KerbalX

Description

A couple of guys on discord were discussing/showing off the carriers which they were building, and it inspired me to build a new one as well. Having spent a significant amount of time recently with optimizing a high thrust propeller, I decided to take on the challenge of making it fly

That project of a flying aircraft carrier quickly devolved into this monstrosity of a craft, which once again claims the throne of largest thing i have made. ( 3 out of 4 of my most recent uploaded craft have continued to break that record..) With a wingspan of 116m, a length of just under 300m and 3610 parts she is a huge vessel. As such, the craft is pretty susceptible to spontaneous combustion and is really only held together through the magic of auto strut.The craft features a massive flight deck, large hangar space below, crew cabins and quarters at the very front, along with a repair bay at the very rear of the craft.

Powered by breaking ground helicopter rotors, the wings are actually completely aesthetic, especially since the average speed of this craft is around 10 m/s of forward velocity. While I would have liked to keep most of the rotors visible, the 4 in the wings are actually used mainly for roll control. Due to the massive size, the lift needed to be carefully distributed along the length of the craft and so majority of the upward thrust needed comes from 20 of the same rotors clipped inside the flight deck. The electric rotors are powered by numerous fuel cells, and through their stupid efficiency the craft only uses about 1 Lf/Ox a second to remain airborne. As such, it can actually remain in the air for around 6 in game hours - making it a surprisingly effective helicarrier despite the size.

Movement of the craft comes is identical to a helicopter, and comes from the pitch or roll of the carrier. That being said, with no aircraft it is tuned to have about a 5 degree forward pitch, leading to a stable crawl forward at at 10 m/s. Roll is controlled through a KAL that is linked to the wing mounted rotors, while pitch also has a KAL linked to some of the clipped rotors. The yaw is controlled through basically rcs vectors, where 4 vectors on the front of the craft act as yaw rcs.

Flight Guide

Fly this craft pretty much like one would fly any helicopter. Throttle is tied to rotor torque, controlling the upwards force. Turning on the fuel cells as well as activating the yaw engines is done through action group 1. Dont ever stage, as that would activate the numerous aesthetic rockets and causes spontaneous combustion.There are numerous SAS modules throughout the craft so SAS does help, but since the majority of the pitch/yaw/roll control comes from a KAL, the craft isnt the most stable. (especially with roll as any significant horizontal movement can make it go out of control)