Building A Drone To Explore The Mountains In Ksp

[00:00:00]So, in the past, I've said I wanted to go explore these mountains right here in the background. These boys are big, and I want to see how big they are. Now, I said I wanted to use a helicopter. Thing about KSP though, is there's no helicopters. I did realize the mod pack I have came with this efficient flight system tab. And in that tab, there is a HVR 3 lift fan, a corkscrew prop fan engine, and a buzzsaw turboprop engine. So, we're going to head down over here into the spaceplane hangar, and we're going to get crafting. I have never used any of the parts we're going to use, so we got to kind of just figure things out here.

[00:00:42]So, I'm going to make this a drone, fully autonomous, for my first go. I feel like it's fitting. We got our little probe control. Now, we just need some electricity. Big old battery on the back.

[00:00:55]And an advanced inline stabilizer, and we'll just match the size. So, we got a little bit of a brain. Very good. Now, I already knew the helicopter approach is going to be just impossible to do. So, I'm going for a drone, which is technically a helicopter, you would think. I actually don't know. But, to do that, I need the four arms going off in each direction.

[00:01:21]We do four arms like this.

[00:01:23]Oh, hell yeah. Grab the fans. This is my only lifting fan. Toss them on like that. Blam. Those are big blades. I like that. All right, that's a good testing unit right there. All right, what you about to do, girl?

[00:01:41]Stage it.

[00:01:42]Ooh, hello.

[00:01:44]Hello. Hey, that's lifting pretty good.

[00:01:48]That's nowhere close to full throttle, either. Oh, it's tilting, though.

[00:01:53]I don't like the tilt. We'll go full throttle, see what happens.

[00:02:03]Very buggy noises. I don't know why it's randomly turning and whatnot. I'm only holding pitch pitch down.

[00:02:13]Oh.

[00:02:14]We done freaking blew an engine, brothers.

[00:02:19]Down to the deeps we go.

[00:02:24]Oh, yeah. Very satisfying splash. Now that I'm thinking about it, this may be pretty much impossible all the way around because I think drones I don't want to say anything too confidently here because I'm not super caught up on all technologies humans have, but I think drones possibly might modulate each engine separately to do things. And I don't know how you would do that without months worth of coding in this game. So, I'm trying to think how I could replicate a drone's flight. Honestly, I feel like I should look this up. I don't even know how a drone spins. Like, how does a drone just do like a a spin? Oh my gosh, the complexity of a drone is insane. I've never even would have assumed that, but uh I guess all the motors do spin separately from each other. They also spin clockwise and counterclockwise, which, you know, that really uh puts a pickle into this whole video idea. Can I change the way these uh these rotate? I can close the intakes.

[00:03:26]Two intakes per fan, apparently. I don't know where they're at. Mm.

[00:03:30]Yeah, there's just uh there's no way I'm going to be able to do what I'm trying to do here. This is kind of sad, kind of upsetting cuz to tilt forward and backwards, I was kind of just trying to use gravity to tilt, which honestly, I don't understand why that wasn't working. Let me go fly it one more time.

[00:03:45]We do have a gyroscope on this mother fricker, so it should be able to tilt left or right, forwards and backwards.

[00:03:56]So, this is a forward tilt.

[00:04:01]That is tilting forward.

[00:04:04]This is a backwards tilt.

[00:04:07]That is tilting backwards.

[00:04:10]Okay.

[00:04:13]What about full to the right tilt?

[00:04:19]Ah, no. This is doing like some type of spin.

[00:04:24]Some type of yaw.

[00:04:25]Don't touch the ground. Don't touch the lava.

[00:04:29]Oh, as soon as I start getting real fast, too, everything just extra goes to [ __ ] All right, this should be a left roll.

[00:04:37]The button I'm holding now should start rolling to the left.

[00:04:41]It's not really doing that, is it?

[00:04:48]It almost kind of looks like I'm controlling this thing, but I I assure you I'm not controlling this thing. Every time I get close to the ground, I just give it more power, and it's somehow not crashing. Looks sick as [ __ ] though, dude. It looks slicker than a turd.

[00:05:04]We're about to cut some trees, do some hedging. It almost wants to be like a a usable craft.

