Any way to make gyroplanes self stabilizing?

[goduranus]

For my Eve ocean/Jool cloudtops sampling mission, I'm trying to build a craft that uses only reaction wheels and sloped wings for lift by spinning it like a helicopter. So far I've achieved around 7m/s rate of climb. However, the craft tends to drift its heading, requiring constant attention to keep it on course. I've tried changing the wing's dihedral, different placement of center of lift vs center of mass, and turning SAS on or off, but no luck.

Is there a way I can make this thing never drift off the vertical, so that I can just weight down the Q key and have this thing fly up by itself?

[I.T Marcus]

Hmm if I am picturing this correctly I think I may have a question for you, Is it's center of lift vertically in-line with it's center of mass? I have prototyped only one "helicopter propulsion system" (it involved swept wings with angled SRBs, yeah talk about exhaust fumes)

[MockKnizzle]

I don't think so. A single monolithic rotor is always gonna be dynamically unstable due to asymmetric lift.

Say your craft has four blades and is moving vertically upwards, and for some reason or another your rotor disc is tilted slightly to one side. The blade 90 degrees before the high point on the disc is moving slightly upwards, and the the blade 90 degrees after the high point is moving downwards. The upwards-traveling blade is moving slightly faster relative to the airstream, so it generates more lift. This lift manifests as an increase in the tilt of the rotor, which will quickly flip the whole thing over.

Helicopters have to deal with this too, but the cyclic control allows the pilot to correct for the asymmetric lift. Without a similar mechanism, control will be very difficult.

[I.T Marcus]

Hmm I don't think the stock KSP aero-model simulates this as you described it, so perhaps there could be a way to design a rotating propulsion system to carry a payload... but I think the payload may need a torque module on the underbelly, that last part may of been what you were saying with helicopter payload arrest systems only explained less elegantly lol

[goduranus]

KSP dos simulate the effect Knizzle had described, I think, as it occurres due to wing lift being proportional to speed. Controlling the cyclic in KSP is pretty easy though, but correcting it through a 4 hour climb from the depths of Jool is tedious.

When I get home today I will try adding some drag sources(intakes or vertically placed) above the rotor disk, perhaps that'll drag the axis of rotating back to vertical when the thing starts sliding to the side?

[I.T Marcus]

Would you consider using mods? I can think of a couple that may help you with this endeavor of course they may require you to do a re-do of the mission

[rentaspoon]

Infernal robotics I think has what they call free spinning washers which work as bearings, you could add one to that and just it for your rotor