Apex Scrapyard EP10 - "Taking to the skies on wings of scrap"

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:10]Hello and welcome to another episode of Apex Scrapyard. As again we have a wonderful morning, the sun reaching over the mountains in the distance and uh our engineer taking in the view. But today, today we are going to take to the skies as we found thrusters in the last episode. Three small thrusters.

[00:00:43]And I am really excited about that because I think it is just enough that we should be able to make a small ultralight little plane and fly off to some of these settlements.

[00:01:04]So you can see that one there. It's Oh, it's 7 kilometers in that direction. H it's going to take me a few minutes to drive out there. It's not too bad.

[00:01:12]in the like grand scheme of things. But it would be really nice like you know how I went out I found that turbine that was great but that took like an entire episode to do to do that one search pattern. But if I could just jump in my ultral light, whip out to one of those and if there is something there, mark it or like up onto that mountain there, I I I want to go see what's at that settlement on the mountaintop, but I'm not driving up there. So, if I could just fly on in and land and investigate and decide whether or not it is worth trying to find a way up the mountain, that would be great.

[00:01:55]So, with that, we have our three thrusters here.

[00:02:01]And I'm probably going to have to bring myself a a shield so I don't barbecue myself with the sun. Good oldfashioned platforms will uh come in handy here. We'll just place a couple of these down over here just to block the sun so we don't have to worry about it for now. Get our exposure level to start coming down.

[00:02:24]And what I'm thinking is this is just going to be an ultralight. It's going to be some kind of control seat.

[00:02:34]I'm wondering if I want to do a control seat itself or if I could fit on a full-on cockpit cuz I could theoretically get a I need to switch this to small grid.

[00:02:52]There we go. Now I got all the cockpit choices. I could fit something like a fighter cockpit on there cuz it would be nice to have a cockpit that I could pipe with one of the various vents that I have which are connected to things.

[00:03:09]You're not connected to anything. Yeah, there vent.

[00:03:13]So I can put that on the nose and my cockpit can at least give me oxygen while I'm away.

[00:03:19]That would probably be a good idea. So let's get this started. We'll get a landing gear on the ground so we have something to build off of and get the basic shape of this uh going. Now, I do have to worry about the fact that I don't have a jump like jump jets. So, my jetpack.

[00:03:40]So, I have to build it from the ground here. Hippity hoppity.

[00:03:47]And that way the two blocks there will make it so I can walk underneath it and I can work on its wheels and things.

[00:03:53]Excellent. So fighter cockpit and then we want a little bit of a body and then right we're going to need some power for this. I wonder if I have just enough stuff to scavenge a battery out of my pile.

[00:04:13]If not, I might have to cut the battery off of the semi.

[00:04:19]This two out of 20 for its power cells.

[00:04:26]That's 10 out of 20. That's pretty good.

[00:04:31]Get that out of there.

[00:04:34]What about you? You're 12 out of 20.

[00:04:36]Okay. So, you're the best. I just need eight power cells.

[00:04:41]Do I have eight power cells? Is a very good question. Power. Power. Power cells. I need to deposit everything.

[00:04:49]Clean up my inventory.

[00:04:53]Power.

[00:04:54]I have four.

[00:04:59]Is that it? No. Ah, I have 10. Okay, good. I do have enough to repair a battery. Wonderful. Okay, put those away.

[00:05:10]And we can do that. Just need the eight. I thought there was maybe some other stuff that it needed, but nope. It was all built up.

[00:05:18]And bada boom, we have a battery. Good.

[00:05:21]We have a spare battery for this thing.

[00:05:23]So, that'll be its fuel source.

[00:05:26]So, what I'm thinking is we're going to have this cockpit on the nose here. We're going to put you on the nose. There's this little bit here, this port. So that'll be perfect to line up with this vent fan.

[00:05:49]Rub rub rub. Hey, there we go. It attached. And now you can depressurize on. And now once this has power, just sitting in this cockpit should give me oxygen, which makes me very, very happy.

[00:06:06]Now a question comes of what do I do about storage on this thing? I'm thinking I go if I put battery immediately and then I could conceivably have medium cargo container and then connector and then that's it.

