Helicopter circumnavigation of Duna [1.9.1]

[xendelaar]

Hi folks,

I recently decided to do a circumnavigation of Duna by plane or helicopter. After many hours of testing, I finally came up with a compact helicopter that flew pretty darn well! Here are its specs:

- Weight: 1.24 tonne
- Top speed: ~75 m/s (65 m/s on average)
- Kerbal capacity: 2 meat bags
- Power consumption: ~2.5 Electrical untis/s
- Max air time: infinite
- KSP Version: 1.9.1 with breaking ground

My goal was to circumnavigate Duna and get as much biome-science as possible. I didn't want to visit every biome, but only land on the ones that were along the path of the circumnavigation.
Since Duna's circumference is ~2.000 km and my average speed was around 65 m/s, this mission would take me at least 8,5 hours. I believe I flew over 3.000 km in the end, but I wasn't able to record it properly, so I could be wrong.

I made a time-lapse video of the mission. You can check it out in the link below (~7:00).

 

Hope you liked it.

 

Some highlights from the mission:

• Spoiler

   

  • Landing this craft takes quite some time, since the rotor create lift when it plummets to the ground.  Max descending speed would be 4 m/s! So that's why I brought a parachute along so I could get to the ground fast, when I needed to land. I would just brake the rotors and deploy my chute. My Engineer would repack the chute after we had landed....
    The thing is... Bill, was a level 1 engineer.... so he didn't have the skillz yet to repack the damn chute! so I had to land the slow way...
  • The helicopter flies very stable. But when you're circumnavigating with SAS on, the helicopter will eventually tilt upward due to the curvature of the planet. so I had to readjust the pitch every minute or so in order to keep a steady altitude... After 5 hours of flying I started experimenting with mechjeb2 and discovered that there is a pitch control option (with surface as a reference point)!!! that made life SOOOOO much easier haha
  • I also set up a commsat network prior the circumnavigation. I wanted to use a scientist and a SKILLED engineer to do the work. But eventually ditched the Goo and materials bay to save on weight which made the scientist obsolete, so I sent Jeb and Bill instead... making my commsat network obsolete hehe...
  • The making of the video took me almost more time than the mission itself.. Every time I rendered the movie, I discovered a new typo in the subs... It seems I'm not very good with words... ... I bet there are still several errors in there as we speak, but now I've run out of patience to re-render the video again haha..

   

   

 

[Vanamonde]

If it works on Duna, I believe it should work even better on Eve. 

[KerballingSmasher]

1 hour ago, Vanamonde said:

If it works on Duna, I believe it should work even better on Eve. 

Yes, because of the thicker atmosphere

[GummiRevolution]

Wow! This is amazing! I'm having trouble even getting my four-kerbal Duna quadcopter into the air!

[Single stage to ocean]

Poor you, you had to sit and fly the cursed thing.

[king of nowhere]

I never considered trying to actually fly something in Duna's atmosphere, but I may give it a shot eventually.

I never got the hang of actually landing an helicopter. i can't make it land without either crashing, or going up again. And after a while, I stopped making helicopters in favor of propeller planes; those, I can land

[Vagrant203]

Mechjeb's got a feature that might help. Think it's the Translatron but I could be wrong.

[xendelaar]

On 3/23/2020 at 10:26 PM, GummiRevolution said:

Wow! This is amazing! I'm having trouble even getting my four-kerbal Duna quadcopter into the air!

@GummiRevolution this is so weird. I never got a notification that anybody wrote a message on my thread! thanks for the kind reply

 

On 3/30/2021 at 12:53 PM, Single stage to ocean said:

Poor you, you had to sit and fly the cursed thing.

@Single stage to oceanhaha thanks for your compassion! i also did other things while I was flying, so I didn't get too bored hehe. i love your name btw haha

On 4/5/2021 at 5:35 PM, king of nowhere said:

I never considered trying to actually fly something in Duna's atmosphere, but I may give it a shot eventually.

I never got the hang of actually landing an helicopter. i can't make it land without either crashing, or going up again. And after a while, I stopped making helicopters in favor of propeller planes; those, I can land

@king of nowhere if you put duna out of the equation, landing with a helicopter is really easy. just use the fan blades. When you want to land, tilt them all the way up to their max angle (i don't recall which angle it actually is though). The helicopter will descent.. but very slowly!
Btw.. how did you find this year old thread?!

On 4/8/2021 at 2:09 PM, Vagrant203 said:

Mechjeb's got a feature that might help. Think it's the Translatron but I could be wrong.

yeah... I found out after a couple of hours flying manually haha.

Edited April 10, 2021 by xendelaar

[king of nowhere]

5 hours ago, xendelaar said:

 

@king of nowhere if you put duna out of the equation, landing with a helicopter is really easy. just use the fan blades. When you want to land, tilt them all the way up to their max angle (i don't recall which angle it actually is though). The helicopter will descent.. but very slowly!
Btw.. how did you find this year old thread?!

 

single stage to ocean reopened it. i saw it in the first page.

and when i checked the date, i didn't look at the year...