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[Stock Helicopters & Turboprops] Non DLC Will Always Be More Fun!

Azimech

By Azimech
in KSP1 The Spacecraft Exchange

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selfish_meme

selfish_meme

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, NoobTool said:

I've been trying (and failing) to build a tilt wing/rotor turboprop. I did manage to make a heavy duty bearing that works pretty well.

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giphy.gif

Full 90 degree range of motion. If you play around with the position of the actuator, you can probably get close(ish) to 180degrees. Not the smoothest, but it works. This craft can hover, but can't transition to forward flight. The engines are good for helicopters, Airplanes, not so much. There are also a lot of balance issues to work out. I was more interested in load testing the bearing.

Here's just the mechanism:

giphy.gif

And internals

giphy.gif

Once it's docked, autostruts hold everything together making the airframe rigid.

If anyone's interested in testing out the mechanism, let me know and I'll upload it.

Thanks for reading!

You got further than I did, I keep meaning to go back to my Osprey now I have some decent engines.

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NoobTool

NoobTool

Posted
Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Castille7 said:

That's no Noob Tool that's slick man!

Thanks! I still have a lot of work to do.

51 minutes ago, EpicSpaceTroll139 said:

@NoobTool I'll have to search around for where I posted it, but my collective kOS script should be able to manipulate the blade pitch on those prop/rotors so that they can transition moderately well to forward flight. It won't be able to compensate if they simply don't have enough torque for forward flight though.

I don't think torque is the issue. On the newest version of the Drake they produce ~800kN of lift a piece. The problem is the width of the rotor blades. Increasing pitch causes clearance issues, and increasing clearances throws off the balance. Not to mention, I doubt the bearings would handle the stresses of maneuvering in a forward flight orientation. I'll have to check out that script when I get some better engine designs worked up.

Nice work on that geartrain. Was it actually turning a tail rotor in that pic?

24 minutes ago, selfish_meme said:

You got further than I did, I keep meaning to go back to my Osprey now I have some decent engines.

Engines are what are holding me up. I've been working on different designs, but I'm having trouble finding a design that works well in both hover and forward flight.

Edited by NoobTool
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selfish_meme

selfish_meme

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, NoobTool said:

Engines are what are holding me up. I've been working on different designs, but I'm having trouble finding a design that works well in both hover and forward flight.

Yeah too light and spinny like my fighter engine and it does not have the torque for vertical flight, too big and it does not have the rpm for forward flight

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selfish_meme

selfish_meme

Posted
Posted
On 9/3/2017 at 7:01 PM, selfish_meme said:

A new day and a new bearing, mixed my two bearings for 1.25m size and an easy 4 junos per engine, best level speed yet, stock aero, all landing and taking off equipent attached

70zZtKe.png

These are probably what I am thnking of using, they should handle a lot more torque than I am applying here

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Azimech

Azimech

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Posted
20 hours ago, Krog34 said:

Wow, funny enough I was experimenting with some completely internal turboprops similar to yours but also kept running into the overheat issue! When I removed the outter fairing (exposing drag in all the bad spots) the overheat issue went away almost like it models insulation effects...which it might... I don't know enough about the KSP physics engine.

 

On a separate note, I had a small break through on forward flying single-turboshaft helicopters that use a powered main blade (as apposed to auto-gyrating.) It seems that simply canceling the counter-steer engine, powering down the main rotor, and applying a forceful push from behind (gigity?) you can start to fly your chopper sorta like a weird jet. It's fun, and enjoyable to fly! The main blade and bearing hold up to a lot of abuse, a surprising amount in fact. But like all turboprops/shafts they have their limits  :wink:

The only noticeable issue I have with this helicopter and it's handeling is that it wants to constantly corkskrew when flying forward. It can be easily counter-steered though, it just takes a steady hand. I suppose using a keyboard isn't the most efficient way to fly a helicopter though in the first place! :D

Kermansky VK-01 Roxanne

 

As I wrote above, a cooling system might help.

Indeed, one of my a few of my helicopters are hybrid variants and use the same principle of powering down the main rotor.

My solution for stable flight is a stock autopilot. See the Titan manual.

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NoobTool

NoobTool

Posted
Posted
21 hours ago, Krog34 said:

The only noticeable issue I have with this helicopter and it's handeling is that it wants to constantly corkskrew when flying forward.

