@MTakach Right, I'm just saying that the intake air can come from anywhere - it isn't coupled to the main rotor. Unless you're talking about the downwash over the boom, in which case you're right and I apologize.
@MTakach Hey, I was just looking for people who did NOTAR helis in SimplePlanes, and I wanted to correct one misconception here: NOTAR controls are powered by a mechanical take-off (basically, a small secondary fan within the boom) and not by air "sucked in" from the main rotor.
@BigBeast I made this while double-checking the heli building guidelines for your post. Of note:
This ship is probably a bit overpowered, as it can hover at 50% collective (VTOL) while fully loaded. I could reduce the power or the rotor size slightly and it should still fly.
The tail rotor is set to Head[ing] Hold mode, as I find this easier to fly on mobile. Rate mode is probably more realistic, but far harder to fly without a flight stick (or pedals).
The vertical and half horizontal stabilizers are not strictly necessary, but they improve control at higher speeds.
Despite what the stats say, the rotor disk loading for this heli is about 5lbs / ft^2, right in the 2 - 10 lbs / ft^2 zone.
You can reduce the necessary main rotor power by making the main rotor blades longer or thicker, up to a point. The lowest possible power to weight ratio is probably ~ 1/5 hp/kg (approx. the power to weight ratio of a fully loaded Robinson R22). * Sorry, messed up the conversion originally
Disk loading (the heli equivalent of wing loading) should be between about 10 lb/ft^2 and 2 lb/ft^2, with lower loading giving better efficiency and higher loading generally giving higher speeds (iirc). Calculate loading by Pi * (main rotor radius)^2 / (desired max takeoff weight). If too high, lower weight or increase rotor size.
@BigBeast
A) big rotor goes directly over your center of gravity. Like, exactly. Tweak everything else to ensure this is the case.
B) little rotor goes out on a boom, far enough away that the big rotor can't ever hit it. Make the boom as light as possible.
Give the big rotor power equal to about 1/2 the craft's mass in Kg: if your heli is 1000kg, 500hp is probably a good starting point.
Give the little rotor about 10% of the big rotor's horsepower to start.
This was a real aircraft! Or, at least, my attempt at representing one. A group of us on Reddit's r/weirdwings have been trying to track down details and information about whether it ever flew; see this thread for more info.
Details:
The little delta, which may fly this year or early in 1954, will be a two-place job powered with twin McCulloch 4318 target engines developing 70 h.p. each. It will incorporate a coaxial propellor-rotor mounted in a nose shaft that will swing from vertical position -- for vertical helicopter take-off -- to a horizontal position for airplane flight altitudes.
The twin rotors each have three blades mounted rigidly, with unusual -- and secret -- gearing to permit the shaft to swing from vertical to horizontal and return.
...
Performance estimated by Dobson, who formerly was chief of the Helicopter Division of Aeronautical Products, Inc., is:
max. speed, emergency power, 187 m.p.h.;
max. climb, 1950 ft./min.;
range, 225 miles;
min. sinking speed, power off, 21.2 ft./sec.
The Dobson convertiplane will have a high wing of 112.5 square feet area, a useful load of 440 pounds including two persons and 20 gallons of fuel; a gross weight of 1100 pounds, and a rotor diameter of 16 feet. Control surfaces will comprise two vertical fin-rudders at the wing tips, each with a skid on the underside.
This version has:
- Working elevons,
- Cyclic input is suppressed above 150kph for smoother flying in aircraft mode.
- While hovering, rudder uses differential torque to rotate the correct direction (but the rotation sticks, so you have to manually counteract it).
- Camera is oriented for horizontal flight, while the cockpit is oriented for landing (if you are brave).
Take-off procedure 1:
1. Use Trim to rotate prop-rotors to point perpendicular to the ground. The hinge is too strong so do this slowly!
2. Set throttle to 100%.
3. Use VTOL to slowly increase collective until the nose just begins to lift up; drop VTOL by one click once this starts.
4. Smoothly raise Trim lever to ~95%; this will lift the nose further due to torque.
5. If the ship is generally upright, the shaft is generally perpendicular to the ground, and the plane is mostly stable: increase VTOL to 90% ~ 95% and take off. If not, you will probably crash and burn immediately.
6. Smoothly nose down to horizontal flight. Cyclic inputs to the prop-rotors phase out at 150kph.
7. Throttle down to ~50%. Trim Pitch using the Trim lever: lower is nose-up, higher is nose-down. Manage velocity using VTOL lever: less is slower, more is faster.
Take-off procedure 2:
1. Use Trim to rotate prop-rotors to nearly horizontal. Avoid letting the rotor tips touch the ground!
2. Throttle up to 100%.
3. Increase collective to ~95% using the VTOL lever.
4. Once in the air, immediately increase Trim to ~95%.
5. Follow steps 6, 7 as per procedure 1.
Landing procedure:
1. Approach landing point in horizontal flight; get to within about a kilometer at about 500 meters altitude (less with experience).
