KerbalX

Details

• Type: SPH
• Class: aircraft
• Part Count: 42
• Pure Stock
• KSP: 1.12.0

Description

Important - Please Read!

Juno Throttle - Translate F/B (H and N by default)
Helicopter Mode -> AG1, use main throttle as normal (for take-off/landing)
Plane Mode -> AG2 and main throttle to 0, use H/N to throttle Junos (for +70 m/s flight, not recommended for take-off or landing)
Stage -> activate Junos
AG 5 -> rotor brakes (landed ONLY)

A stock aircraft called SA - Cygnet. Built with 42 of the finest parts, its root part is Mark1Cockpit.

Built in the SPH in KSP version 1.12.0.

Alright, that was the important bit. If you hate reading and just want to fly, there’s a TL;DR at the bottom. Have fun!

Another aircraft for the Naval Aviation challenge on the KSP forums:

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/202184-naval-aviation-challenge/

This time it’s a combination craft, half good helicopter, half mediocre plane. I think the technical term is compound helicopter but I’m not an expert on the subject, I just roleplay as one on the internet.

With counter-rotating rotors, well-centered motors, and carefully balanced fuel stores, this baby bird is a joy to fly as a helicopter. Certainly, it can pitch/yaw/roll a tad aggressively, but if you don’t over-correct too hard, you can land in all kinds of fun places and fly through tight gaps without even getting close to hitting something. As you can see from the photos, landing on the control tower at the island runway is simple, landing above the front doors of the astronaut complex not much harder, and flying through the R&D tunnel a matter of a tiny bit of patience/practice with the craft.

As an airplane, there’s not much to recommend it over the great many well-made small planes this community has created, but it serves to achieve an important design function for the Naval Aviation challenge by giving it a theoretical range of over 700km (following the flight suggestions I’ll include below). The stub wings will not provide much lift under 60m/s, nor does it handle turning and banking in a particularly outstanding manner. It will, however, happily cruise at 240m/s in level flight with absolutely minimal effort from the pilot, provide a couple simple steps are followed.

As promised, flight instructions. Here’s a sample take-off:

• Once the craft loads, set main throttle to 0 and engage SAS. You can activate brakes if you like, as the motors for the rotors have been removed from the brake action group.
• Activate action group 1 to activate all necessary motors, rotors, and power supply.
• Main throttle up, craft will lift fairly quickly if throttle set to maximum power.

If you want to fly it as a helicopter, that’s all you need to know, enjoy! You might want to remove the Liquid Fuel from the Mk0 tanks and maximize Oxidizer in the R-11 Baguette clipped into the fuselage just under the electric motors before you leave the SPH for maximum helicoptering.

If you want to go further and turn it into an airplane, there’s a few more things to do:

• Stage to activate the Juno Engines
• Junos are NOT controlled by the main throttle. Use your Translate F/B keys to increase and decrease thrust for these engines. If using default bindings, this mean Throttle Up is H and Throttle Down is N.
• Once horizontal flight of at least 70m/s is achieved, set main throttle to 0 and activate Action Group 2. You’ll get a message about the servo not locking because it’s moving, ignore if you want. Otherwise, wait for the rotors to stop spinning visually and hit AG 2 again until you stop getting that message. Locking the rotors makes the craft a veeeeeery tiny bit more stable in my experience, but you can ignore it and probably won’t notice a difference. Pressing AG 2 repeatedly will not cause problems with the craft.
• If you are not achieving at least 230m/s in level flight, double check that main throttle is set to 0. Main throttle controls blade angle, and having the blades completely flat allows for higher speeds with this design.
• I like to cruise above 1300 meters altitude with an airspeed of at least 240m/s, but you do whatever you like.

Returning the Cygnet to helicopter mode is stress-free, so long as you remember that the Junos are not controlled by the main throttle:

• Activate Action Group 1 to re-enable the rotors, motors, and power sources.
• Throttle Down the Junos to 0 thrust. Again, Juno throttle is Translate F/B, with default key bindings this means holding N for a couple seconds.
• Use Main Throttle controls to handle helicopter functions as normal.

Yes, you can feel free to fly this solely as an airplane and ignore the helicopter aspect. It is 100% capable of take-offs and landings on Junos alone. I’m just going to warn you that this is a helicopter with some jet engines to make it fly fast in a straight line and you’re not going to enjoy using it like an airplane as much as you would a purpose-built plane.

TL;DR how 2 fly:
- Stage
- Press 1 and maximum throttle
- When fast, hold H to go even faster
- Press 2 and minimum throttle to go turbo fast
- Hold N if you want to go slower
- Press 1 and maximum throttle so you don’t crash
- Use a little less throttle until you start going down slowly
- Land
- ????
- Profit

• Quick edit because I seem to have forgotten to mention it anywhere else; Don’t fill the NCS adapter to the rear of the craft, that’s empty and should stay empty for CoM balance reasons.