Retreating blade stall. When traveling forward, one side of your rotor is rotating in the direction of travel, while the other is "retreating". This causes asymmetric lift between the two sides of your rotor, leading to a tendency to roll.

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Krog34

Krog34

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, NoobTool said:

Retreating blade stall. When traveling forward, one side of your rotor is rotating in the direction of travel, while the other is "retreating". This causes asymmetric lift between the two sides of your rotor, leading to a tendency to roll.

OH that's awesome! Something I've known aboiut but I didn't realize that was the specific torque I was dealing with. Thanks for that! 

The swash plate is a magnificent thing of science.

 

On a different note, I hate to have to ask this question so bluntly but haven't found the answer after a bit of searching. How do you see or calculate the rad/s value for rotation? I have no idea how to measure this or what any of my turboprops/shafts put out. I'm sure there's plenty of mods for such a thing, anyway to see such a value with stock gui?

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Azimech

Azimech

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20 minutes ago, Krog34 said:

OH that's awesome! Something I've known aboiut but I didn't realize that was the specific torque I was dealing with. Thanks for that! 

The swash plate is a magnificent thing of science.

 

On a different note, I hate to have to ask this question so bluntly but haven't found the answer after a bit of searching. How do you see or calculate the rad/s value for rotation? I have no idea how to measure this or what any of my turboprops/shafts put out. I'm sure there's plenty of mods for such a thing, anyway to see such a value with stock gui?

The stock GUI is a bit useless because of the refresh rate, which is way too high and only shows in deg/s. Go to debug menu -> Physics -> Aero -> "something with GUI".

A much better solution is to install V.O.I.D.
Look at the screenshots by selfish_meme on this and the previous page, when switched to the turbine, it shows up on the secondary HUD (next to the Navball).

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selfish_meme

selfish_meme

Posted
Posted

Sort of gone backwards, though this plane is much nicer to fly than the previous one, a different bearing, it can take more torque and is why I am thinking of using it for a V-22. It is stable up to about 44 rads under heavy prop load. The trouble is with this plane trying to keep propeller sizes in the "this fits with this WWI looking craft" means I can't really stretch the engine. Each blade are three blades clipped into each other and I had up to four clipped blades and 16 Junos. With this setup it is slower but behaves like a proper plane. I also solved overheating issues quite neatly.

QKbMAm5.png

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EpicSpaceTroll139

EpicSpaceTroll139

Posted
Posted

Shaft-driven tail rotor now works reliably enough to fly on a helicopter, at least for a few minutes before it goes kaboom.T

nR3Qv9g.jpg

The biggest problem is dealing with the lateral forces that the pseudo-bevel gears put on the bearings. I'm not having too much problems on the engine end of the shaft, but at the part where it transfers power to the tail rotor, it has significant strain, and is ready to shoot out towards the left if I make too hard a turn. If I can figure out a gear system there that induces less stress, or a bearing that can endure it indefinitely, I should be able to work on making it useful.

Currently the tail rotor spins at the exact same rate as the main rotor, so I'll have to change the gear ratios to make it spin faster if I want to get reasonable thrust out of it. For now it just kind of looks cool.

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Azimech

Azimech

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Posted (edited)
2 minutes ago, The_Rocketeer said:

Watching it is mesmerising. It makes me think of this thing:
 

 

Nice :-)

Reminds me I need to continue work on my programmable music player (my own mod) and rebuild my tone generator/synthesizer. No, not real life, in KSP.

Edited by Azimech
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Castille7

Castille7

Posted
Posted
50 minutes ago, KerBlitz Kerman said:

WAIT WHAT!!!

@Azimech He made one like this before, pretty darn cool stuff!

https://kerbalx.com/Azimech/Crapahoola-Synthesizer

3 hours ago, Azimech said:

It should be possible to create something that rolls. I'll continue work in a few days.

That is some a amazing amount of work, color me impressed once again. Also I was thinking about a boat shaft :D a huge tugboat maybe?

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selfish_meme

selfish_meme

Posted
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19 minutes ago, Castille7 said:

@Azimech He made one like this before, pretty darn cool stuff!

https://kerbalx.com/Azimech/Crapahoola-Synthesizer

That is some a amazing amount of work, color me impressed once again. Also I was thinking about a boat shaft :D a huge tugboat maybe?

Props don't seem to work underwater unfortunately

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