2. Decrease engine throttle to ~33%. Decrease VTOL to about 25%.
3. Extend landing gear.
4. Set Trim to about 90% (decreased thrust will change the Cg / Ct balance so try to find a stable point)
5. Pitch up to about 60-70 degrees on the Attitude Indicator ball. You will rise quickly while bleeding off airspeed; decrease VTOL to lower VSI until you begin sinking towards your landing area.
6. To speed up, pitch down; to slow down, pitch up. I find it easiest to land from the orbit view, but it is possible to land from the cockpit view.
7. Try to maintain a positive forward speed and negative VSI using cyclic, rudder, and VTOL controls only.
8. When the rear skids touch down, decrease VTOL slightly until the nose starts to drop slightly.
9. Smoothly reduce Trim to 0 and VTOL to 0.
10. Reduce throttle to 0%.
Issues:
1. Too much VTOL will lead to blade stall while maneuvering. Do not exceed 95% VTOL in horizontal flight.
2. Adding VTOL and Trim too fast during takeoff will cause the ship to flip on its back and explode.
3. Power-out landings are tricky because the rotor has a tendency to over-speed and explode, which somehow changes the Cg enough to make gliding landings impossible. Good luck.
Take-off procedure 1:
1. Use Trim to rotate prop-rotors to point perpendicular to the ground. The hinge is too strong so do this slowly!
2. Set throttle to 100%.
3. Use VTOL to slowly increase collective until the nose just begins to lift up; drop VTOL by one click once this starts.
4. Smoothly raise Trim lever to ~95%; this will lift the nose further due to torque.
5. If the ship is generally upright, the shaft is generally perpendicular to the ground, and the plane is mostly stable: increase VTOL to 90% ~ 95% and take off. If not, you will probably crash and burn immediately.
6. Smoothly nose down to horizontal flight. Cyclic inputs to the prop-rotors phase out at 150kph.
7. Throttle down to ~50%. Trim Pitch using the Trim lever: lower is nose-up, higher is nose-down. Manage velocity using VTOL lever: less is slower, more is faster.
Take-off procedure 2:
1. Use Trim to rotate prop-rotors to nearly horizontal. Avoid letting the rotor tips touch the ground!
2. Throttle up to 100%.
3. Increase collective to ~95% using the VTOL lever.
4. Once in the air, immediately increase Trim to ~95%.
5. Follow steps 6, 7 as per procedure 1.
Landing procedure:
1. Approach landing point in horizontal flight; get to within about a kilometer at about 500 meters altitude (less with experience).
2. Decrease engine throttle to ~33%. Decrease VTOL to about 25%.
3. Extend landing gear.
4. Set Trim to about 90% (decreased thrust will change the Cg / Ct balance so try to find a stable point)
5. Pitch up to about 60-70 degrees on the Attitude Indicator ball. You will rise quickly while bleeding off airspeed; decrease VTOL to lower VSI until you begin sinking towards your landing area.
6. To speed up, pitch down; to slow down, pitch up. I find it easiest to land from the orbit view, but it is possible to land from the cockpit view.
7. Try to maintain a positive forward speed and negative VSI using cyclic, rudder, and VTOL controls only.
8. When the rear skids touch down, decrease VTOL slightly until the nose starts to drop slightly.
9. Smoothly reduce Trim to 0 and VTOL to 0.
10. Reduce throttle to 0%.
@Sleet01 Issues:
1. Too much VTOL will lead to blade stall while maneuvering. Do not exceed 95% VTOL in horizontal flight.
2. Adding VTOL and Trim too fast during takeoff will cause the ship to flip on its back and explode.
3. Fuel lasts about 90 seconds at 100% power.
4. Power-out landings are tricky because the rotor has a tendency to over-speed and explode, which somehow changes the Cg enough to make gliding landings impossible. Good luck.
To-do:
- Change engine power and throttle input limits to decrease fuel consumption.
- Add accurate paint applications: the real thing was white and orange!
- Make cockpit less ugly. The general shape is correct but it was almost all windows back to the rear half of the fuselage.
- Reduce fuselage parts weights to bring Cg forward and reduce overall gross weight to ~1,100 lbs
- Reduce wing size ~20%
This was a real aircraft! Or, at least, my attempt at representing one. A group of us on Reddit's r/weirdwings have been trying to track down details and information about whether it ever flew; see !this thread for more info.
Details:
The little delta, which may fly this year or early in 1954, will be a two-place job powered with twin McCulloch 4318 target engines developing 70 h.p. each. It will incorporate a coaxial propellor-rotor mounted in a nose shaft that will swing from vertical position -- for vertical helicopter take-off -- to a horizontal position for airplane flight altitudes.
