@iPilot yeah sure. I’m probably not gonna build the swash plate for some time since my next project has to be done in under a month and I want to dedicate my time to that for now before starting something new

@asteroidbook345 can't wait to check it out, if u need a second look at something tag me, also do you wanna check out a huey i've started building?

@iPilot I'm making a CH-37 Mojave that had two Wright double Wasp radial engines

more example

@V @asteroidbook345 the max rpm is 1.4 rp/s (84 rpm) a typical turbine helicopter runs at ~400-500 rpm. here is a forum post talking about it

@V could you get past that rotator RPM limit by attaching an actively spinning rotator between a free spinning rotator and your power plant? Or can rotators only spin faster than the limit when they are producing the RPMs and not something else

Add rotator between tip of the blades and your powerplant to reduce vibration and add more velocity.

@iPilot yes, I had. It’s working.

@V yeah that’s an issue for the rotor since rotors spin much faster, especially the tail rotor

@asteroidbook345 there is a global RPM limit for everything except for rotators that actively spin things. The wheel drive linked below actually goes faster than the limit, though not very much above

@V from my experience free spinning rotators have an RPM limit for whatever reason, unfortunately I think I’d run into the same issue as using jets. As for the swash plate’s movement I was thinking of only using one piston for the collective and two hinges for the cyclic, all of them hidden in the rotor shaft

@asteroidbook345 using linear actuators might work for swashplate movement as they are not wobbly, and you can just use car wheels to spin the rotor. (Wheels have traction on other parts now, here is an example)

@asteroidbook345 can't wait to check it out

also for the drag you could split the blade into 2 sections along the length, the section that's the leading edge could have very low drag and the back section high drag, so when you increase collective the lagging edge would be exposed and no longer "protected" from the air by the low drag leading edge, which would increase drag whenever the back edge comes up

@iPilot it still doesn’t work, there’s a cap on the rotators I think. I can make the rotor start and stop and run out of fuel, it’s just a matter of whether or not I can do autorotation, which might not be entirely possible. I’ll definitely look into it. It’ll probably be more or less constant speed and mostly use the collective for flying

@TheSeventh have you tried using cyclic pitch? on your design?

@asteroidbook345 the rpm is probably low no matter how powerful the jets are bc they are too close to the shaft, increasing distance between shaft & engine increases rpm usually, but engines on the tips of the rotors leads to weird performance. Using a rotator as the power for the rotor shaft isn't great bc of fuel usage and hard to program stopping/starting without looking very weird. Could add an engine that doesn't do anything except burn fuel and an FT function in the rotator to stop when fuel=0

sample

@iPilot yeah for sure. The collective drag would theoretically be fine because wings you put in it would end up creating drag too. The only problem is I’m not gonna be using a jet since for some reason the rpm ends up being really low regardless of how much power you put on them. So realistically idk what rotor drag would do

@asteroidbook345 please tag me i'd love to check out how you approach the problem

@iPilot sometimes close parts will automatically disable their collisions. Rotators and an FT code wouldn’t be able to respond quickly enough without being really jerky/shaky. You wouldn’t get enough deflection out of the rotators unless they were also super fast at which point the torque would cause pretty bad vibrations. You also might not be able to make odd-number bladed helis. I’m gonna work on my own version and see if it works

@asteroidbook345 also angle of a free spinning rotator can be found using variables so rotor RPM can be calculated also things like increasing collective (which also increases drag on the blades) would have an affect on rotor RPM, which is another element of flying helicopters that's important to check.

@asteroidbook345 why wouldn't it be able to spin at a fast speed? Also why wouldn't the plates be able to slide? I'm getting suggestions from the FTLab discord rn on it and it sounds like it's possible with some variables

@iPilot you gave me an idea actually and I was thinking I could do it where the only thing controlled by a piston is the collective, so it wouldn’t be quite as wobbly. Getting the plates to slide would be a little difficult though, unless I just did away with the bottom plate and cheated a little. There’s probably a way to do it with FT but you wouldn’t be able to have the rotors spin at a believably fast speed

Mine works it's just sort of wobbly, i think it's cause by the two sets of rotators on each side of the pistons@asteroidbook345