[00:05:14]I think what I need to do to recover from this situation is just put a bunch of RCS controls on it. Put a gyroscope on your gyroscope type-ish. Maybe we do command and control. We grab these small inline reaction wheels, right? Oh, I can just bolt them up on there like that.

[00:05:33]Hold on. We just freaking bolt them right onto the propellers. Okay. And then just drag them hoes back a bit so it don't look so weird. I like that, actually.

[00:05:44]All right. What does that do for me?

[00:05:50]Such an explosive engine start. Holy cow.

[00:05:54]I'm trying to get to a good slow speed.

[00:05:57]It's hard. All right, so this is a forward tilt.

[00:06:00]A lot more tilt in now. Very good.

[00:06:04]Backwards tilt.

[00:06:06]Check.

[00:06:08]We get level again.

[00:06:11]All right, A and D are yawing.

[00:06:15]Okay, we got rolling.

[00:06:18]Ah.

[00:06:21]We might be in business now.

[00:06:24]As you I just need to remember that A and D are yawing, Q and E are rolling.

[00:06:29]All right, so can I full throttle this hoe?

[00:06:32]What are we doing?

[00:06:37]They're like skipping around when I full throttle.

[00:06:40]I do not like that.

[00:06:42]Are they dying?

[00:06:46]Oh, you know what?

[00:06:50]These things might be running out of fuel or something. Why do they even let me fly up in the first place if that's the case? I have no fuel on this thing.

[00:06:57]Do they require fuels?

[00:07:03]Lift fan.

[00:07:04]Oh, yeah. Okay, so it takes takes uh 0.82 per second. So, it takes liquid fuel.

[00:07:12]Interesting. Why was I even able to fly then? Something seems not right. Well, this is a mod, so what's the most I appealing way we can throw some fuel on this bad mammer jammer? Something like this.

[00:07:27]Then I can move it under.

[00:07:31]Just kind of built in now, yeah? Third test of the day, baby. Maybe one or two more iterations or maybe this is it.

[00:07:38]Let's see.

[00:07:40]So, yeah, my engines were burning out as soon as I started them. That's why they sounded so weird.

[00:07:48]Now, this thing feels much more controllable, too.

[00:07:56]Woah, not throttle-wise.

[00:07:59]Throttle-wise, this thing's whack. So, I'm just try flying towards the towards the water.

[00:08:04]What is happening? Why is this thing tilting like this?

[00:08:09]Okay, well.

[00:08:11]Maybe not. Maybe we ain't getting to those mountains. Just a little itty bitty of throttle.

[00:08:17]We're fine. We're smooth.

[00:08:19]We got control.

[00:08:21]We can do things.

[00:08:25]This needs you crank it up.

[00:08:27]Different story. Let's see at what point it starts freaking out, though.

[00:08:33]This is quarter throttle.

[00:08:37]Still usable.

[00:08:40]Half throttle, still maneuverable.

[00:08:44]75%.

[00:08:45]Oh.

[00:08:46]Oh, yikes.

[00:08:50]Uh Did we just blow every engine we have? I don't quite understand what was happening there.

[00:08:59]I think they were definitely starved of air flow.

[00:09:05]How, though? I think they're blown. I don't got no throttle control left.

[00:09:10]Am I out of fuel, too? No, I got the fuel.

[00:09:14]Just got to reactivate these engines, or what? Into the soil we go. Hell yeah.

[00:09:19]There's got to be some special sauce I'm missing here.

[00:09:25]Hm, maybe some air intakes. What do you say? What do you say, gamers? What do you say we put a circular intake?

[00:09:34]Oh, yeah, what if we just put it like that? I kind of like that.

[00:09:38]One on the ass end.

[00:09:40]One on the front, one on the ass. I kind of need a way to remember which way is forward. So, we're going to put like a a spike or something. Yeah, like that.

[00:09:50]Exactly what I was going for. Just balance the spike out.

[00:09:54]Oh, that's through our intake though.

[00:09:58]It might work still. It might work. I just need it to be able to get high throttle without freaking out, choking itself to death.

[00:10:06]So, we're going to start the test off at a hundo.