The twin rotors each have three blades mounted rigidly, with unusual -- and secret -- gearing to permit the shaft to swing from vertical to horizontal and return.
...
Performance estimated by Dobson, who formerly was chief of the Helicopter Division of Aeronautical Products, Inc., is:
max. speed, emergency power, 187 m.p.h.;
max. climb, 1950 ft./min.;
range, 225 miles;
min. sinking speed, power off, 21.2 ft./sec.
The Dobson convertiplane will have a high wing of 112.5 square feet area, a useful load of 440 pounds including two persons and 20 gallons of fuel; a gross weight of 1100 pounds, and a rotor diameter of 16 feet. Control surfaces will comprise two vertical fin-rudders at the wing tips, each with a skid on the underside.
This version has:
- Working elevons,
- Cyclic input is suppressed above 150kph for smoother flying in aircraft mode.
- While hovering, rudder uses differential torque to rotate the correct direction (but the rotation sticks, so you have to manually counteract it).
- Camera is oriented for horizontal flight, while the cockpit is oriented for landing (if you are brave).
Older Americans may also be familiar with the setting from the U.N. Squadron game series, which was based on the manga and anime.
+2@Boeing7472 Thanks!
+1Dancho melée.
@MTakach Right, I'm just saying that the intake air can come from anywhere - it isn't coupled to the main rotor. Unless you're talking about the downwash over the boom, in which case you're right and I apologize.
@MTakach Hey, I was just looking for people who did NOTAR helis in SimplePlanes, and I wanted to correct one misconception here: NOTAR controls are powered by a mechanical take-off (basically, a small secondary fan within the boom) and not by air "sucked in" from the main rotor.
@DarthAbhinav Hey, you cut OP some slack, bits were sparse back in Eidos made this game... in 1997... for Windows 95... :P
@BigBeast Been waiting to see it!
@rexzion It would be nice if there were a link to the markdown guide.
@Yourcrush might as well just build a blimp at that point. Torque effects are one of the main components of rotorcraft aerodynamics.
@BigBeast I made this while double-checking the heli building guidelines for your post. Of note:
Further info:
@BigBeast
A) big rotor goes directly over your center of gravity. Like, exactly. Tweak everything else to ensure this is the case.
B) little rotor goes out on a boom, far enough away that the big rotor can't ever hit it. Make the boom as light as possible.
Give the big rotor power equal to about 1/2 the craft's mass in Kg: if your heli is 1000kg, 500hp is probably a good starting point.
Give the little rotor about 10% of the big rotor's horsepower to start.
@KnightOfRen Do you mean you have a Mac with a trackpad (or Apple mouse)? They use gestures to simulate right click, such as three-finger click.
@ILikeToMakeStuff Thanks!
Yes, but will it blend?
Gorgeous. How do you build those beautiful shiny cockpits?
Also,
"T".
@50CalChicken It's good of you to say, especially since it looks like an upside-down AMC Pacer :)
This was a real aircraft! Or, at least, my attempt at representing one. A group of us on Reddit's r/weirdwings have been trying to track down details and information about whether it ever flew; see this thread for more info.
Details:
This version has:
- Working elevons,
- Cyclic input is suppressed above 150kph for smoother flying in aircraft mode.
- While hovering, rudder uses differential torque to rotate the correct direction (but the rotation sticks, so you have to manually counteract it).
- Camera is oriented for horizontal flight, while the cockpit is oriented for landing (if you are brave).
Take-off procedure 1:
1. Use Trim to rotate prop-rotors to point perpendicular to the ground. The hinge is too strong so do this slowly!
2. Set throttle to 100%.
3. Use VTOL to slowly increase collective until the nose just begins to lift up; drop VTOL by one click once this starts.
4. Smoothly raise Trim lever to ~95%; this will lift the nose further due to torque.
5. If the ship is generally upright, the shaft is generally perpendicular to the ground, and the plane is mostly stable: increase VTOL to 90% ~ 95% and take off. If not, you will probably crash and burn immediately.
6. Smoothly nose down to horizontal flight. Cyclic inputs to the prop-rotors phase out at 150kph.
7. Throttle down to ~50%. Trim Pitch using the Trim lever: lower is nose-up, higher is nose-down. Manage velocity using VTOL lever: less is slower, more is faster.
Take-off procedure 2:
1. Use Trim to rotate prop-rotors to nearly horizontal. Avoid letting the rotor tips touch the ground!
2. Throttle up to 100%.
3. Increase collective to ~95% using the VTOL lever.
4. Once in the air, immediately increase Trim to ~95%.
5. Follow steps 6, 7 as per procedure 1.
Landing procedure:
1. Approach landing point in horizontal flight; get to within about a kilometer at about 500 meters altitude (less with experience).
