Duna probe air craft.

[Cloakedwand72]

How do you make a small duna glider or a small Dona quad copter with KAL9k propellers or a mono blade transport helicopter? Or some small crewed duna air craft.

[Duke MelTdoWn]

Air density at Duna sea level roughly corresponds to 15 km altitude at Kerbin. So you can test if you have enough lift/wings by doing high altitude flights at Kerbin.

[MechBFP]

It's pretty difficult, it's got to be really light to be able to get enough lift with blades/propellers. I just made one, although it does use some mod parts. I use a small nuclear reactor for essentially infinite electricity, as well as some tiny reaction wheels. I also use the Kerbal Joint Reinforcement mod. Everything else is stock though, I believe.

It has 4 rotors, each with 8 propellers each, and weighs in at about 3.8 tons, and it can take off without too much of a runway. Landing is more difficult as I have the propellers attached to a hinge, which then allows me to point them at the ground to allow me to slowly kill both my horizontal and vertical velocity.

I have the rotor torque settings bound to the main throttle, the propeller blade pitch bound to translate L/R (J and L on the keyboard) and then the hinge angle set to translate U/D (I and K on the keyboard).

The propeller blade pitch is incredibly important and needs to be constantly adjusted midflight with the aerodynamic display (F12) enabled so you can see how much force the blades are producing (the yellow lines coming off of them, the longer the better), until you reach your max cruising speed. I found that I had to use about an 82 degree pitch on take off, with a max speed obtainable at 62 pitch. Max speed is about 128 m/s.

The rotors engine size can be very small, (you can adjust it during construction). I had mine set to 30% and still only need about 12% torque on the throttle to keep them at the max RPM of 460.

I only use about 1.5 EC/s of electricity at cruising speed.

 

See spoiler below for pictures:

Spoiler

 

 

Edited yesterday at 02:48 PM by MechBFP

[KerikBalm]

On 2/22/2025 at 12:02 PM, Duke MelTdoWn said:

Air density at Duna sea level roughly corresponds to 15 km altitude at Kerbin. So you can test if you have enough lift/wings by doing high altitude flights at Kerbin.

Not really applicable:

When air density (not pressure! Molar mass of the atmosphere and, I think, also temperature affect density) is equal, in Kerbin you are fighting 3.33x as much gravity as on Duna

Just use the cheat menu to test the design in sandbox/a different save

[Vanamonde]

Your thread has been moved to the place where you might find some suggestions. Good luck.