying parachutes run the risk of the heat shield hitting your craft. 

[Ultimate Steve]

You could try using rocket boosters to boost it away. In my experience, four Launch Escape Systems per heat shield works well. Just make sure to angle them so that the shield doesn't smash your ship when the rockets run out. But, if at all possible, decouple it after your chutes are out.

[bewing]

In general what I find is that my ships wobble a lot behind that 10m heatshield on descent, when I'm going slow down in the thick air. So, as you said, what I want to do is turn the ship almost upside down before I decouple that heatshield, to get rid of it. But my wobbles are not big enough by themselves to get the ship quite upside down.

So what I find works nicely is to turn on SAS, and set it to Normal hold -- which is 90 degrees off prograde, of course. This makes my ship go into slow but wild swings. And nearly go upside down. Which is exactly what I want. So I do that, and then decouple the heatshield when the ship is almost upside down. Since the heatshield has such huge drag, it goes flying up above the ship and I never see it again. And then I turn off SAS and stage the main chutes when I feel like it.

 

[Snark]

On 7/1/2017 at 1:57 AM, antipro said:

So I thought it is better if I can turn the ship upsidedown and decouple the 10m shield before open parachutes, but I can't, don't know how.
suggests?

I just put a couple of parachutes at the heat-shield end of the ship, set to open at a higher altitude than the other chutes at the other end.  So, those chutes open, which makes the ship flip upside down.  Then I decouple the heat shield, which quickly wafts away because it has a much lower terminal velocity than my 60-ton Eve lander does (even when it has a couple of parachutes open).  Then I open the rest of the parachutes, which flips the ship right-side up again and slows it to safe landing speed.

On 7/1/2017 at 7:10 PM, bewing said:

So what I find works nicely is to turn on SAS, and set it to Normal hold -- which is 90 degrees off prograde, of course. This makes my ship go into slow but wild swings. And nearly go upside down. Which is exactly what I want. So I do that, and then decouple the heatshield when the ship is almost upside down.

I've done this too, but I have a lot of trouble getting it to work reliably.  Unless the ship is almost perfectly upside down when I decouple, the darn heat shield always seems to torque around and flip suddenly, smashing my ship and breaking something important (i.e. "anything at all", because if there's one thing an Eve lander isn't carrying, it's anything nonessential).  I always seem to have to use F9 to restore quicksave and try it about a dozen times in a row before I luck into catching the tumble at just the right moment.

But since switching to the parachute-assisted mode, it's nicely smooth and predictable; works like clockwork.  Tap spacebar once, ship flips.  Tap a second time, heat shield goes bye-bye.  Tap a third time, ship reorients for landing.

[bewing]

5 minutes ago, Snark said:

I've done this too, but I have a lot of trouble getting it to work reliably.  Unless the ship is almost perfectly upside down when I decouple, the darn heat shield always seems to torque around and flip suddenly, smashing my ship and breaking something important (i.e. "anything at all", because if there's one thing an Eve lander isn't carrying, it's anything nonessential).  I always seem to have to use F9 to restore quicksave and try it about a dozen times in a row before I luck into catching the tumble at just the right moment.

Ah, I forgot to mention that I also use a rockomax decoupler on the heatshield, with the ejection force turned all the way up.

But yeah, I hadn't thought of your reversible parachute technique. That's clever!

 

[Spricigo]

On 01/07/2017 at 1:53 PM, antipro said:

if only could be deflated...
ok, thx

It's just a ModuleManeger patch away. 

Quote

//Allow deflating inflatable heat sheield
//Author: Chris97b
@PART[InflatableHeatShield]:AFTER[Squad]
 {
    @MODULE[ModuleAnimateGeneric]
     {
        @allowAnimationWhileShielded = true
        @disableAfterPlaying = false
     }
 }

Source