[00:06:26]And then on top of the battery I would put on a the gyros and things like that. And that's pretty much all I can do. And because I don't have a lot of thrust, I've just got the three. So, I'm going to need like all three of them for forward thrust.

[00:06:45]So, I can't make this thing super duper heavy.

[00:06:49]And I do have these other wheels that I added, which is the uh landing wheels mod. These small wheels, which I totally want to see what they look like.

[00:06:59]I have not used these before. We have small landing wheel motors. Okay.

[00:07:06]And then we have small W landing wheel steering. So I think we can just have like one wheel here in the front. And then in the back, either here or here.

[00:07:18]In the back we could probably have two wheels on either side. Have a little little bit of a trike. And I think this would do very well. So yeah, let's put that right there. And let's get it built up. Now, there is the unknown signal, but we do have 14 minutes to see how much we can build on this in 14 minutes. But if we get down to like four minutes left, I might just jump into the vehicles and d drive over there to grab it. But let's see. I think I can get a fair amount of this built up in just a few minutes here. I'm going to get prepped to put the battery on by adding in a little ramp for it and a platform so that I can slide it up here and get it into position and then we can hopefully get you good and relatively in position.

[00:08:20]Okay.

[00:08:22]Oh jeez.

[00:08:24]Again, the this improvised engineering mod is wanting to yeet me across the planet.

[00:08:31]Stay. Good.

[00:08:35]And then we'll just do uh in the center. And in the center there.

[00:08:43]And now I just need to push it in place.

[00:08:47]And it should snap into place.

[00:08:50]Wonderful. Now, if I get in here, I have oxygen. I have power.

[00:08:55]Wonderful. Ah, it's going so well. And now the same thing for this uh medium cargo.

[00:09:03]There we go. Cargo container is attached. And now the connector, which thankfully I can just place, but I think this isn't away now.

[00:09:16]Yep.

[00:09:23]Very good. That's a nice size, I think, for a a little scout plane. Not too big, not too small. Now, we just need to get the uh thrusters. We're going to be right here on top. And then a gyro right there. And we're we're laughing. Ready to go flying.

[00:09:44]Boom. Gyro.

[00:09:46]All right.

[00:09:50]And then let's get the wheels on the back here.

[00:09:54]Um then we can potentially drop it off of its struts and uh get it down onto its wheels.

[00:10:04]It'll be able to drive around a little bit.

[00:10:07]So here we want drive wheels.

[00:10:14]And I think I want them.

[00:10:18]Yeah, this will be fine right at the ve very end here.

[00:10:26]Not going to have much width, which is not good. I should probably give it a little bit more width.

[00:10:35]Uh cuz the wings are Digi's wings.

[00:10:43]And so they will start probably gear I want to say and go out like that.

[00:11:06]And so if I have a block or two out, there shouldn't be any issue with that.

[00:11:24]Just one block.

[00:11:29]I think that'll give it enough stability.

[00:11:34]We are at 3 minutes for that unknown signal. But honestly, I'm okay with it.

[00:11:39]The unknown signal can can go as we're doing okay. I think we don't need the food at from that today.

[00:11:51]If it did have any food, we'll get the next one.

[00:11:56]All right. with this. This should be capable of being taken off of its uh struts there and it should be able to taxi around but very slowly. But that's that's fine.

[00:12:13]This doesn't need to drive quickly while it's in on the ground. It needs to be able to fly in plane mode. Gyro.

[00:12:24]How much gyro authority is this giving me? I may need to add another gyro because it's I'm not feeling it very much. But we'll see. We'll do a test flight here soon. Now, I've got the three thrusters and what I'm thinking is we can mount two of them right here.

[00:12:49]It'll make it'll be very easy mount.

[00:12:54]And I actually want to see if two work.

[00:12:56]I kind of want to save a thruster.

[00:13:02]All right.

[00:13:04]So, slap a well pad on here.

[00:13:07]And I'm thinking right there for the middle of the thruster. So, the exhaust is here and the plume's coming out there. And just so that it's a a bit back from the connector. So, if for if I'm ever connecting and it accidentally um connects in a little bit too quickly or anything, I don't want to hit my thruster and cause damage.