[00:10:11]Wow.

[00:10:14]This thing is rising, dude. This thing is rising like a rocket.

[00:10:20]Okay.

[00:10:22]It's doing its own thing right now.

[00:10:34]It is also destroying the liquid fuel. We're almost at half a tank. I'm going to throttle down.

[00:10:44]It definitely wasn't gasping for air. It is very uncontrollable now, though.

[00:10:50]It's more uncontrollable now than it was.

[00:10:53]I can't even attempt to get it to fly straight. Okay, interesting.

[00:10:58]What could be causing that?

[00:11:01]Come on, please. 100% throttle. Don't do nothing weird.

[00:11:08]All right, I'll take it.

[00:11:14]I think we're just going to head over there.

[00:11:19]This is kind of a successful craft.

[00:11:22]Kind of.

[00:11:23]All right, full beans this way, please.

[00:11:27]All right.

[00:11:29]It just went from being blurred out from spinning too fast. Now, I can see them perfectly.

[00:11:33]The liquid fuel is being sucked out like this is a V8.

[00:11:38]Literally worse fuel mileage than my Mustang has.

[00:11:42]Look at these crappy little cities this mod pack puts in. Just textures the ground with a city texture.

[00:11:51]Very goofy. I don't think we're going to make it.

[00:11:55]I just uh showed you guys those buildings on the ground and for some reason we went down so much fuel. We're so close, too.

[00:12:03]It's true god damn tragedy. How How much fuel does this thing use, dude?

[00:12:09]24 units? 24 Us? Whatever U is? Oh my god, we're going to just run out.

[00:12:17]Well, how far did we make it?

[00:12:23]There's a landing strip right there.

[00:12:27]Ah, I guess uh oh.

[00:12:33]What in the world is happening? Did you just aired out and I got some thrust back? Or burnt out, I mean.

[00:12:39]That must be how I was flying away with the no fuel in the beginning. But dude, I'm right here. I'm right here.

[00:12:47]And this is how I'm going out.

[00:12:49]The base of the hills.

[00:12:52]Directly into the soil.

[00:12:54]Just how God intended.

[00:12:56]Oh, yeah. So, we've beat pretty much every issue to a pulp. Last issue we have, fuel. We're just going to grab these fuel tanks. I'm not even going to worry about the struts under. We're just going to use the fuel tanks as structure. Keep it light.

[00:13:14]Somewhat light. So, if we made it there off of one fuel tank, we should more than be able to make it there and explore with three, right?

[00:13:22]You follow the math on that, boyos?

[00:13:25]Yeah, I don't think something like that.

[00:13:27]Something like that we're thinking.

[00:13:28]Let's see if any new problems arise.

[00:13:38]Wow.

[00:13:39]Thing's frisky, man.

[00:13:41]All right, full speed.

[00:13:43]Full speed ahead. Full chooch.

[00:13:48]Full chooching.

[00:13:51]I will never understand what the propellers are doing. I really won't.

[00:13:54]All right.

[00:13:56]What's the max speed we can pull?

[00:14:01]206? That's it?

[00:14:03]Man, that's slow.

[00:14:06]Interesting. With all the fuel we added, I'm almost at half a tank. Get some beauty shots while you can, boys.

[00:14:14]Get some close-ups of the drone.

[00:14:18]You know you got it for the thumbnail.

[00:14:20]Nice little wide shot of the mountains.

[00:14:22]Wow. What do you say we call it a success if we put her down one time up here?

[00:14:29]That feels like it'd be pretty successful.

[00:14:31]Quick save though, cuz I'm trying it over here. Ain't trying it from over there again. It takes way too damn long.

[00:14:40]All right, let's start getting throttle down.

[00:14:47]I can't throttle down.

[00:14:49]I have no control.

[00:14:52]Oh, no, it's a probe, and I didn't put enough electricity in it.

[00:14:57]My electrical charge is too empty.

[00:15:04]And now it's going to rise until it dies. Oh, there's like a little It's like a little a valley crater dillio here.

[00:15:15]Guess I'll get a beauty shot of it hitting the hitting the mountain somewhere, since I have no no over it.

[00:15:21]It's going to be good.