2. Decrease engine throttle to ~33%. Decrease VTOL to about 25%.
3. Extend landing gear.
4. Set Trim to about 90% (decreased thrust will change the Cg / Ct balance so try to find a stable point)
5. Pitch up to about 60-70 degrees on the Attitude Indicator ball. You will rise quickly while bleeding off airspeed; decrease VTOL to lower VSI until you begin sinking towards your landing area.
6. To speed up, pitch down; to slow down, pitch up. I find it easiest to land from the orbit view, but it is possible to land from the cockpit view.
7. Try to maintain a positive forward speed and negative VSI using cyclic, rudder, and VTOL controls only.
8. When the rear skids touch down, decrease VTOL slightly until the nose starts to drop slightly.
9. Smoothly reduce Trim to 0 and VTOL to 0.
10. Reduce throttle to 0%.
Issues:
1. Too much VTOL will lead to blade stall while maneuvering. Do not exceed 95% VTOL in horizontal flight.
2. Adding VTOL and Trim too fast during takeoff will cause the ship to flip on its back and explode.
3. Power-out landings are tricky because the rotor has a tendency to over-speed and explode, which somehow changes the Cg enough to make gliding landings impossible. Good luck.
@WNP78 Good point, although I did have to manually enable it from the Mods menu.
@Sleet01
Take-off procedure 1:
1. Use Trim to rotate prop-rotors to point perpendicular to the ground. The hinge is too strong so do this slowly!
2. Set throttle to 100%.
3. Use VTOL to slowly increase collective until the nose just begins to lift up; drop VTOL by one click once this starts.
4. Smoothly raise Trim lever to ~95%; this will lift the nose further due to torque.
5. If the ship is generally upright, the shaft is generally perpendicular to the ground, and the plane is mostly stable: increase VTOL to 90% ~ 95% and take off. If not, you will probably crash and burn immediately.
6. Smoothly nose down to horizontal flight. Cyclic inputs to the prop-rotors phase out at 150kph.
7. Throttle down to ~50%. Trim Pitch using the Trim lever: lower is nose-up, higher is nose-down. Manage velocity using VTOL lever: less is slower, more is faster.
Take-off procedure 2:
1. Use Trim to rotate prop-rotors to nearly horizontal. Avoid letting the rotor tips touch the ground!
2. Throttle up to 100%.
3. Increase collective to ~95% using the VTOL lever.
4. Once in the air, immediately increase Trim to ~95%.
5. Follow steps 6, 7 as per procedure 1.
Landing procedure:
1. Approach landing point in horizontal flight; get to within about a kilometer at about 500 meters altitude (less with experience).
2. Decrease engine throttle to ~33%. Decrease VTOL to about 25%.
3. Extend landing gear.
4. Set Trim to about 90% (decreased thrust will change the Cg / Ct balance so try to find a stable point)
5. Pitch up to about 60-70 degrees on the Attitude Indicator ball. You will rise quickly while bleeding off airspeed; decrease VTOL to lower VSI until you begin sinking towards your landing area.
6. To speed up, pitch down; to slow down, pitch up. I find it easiest to land from the orbit view, but it is possible to land from the cockpit view.
7. Try to maintain a positive forward speed and negative VSI using cyclic, rudder, and VTOL controls only.
8. When the rear skids touch down, decrease VTOL slightly until the nose starts to drop slightly.
9. Smoothly reduce Trim to 0 and VTOL to 0.
10. Reduce throttle to 0%.
@Sleet01 Issues:
1. Too much VTOL will lead to blade stall while maneuvering. Do not exceed 95% VTOL in horizontal flight.
2. Adding VTOL and Trim too fast during takeoff will cause the ship to flip on its back and explode.
3. Fuel lasts about 90 seconds at 100% power.
4. Power-out landings are tricky because the rotor has a tendency to over-speed and explode, which somehow changes the Cg enough to make gliding landings impossible. Good luck.
To-do:
- Change engine power and throttle input limits to decrease fuel consumption.
- Add accurate paint applications: the real thing was white and orange!
- Make cockpit less ugly. The general shape is correct but it was almost all windows back to the rear half of the fuselage.
- Reduce fuselage parts weights to bring Cg forward and reduce overall gross weight to ~1,100 lbs
- Reduce wing size ~20%
This was a real aircraft! Or, at least, my attempt at representing one. A group of us on Reddit's r/weirdwings have been trying to track down details and information about whether it ever flew; see !this thread for more info.
Details:
This version has:
- Working elevons,
- Cyclic input is suppressed above 150kph for smoother flying in aircraft mode.
- While hovering, rudder uses differential torque to rotate the correct direction (but the rotation sticks, so you have to manually counteract it).
- Camera is oriented for horizontal flight, while the cockpit is oriented for landing (if you are brave).