[00:13:29]So, we got to get onto that end and then we'll lock that side. God freaking thing. Stop being so weird. I'll just push you into position.

[00:13:42]Good. All right, let's get it built and we're ready for a test flight.

[00:13:46]So, we have two thrusters. We have a gyro. We've got our cockpit here with our ability to get some oxygen out of it. So, I'm going to take these two thrusters and let's put them into a group.

[00:14:04]And we'll have that group to be toggle onoff. So, that way we can uh manage our flight here.

[00:14:12]And we'll also do a few things like uh switch lock here and battery recharge on off and that kind of stuff.

[00:14:28]So if I turn those off, we can taxi our way out here nice and slow.

[00:14:34]Get to a nice flat place.

[00:14:37]Thrusters on.

[00:14:40]Let's go.

[00:14:45]Okay, first thing I can say is I don't have enough gyro.

[00:14:53]I instantly can tell I don't have enough gyro.

[00:14:58]I just don't have the gyro authority in order to lift myself off the ground there. So, we need to go get some more of our gyros from storage and put them on. You gyro?

[00:15:09]I think I got more gyros floating around here in somewhere.

[00:15:15]deep in this pile of junk, which I should sort at some point.

[00:15:21]But I like my pile of junk. It's fun digging around in it.

[00:15:27]Ah!

[00:15:28]Oh god, everything's moving. You're a gyro, too.

[00:15:35]Jesus Christ. This pile of junk is going to kill me one day.

[00:15:41]All right.

[00:15:42]Let's get him up here.

[00:15:46]That has got to be the smoothest installation I have ever done.

[00:15:52]I didn't even mean for that to go so perfectly. It just worked. Am I getting Am I getting better at this or am I just getting lucky?

[00:16:07]Come on.

[00:16:11]And then this one is like flailing around.

[00:16:20]There we go. You're plugged in. Okay.

[00:16:22]Let's see what it's like with three gyroscopes.

[00:16:27]You're I don't want to override.

[00:16:31]Gyroscope. Gyroscope. Gyroscope.

[00:16:34]Now, let's see.

[00:16:36]Oh, yeah. There we go. Now I can ah now I have gyro authority. I can lift my goddamn nose.

[00:16:45]All right, let's back up. Also, I should add a uh vertical stabilizer, I think.

[00:16:52]Just cuz I can.

[00:16:55]Yeah, that looks good.

[00:16:59]So, now we should be able to take off.

[00:17:08]So, we should be able to gyro up enough that we start getting air. Whoa. Okay.

[00:17:16]Oh, okay. It's catching the Okay. I don't think vertical stabilizer is actually useful. I think it's catching the air and throwing me around. Oh my god.

[00:17:29]Was that the vertical stabilizer issue?

[00:17:35]No, it's not vertical stabilizer issue.

[00:17:38]Okay, it's just it's just freaking like flying a buck Bronco. Oh god.

[00:17:48]Landed.

[00:17:50]Holy crap. What is going on there? Why is this thing flying like crazy?

[00:17:57]I am so confused. I wonder if the wheels they were going nuts there at the thing at the back at the end. They were like spinning like crazy. What if I I have the group for my wheels and I toggle them off, but I have my thrusters on.

[00:18:23]No, we're still getting some major Oh my god.

[00:18:29]This thing is so hard to fly.

[00:18:34]I don't know why this thing is just freaking kicking in every s different way. And maybe it just doesn't have enough weight. This is only 10,000 kilos, which for a space engineer's design is tiny.

[00:18:51]Okay, we need one of the gyros maybe be an override.

[00:18:58]We have that and we have the ability to override controls on it.

[00:19:11]So if I can Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. The other gyros are able to overpower that one.

[00:19:21]But that one is holding me steady while I'm flying.

[00:19:25]Okay. I can actually fly like this.

[00:19:28]Okay, I'm doing it. I'm actually flying.

[00:19:32]Yes.

[00:19:33]What do I got? 47 minutes of flight time. And we're maxing out at 53 m a second over the surface.

[00:19:43]Oh yeah, baby. This is awesome. Heck, we even beat this unknown signal before it even freaking landed. I bet we have enough time to go up to that uh outpost up there on the on the hill and come back and get this unknown signal in time.

