the stock helicopter thread

[Ol’ Musky Boi]

I decided to make a thread for the under-appreciated stock helicopter. Here's one I made earlier! Dubbed the Roton Mk1. It's a little wobbly, but for something that I threw together in about 10 minutes I'm pretty happy with it. (Edit: Lets just ignore the fact that the tail rotor is the wrong way round )

Edited September 5, 2018 by Ol’ Musky Boi

[Deddly]

Nice!

Moved to Spacecraft Exchange

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

I always love to see people venturing into the world of stock helicopters. You make me want to work on fixing mine, but unfortunately I am not able to play KSP at the moment.

Is the tail juno there as a counterweight? Because ideally, a tip jet powered helicopter shouldn't need any significant anti-torque. Also, how easy is it to control? I remember making tip jet style helicopters before and finding that mass on the blade tips caused extra strong gyroscopic effects when steering.

 

Also: You might want to check out this thread. 

 

Apparently the title is still referencing the problems that also broke literally all my helicopters. (1 fixed so far)

[Ol’ Musky Boi]

3 hours ago, EpicSpaceTroll139 said:

I always love to see people venturing into the world of stock helicopters. You make me want to work on fixing mine, but unfortunately I am not able to play KSP at the moment.

Is the tail juno there as a counterweight? Because ideally, a tip jet powered helicopter shouldn't need any significant anti-torque. Also, how easy is it to control? I remember making tip jet style helicopters before and finding that mass on the blade tips caused extra strong gyroscopic effects when steering.

 

Also: You might want to check out this thread. 

 

Apparently the title is still referencing the problems that also broke literally all my helicopters. (1 fixed so far)

She flies OK if you're only doing short up and down hops, but like you said, angular momentum causes steering to be tricky. This is the biggest issue with this copter, if you try to make too many pitch or roll maneuvers then the bearing flexes and explodes. You could probably get around this by adding jet engines for forward flight but It still means no barrel rolls  I think I might experiment with all-electric copters, since I've got much more experience with electric props than I do jet powered ones.

The tail juno was just there for aesthetics, probably didn't help the stability much because it made the craft slightly rear-heavy, but it was only a prototype.

Good luck on fixing your copters! I too understand the hardships of KSP withdrawal.

[Ol’ Musky Boi]

Here's my latest experiment, an electric micro-copter with a juno for added speed. The bearing is incredibly smooth (I was inspired by this creation on KerbalX https://kerbalx.com/quitessa/Ultrasmooth-Microbearing) and doesn't have any stability issues, at low speeds manoeuvring is quick and responsive; with decent piloting skills you could probably get it to do precision landings on the VAB. When using the juno in horizontal flight you can get up to about 40m/s before losing control (dual rotors would probably fix this ). The whole craft weighs a little over two tonnes, but most of the weight comes from purely aesthetic parts and the prop is slightly overpowered as it is, so I could probably trim it down a bit. Overall, a success!

[Heckspress]

craft file??

[Jon144]

On September 5, 2018 at 1:12 PM, EpicSpaceTroll139 said:

I always love to see people venturing into the world of stock helicopters. You make me want to work on fixing mine, but unfortunately I am not able to play KSP at the moment.

Is the tail juno there as a counterweight? Because ideally, a tip jet powered helicopter shouldn't need any significant anti-torque. Also, how easy is it to control? I remember making tip jet style helicopters before and finding that mass on the blade tips caused extra strong gyroscopic effects when steering.

 

Also: You might want to check out this thread. 

 

Apparently the title is still referencing the problems that also broke literally all my helicopters. (1 fixed so far)

Same along with you and Azimech. All the bearings for my old choppers like the kinchook break much easier now. Not sure what big change happened. At this point i'm not interested in making anymore cool mechanical creations anyways.

That said awesome work by the op here. The more crazy stock things the better.

[Ol’ Musky Boi]

15 hours ago, Jon144 said:

Same along with you and Azimech. All the bearings for my old choppers like the kinchook break much easier now. Not sure what big change happened. At this point i'm not interested in making anymore cool mechanical creations anyways.

That said awesome work by the op here. The more crazy stock things the better.

Thanks! I really enjoy the challenge of building these sorts of contraptions in stock KSP. It's really incredible what you can do with the stock game, most other games don't have that kind of flexibility.

20 hours ago, Heckspress said:

craft file??

I'm not quite happy with them yet so I haven't posted a craft file. I'm still experimenting with new ideas, but I hope to release the final products soon-ish. 

Edited September 7, 2018 by Ol’ Musky Boi

[Ol’ Musky Boi]

I built one of these 

For a tip-jet monocopter, she's VERY maneuverable and pretty speedy to boot. Landing can be a little tricky, but possible and relatively easy once you figure it out. I've had great fun flying around the KSC with this.

Here's the craft file: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1506090709