Rotodyne A-2

The Rotodyne A-2 is a Rotor-assisted jet aircraft. It has decent VTOL and limited hovering capabilities, along with a pair of fuel-efficient Jet engines. Landing the Rotodyne vertically can be difficult, especially without reading the reccomended flight instructions listed below:

1. Taking Off:
   To take off with the rotodyne, you must first turn on its jet engines, and turn the rotor blade pitch up to roughly 50% (use slider 1).
   Next, click on the tip jet activation group, and begin to slowly throttle up. After 2-3 seconds, turn off the tip jets (the tip jets use a limited supply of RCS, and does not have throttle control, so use sparingly). If you followed these steps correctly, your aircraft should have experienced a slight pitch upwards after throttling up, but began responding to pitch, yaw, and roll controls soon after.

2. Flying the Rotodyne:
   The rotors of the Rotodyne are less useful when in lateral flight, so it is reccomended that you set their pitch to 0 (using slider 1). Leaving the Rotors pitch unchanged can result in the craft acting “jittery” under most circumstances. When the Rotor pitch is set to 0, the craft should fly similar to a conventional jet (albeit slow).

3. Landing the Rotodyne:
   To land the Rotodyne, first set rotor pitch to roughly 25% (slider 1), and throttle down. At higher speeds (>150m/s) the craft will begin to climb vertically. This effect should diminish as the Rotodyne begins to slow down. When landing, it is reccomended to use the navball to get a general sense of the crafts angle of attack. To slow down laterally, pitch the entire craft upwards manually, and pitch back down to 0 degrees once you reach speeds of < 20m/s. If your craft is still high above the ground, you might want to perform banking turns to speed up descent, by rolling to 45 degrees and then allowing it to freefall like a feather in the wind. Once you are closer to the ground, you should take back control and perform the maneuver previously discussed to slow down lateral velocity. If the Rotodyne is dropping to fast, you can temporarily pitch up the rotors for a rapid change in vertical velocity. However, you should set it back to 25% afterwards. In general, you should attempt to land the Rotodyne like you would a typical helicopter, but keep in mind the Rotodyne can feel much less controllable than most helicopters.