[00:20:01]We got 13 minutes to fly there and back.

[00:20:03]Easy.

[00:20:05]Oh, hell yes.

[00:20:08]So, I guess it isn't the wheels that are the issue.

[00:20:16]It's just something else. There's some other mechanic that's causing this thing to go absolutely haywire.

[00:20:26]But for now, hey, we're flying. That's all that really matters.

[00:20:32]And we're up. Oh, there it is. It's like a Oh, it's like a helicopter.

[00:20:40]This thing turns weirdly.

[00:20:42]Coming in for landing.

[00:20:46]And we're down.

[00:20:51]What is this?

[00:20:54]What the hell is this?

[00:21:01]Oh, this is cool.

[00:21:05]We also got cargo dainers in here. We got potential for for drops. Oh, we didn't get any. We didn't get anything good.

[00:21:18]Oh, come on. Let me through.

[00:21:23]What about on down here? Exhaust pipe. A decoy. A timer block. I don't really care about. There's a small cargo container. That's what the uh the grids were.

[00:21:37]Button panel hinge lock on off.

[00:21:42]Uh okay.

[00:21:48]Uh, I don't know what that did.

[00:22:00]What do we got in the cockpit here?

[00:22:05]Uh, timer block. An event controller.

[00:22:08]I'll take that.

[00:22:14]Come on. Give me.

[00:22:16]Fine. I don't care about the timer blocks.

[00:22:20]They're not really relevant to what I want to do. Oh, it had this beam block in front of it. That's why I couldn't come out. Yoink. There we go. Now I got my event controller.

[00:22:32]I like you, Mr. Event Controller. I'm going to install you probably right away. But what about the rest of this thing?

[00:22:42]Is there any hydrogen on this?

[00:22:52]Let's see.

[00:22:54]Sound block, battery, cargo containers.

[00:23:02]Nope. No hydrogen. That sucks.

[00:23:06]No batteries either. Just small batteries, right?

[00:23:12]Yeah, just small batteries. Not that I care about small batteries. They are too annoying to deal with.

[00:23:20]We can totally install an event controller on here.

[00:23:25]Uh if not, we just mag plate it down and take it home with us.

[00:23:30]Somebody will want to use it.

[00:23:34]Just need a motor. I can find a motor.

[00:23:45]God, the ambient sounds in this world are awesome.

[00:23:50]Freaking Tuscan raiders out there.

[00:23:57]Use for parking off and uh slap that event controller on there.

[00:24:05]Perfect.

[00:24:07]All right, 8 minutes to get to the end signal. Should be enough time. Let's go get it.

[00:24:13]Turn off our parking and lift off. Easy peasy.

[00:24:19]And we should once we get ourselves aligned here, just be able to essentially aim at it and glide this entire way down. Not using any power.

[00:24:35]We're very slowly. There we go. Now we're very slowly or we were gaining speed. We got to just find our right pitch for glide.

[00:24:46]And what I'd like to do on four and five here, I'd like to go and set thrust, set an override percentage for zero, and set an override percentage for 100%.

[00:25:02]So that way I can toggle between my thrusts when I need it.

[00:25:09]And then maybe also a good thing to do would be decrease and increase override cuz I should be able to find a nice healthy medium here.

[00:25:25]Nice middle ground because I don't need full thrust at all times. I can probably get away with like half thrust or potentially I don't need to have that much control.

[00:25:40]Let's just set it to be set override percentage 50 and then set override percentage 100. There go.

[00:25:49]So half thrust, full thrust, and no thrust.

[00:25:54]So, I've sort of got my like turn the things off, get to cruising speed, and then my takeoff speed.

[00:26:04]Cuz if I'm just flying flat and level here, 46 m a second at half thrust for an hour of flight time, I can't complain about that. That's awesome.

[00:26:22]So we can go back into Whoa. Hello.

[00:26:31]What the hell? Whoa. What the is going on?

[00:26:37]As soon as I turned off the the things that my Oh my god. I turned off the overrides and then my my Okay, stop.

[00:26:50]My plane just started going crazy.

[00:26:53]My override still on? Okay, no, they're not.

