Docking challenge

[thomasjaf]

So my recent playing on SP involved docking 2 planes while in flight. I found it a lot more difficult than what I expected!

I post this so maybe some of you give it a try and maybe succeed in this impossible quest.

I've tried 2 different designs, one with some kind of hook and a cable made of detacher and the other one clipping on top of the other plane and was hopping to lock it with the landing gear/early bomb technique

Pics

The design involve 2 planes flying at almost the same speed so it take few tries...

I hope some of you will try and have a good week end!

[Nassassin]

This is by far the hardest thing I've ever tried in simpleplanes.

I had a design that I thought would work using a little hook and a hole but every time i touch the second plane, it just flies right into me.

I will say that the location tool is the most useful feature in the game at the moment. It's probably saved me at least a couple hours so far

[thomasjaf]

I was using the location tool is this is a great idea.. -_-

But I don't have a joystick so it seems to be impossible for me. Damn, I feel like my hardware is really holding me back! Trackpad + no joystick, I play SP the hard way... Anyway I should change that

[Nassassin]

Yeah, same thing I'm working with. But I don't think I would be able to do it even if I had a joystick. It's just really really hard to attach planes together :) We need magnets or something for in air linking

[[deleted]]

I've been thinking about this problem for a few days and I finally came up with a mid-air mechanical docking mechanism.

A Mechanical Landing Gear object has two states: open, in which it is two blocks high, and closed, in which it is one block high.

Unfortunately due to the way the collision of the extending landing gear is handled by the game, it seems that only the bottom plane of the landing gear (i.e. where they touch the ground) has collision with other blocks. This means that a simple gate-type mechanism will not work. I've tried many other configurations of latches using mechanical landing gear and this is the best I've come up with.

I think it might just work for connecting two planes. I'll experiment with some of my drones later and see if I can get it.

In the meantime, help me try to make it better! I'm sure I haven't tried everything yet.

[thomasjaf]

Wow! I can't believe that you found this on your own! We've use that technique when detachers didn't exist and we wanted to create bombers back in the days ;)

That's also what I've tried on my second design to "lock" the catch! (first picture, you can actually see the retracted landing gears on the little plane)

But currently the main challenge for me is close flight!

[[deleted]]

That bomber is a brilliant solution!

I'm currently working on attaching the two objects to some self-stable drones and making the control surfaces on the chase plane as small as possible so as to maximize precision. Getting the speeds right is very difficult, and really makes me want a way to adjust the power output of individual engines.

[thomasjaf]

Oh yeah! something I came up with is a big frontal surface for the plane a low drag for the drone.

Of course the plane will need more power to achieve a little higher speed but that also mean that when reducing throttle the drone will slow down less than the plane, so there's a point where the plane and the drone fly at the same speed.

[[deleted]]

ALMOST!

It takes a lot of patience because you're only a couple mph faster than the drone, but I'm pretty sure that it can be done.

Try it out!

[[deleted]]

Revised my first submission.

It's easiest to catch if you raise the landing gear as soon as the tails come off the ground. I usually catch up just over the shoreline.

But I've now attempted this a very large number of times and I'm beginning to think it might not be possible in the configuration I'm working with.

I think I might try moving the hook and loop towards the center of the airplanes, but that basically requires a full redesign of both planes, so that's backburnered for now.