[00:15:22]It's going to be very explosive.

[00:15:25]Fire. All right, perfect.

[00:15:30]It's all I wanted to see is it get shredded into a million pieces. This thing is making me angry. Last upgrade that I'm going to do to this hunk of junk, solar panels on all the arms.

[00:15:42]Two per arm. And I'm going to want some landing legs when I go to land.

[00:15:46]Something's telling me I'm going to need it.

[00:15:49]Looks very drone-like now with legs.

[00:15:51][snorts] I do like that.

[00:16:01]See what it looks like with legs up.

[00:16:04]Oh, that looks pretty sick.

[00:16:07]Wow, this thing looks menacing.

[00:16:09]Very nice. Very nice.

[00:16:11]Solar panels really uh add a cool touch.

[00:16:16]Got to get new photos.

[00:16:18]Updated the craft, man. It's the coolest angle I can get on this thing. Like right here, coming straight at the screen.

[00:16:27]Maybe a little angled one.

[00:16:31]All right, that's good enough. I still can't get over the fuel flow on this thing. Here's the landing strip that I took off of. Here's me.

[00:16:40]Here's the fuel.

[00:16:42]Incredibly inefficient. Which I guess kind of makes sense. You never really see gas-powered drones in real life. I don't think I've ever seen a gas-powered drone. Unless you count like the one that we use in the military. That's kind of a plane type of deal, not really a quad drone. It's like a the Reaper or whatever. Also really weird that this requires air flow. Why do these require air flow? It's literally sucking in a giant tunnel wind right through the top of that hoe. Hey, we're getting pretty close to the mountains. Look at that.

[00:17:11]Look at that. I still got somewhat a little bit of control.

[00:17:17]Very nice. Very nice. So much for exploring these mountains though, huh?

[00:17:21]I'm going to title it that, but we're not really exploring them. We don't really have the fuel to explore.

[00:17:29]We're going to just fly over here, land one time, and call it a day, eh? Look at this fuel I got. I got 1/4 of a tank.

[00:17:37]All right, I'm going to quick save right here.

[00:17:40]Quick saved up.

[00:17:41]We're going to go fly around and explore and then when when we run out of fuel, we're going to load this quick save back and we'll land right here. At least try to on that point.

[00:17:51]I'm trying to see what's down in here, son.

[00:17:54]These mountains have such a huge features on them.

[00:18:02]I live in Colorado. I'm pretty a pretty big fan of mountains and there's some mountains in the the Ouray-Ridgway area that look like this. Very jaggedy.

[00:18:10]It's like one mountain line.

[00:18:14]There's nothing behind that. Okay.

[00:18:16]We're about to run out of fuel again.

[00:18:17]Let's go full speed.

[00:18:19]Fly off the deck.

[00:18:31]205 It's quick.

[00:18:38]Could be quicker though.

[00:18:41]Oh, hell yeah.

[00:18:43]Oh.

[00:18:46]This is probably going to be a hard landing.

[00:18:49]I got so much stuff to do with my left hand.

[00:18:52]Throttle controls, regular controls. If I do this first try, that's a like.

[00:18:57]It's got to be. Hate to be a YouTuber that asks for them, but it has got to be.

[00:19:02]Oh, this is intense.

[00:19:05]Hey, there's a tree on the side of the side of the mountain.

[00:19:08]It's an Alex Honnold tree right there, bud.

[00:19:12]Want you to come over here. Wow. It's a good lineup.

[00:19:26]Oh.

[00:19:29]Oh.

[00:19:31]Oh.

[00:19:33]Hey, that's what I'm talking about.

[00:19:36]Literally zero prop strikes. Got close.

[00:19:40]Pretty happy with that. Listen, guys.

[00:19:42]There is a whole list of things to improve on this, but I'm just saying for a random mod I didn't even know I had, we got her done. Anyways, I hope you guys did enjoy this video. You know what? I'm going to ask for it again. I love these things. If you slam that under my video, oh my gosh, we're the bestest friends. We're the bestest. Get your little gremlin fingers out. Go hit the comments. Tell me anything you'd like to see, and uh I'm going to get out of here. You boys have a good one.

[00:20:09]Peace.