[00:26:57]Jesus Christ. I have to figure out why this plane is going so crazy.

[00:27:03]It shouldn't be this crazy.

[00:27:08]Okay. Okay. I'm going to have to come back here.

[00:27:15]I'm 100% going to have to come back here. This is a modular cargo container.

[00:27:19]I want to put this onto my uh my rover.

[00:27:28]Hey, glamour grinder. I normally don't get stuff. That's awesome. Yeah. Okay.

[00:27:33]Yeah, we're coming back. We're grabbing this thing on the way back. We're just going to mark this real quick. Uh modular cargo. We're going to go grab that. I don't know what's going on with this. I can't reverse. There's something weird about this. I think it might be the wheels.

[00:27:52]When I get back, I'm going to replace those wheels and see if the issue goes away.

[00:27:58]Cuz look at him spin. Look at him be all stupid there.

[00:28:17]All right, we are back. And I guess we don't really need this anymore.

[00:28:25]You can fall down. You know, you are no longer attached to the ground.

[00:28:30]You are welcome to fall.

[00:28:34]You know, kind of feel like I got to go.

[00:28:40]Almost got that one.

[00:28:47]Ah, I got that one.

[00:28:52]I guess that thing's floating up there for now. Or I can just shoot it.

[00:29:00]Give me a gun.

[00:29:05]There we go.

[00:29:08]Some nice confetti.

[00:29:10]All right, first things first. I need a snack. And let's get this thing up on a stand so that I can replace its wheels.

[00:29:36]which I guess we'll just do.

[00:29:41]Honestly, we just do a dra dragging one by ones or just 2 by twos. I guess it's unfortunate. It's going to look kind of silly, but whatever.

[00:30:01]>> And I kind of need that to be in a slightly different place, but oh well.

[00:30:05]I'll get it working.

[00:30:22]cannot withdraw three large steel tubes.

[00:30:25]Do I not have three large steel tubes?

[00:30:28]Oh no, I need three large steel tubes.

[00:30:32]Uh, where can I steal large steel tubes from?

[00:30:42]Typically large thrusters. Those have a good amount of them.

[00:30:46]You no already stolen already stolen from those.

[00:30:54]You no I guess this guy he's got 12. Not using him right now.

[00:31:05]Seems like the best way to get some wheels. I also have to remind myself that I don't have any large steel tubes right now and that when I go out I definitely need to go and scavenge wheels if I see them.

[00:31:17]But just I just healed.

[00:31:22]Then I get hit by a great big wad of debris.

[00:31:28]And we got to have eat a little bit more crisps.

[00:31:32]All right, let's see if this this silliness works.

[00:31:36]Now turn our gyro off.

[00:31:46]Ah, it's perfectly stable. Yeah, it's entirely those wheels. What the hell?

[00:31:51]This is the kind of behavior I would expect.

[00:31:54]Yeah, whatever.

[00:31:58]Our plane works. Our plane works actually really well now. Like extraordinarily well now. Woohoo. Uh, we still do have some time even though it is a sandstorm. Let's uh yeet ourselves over to this abandoned settlement.

[00:32:14]We will lock our heading with the gyro. Go to 50% power and we are coasting like beautifully.

[00:32:26]Oh yeah, baby.

[00:32:32]100 meters off the deck. Coasting along.

[00:32:38]So there is something there.

[00:32:43]I'm not sure what it is.

[00:32:47]Let's go do a flyby.

[00:33:07]Uh, crash heli. Okay, sure. Let's check this out. Ow. Okay, that was a little bit harder landing.

[00:33:14]Let's check our our wings survived it.

[00:33:19]You good? Have I been here before?

[00:33:23]I might have. This thing looks pretty stripped. Yeah, I think I've been here before a few episodes ago. That's all right. Good to know.

[00:33:34]But we can up up and away and head on to the next grid.

[00:33:42]and can use our cockpit's uh sort of scanner here to be able to see grids.

[00:33:53]What we got going on here?

[00:33:59]Uh rover of some kind and some signs.

[00:34:10]H.

[00:34:12]Nothing much here. Just a cargo container.

[00:34:15]Battery.

[00:34:17]Unknown signal over there. We can go grab that.

[00:34:20]Nothing much.

[00:34:29]Up and away.

[00:34:32]I might have to install some bumpers on my uh ends of my wings here so I don't uh break them off. It probably be a good thing.

[00:34:44]Oh man, this is so I'm 7 and a half kilometers from home here. I'm just ripping out onto the horizon so quick.

[00:34:52]There's a couple grids over there I'll have to take a look at in a moment as soon as I get this unknown signal. Or honestly do that first. The unknown signal is still landing.

[00:35:03]There's multiple grids in this area.

[00:35:17]Look like a power transmission things.

[00:35:21]Looks like some kind of something here.

[00:35:28]Oh, what is this?

[00:35:31]Is that what I think it is?

[00:35:34]That's a goddamn solar panel. Oh my god.

[00:35:39]That's That's useful. That's very useful.

[00:35:44]Uh what else is this?

[00:35:49]Some kind of drone. Little flying contraption.

[00:35:58]But we've got a guy's he's got his lawn chair. I love it.

[00:36:05]And we have a solar panel. Okay, we're marking this immediately.

[00:36:09]Solar panel.

[00:36:13]He's got a little engineer plushy.

[00:36:15]Taking that.

[00:36:18]What else?

[00:36:21]Ice. I won't say no to that. Absolutely.

[00:36:25]And there's some hydrogen here. Cool.

[00:36:31]Well, yeah, we absolutely have to come back with a vehicle to get this solar panel cuz I can't really fly it home.

[00:36:41]Little bit much, but I I can at least find it. And then we can go out on a big scavenging hunt another day and get all this stuff. That's so useful.

[00:36:55]And also this h there's some pretty good components on this thing as well.

[00:37:00]Yeah, we definitely come back and grind this thing down. Let's go get that uh unknown signal now.

[00:37:25]A little bit of kelp crisps as well. I could Oh. Oh, this is the flying unknown signal.

[00:37:35]Oo, claim the grid and turn those thrusters off.

[00:37:50]Nice.

[00:37:54]Can I flip you over at least, please?

[00:37:58]Thank you.

[00:38:03]Oh, no. No. No. I had you right there.

[00:38:05]Stay. Good. Good signal.

[00:38:10]No items.

[00:38:13]Some seeds. Never really going to use them, but some seeds. But this is for little thrusters.

[00:38:21]That could be very useful. Uh oh man, I really want to take this back with me, but this thing's heavy.

[00:38:32]How am I going to get this in? I'm going have to cut away at some stuff.

[00:38:36]And I think it's what I had to do on the other one as well that I have.

[00:38:44]Um, put uh I guess one there and one there.

[00:38:58]Okay.

[00:39:00]Could you not? Thank you.

[00:39:12]There we go.

[00:39:17]All right.

[00:39:19]Well, we've already seen the power that is what this plane can do for us.

[00:39:27]In just a part of a day, cuz I only really got this plane functioning like as the sun was setting, we were able to find a solar panel, several new thrusters, go seven kilometers away from our base easily.

[00:39:47]So, I can I can see us doing some really awesome scouting trips where we're just gonna fly off and we're just gonna go like, "Oh, there's an abandoned settlement right there.

[00:39:58]I'll be there in a couple minutes."

[00:40:01]Like, I need to come back out here first thing tomorrow morning. But I think for now we're just going to uh get home out of this weather and uh put the probably find a place for this thing to charge and get ready for an entire day of flying tomorrow. Hopefully the sandstorms have uh blown over and there's no issues there. But oh yeah, we're gonna get so much stuff done and hopefully try to hit up like a dozen of the base spawns so that we can look for more of the construction frames cuz we need five to get that moisture evaporator running.

[00:40:57]And then we can I think just need one more unless we can find a uh O2 H2 generator.

[00:41:05]And then we can start stockpiling hydrogen and we can stockpile it on our hydrogen rover. And that's going to be the plan. And then once we've got that, we can finally start putting together our escape. But we are in the search right now. We are desperately needing four well four more construction frames for the evaporator and one more after that for an O2 H2 generator.

[00:41:37]That's going to be it for now. Couple more kilometers to get home.

[00:41:42]Thanks for watching and good hunting out there, fellow space engineers.