@warpus: i would call that a bloody anomaly, no doubt.
Meamwhile at Duna...
First step to find anomalies is to map duna, so it is a work for the ion mothership equiped with a nice mapsat system. The worst part wast to change the equatorial orbit to an highly inclined one, but the ion engines allow some degree of freedom thanks to the high autonomy. However due to the long and ence imprecise burns it almost deorbited in the proccess. After 14 accelerated hours orbiting dune the map was ready and two anomalies were detected, no a lot but better than nothing.
To choose one was not easy, finally it was decided it would be the most southern one which was placed in the middle of a deep and perfectly circular crater (maybe the remains of a meteor?) mostly because it is more to the east and it would be boring to wait for the northern one to reach the daylight zone.
The second step was to decouple the tricopter from the kethane platform which was orbiting duna too. In the deorbiting phase the tricopter will be assisted by a little rocket. Of course not precious liquid fuel is going to be spended to reach an inclined orbit, so the tricopter would land near the equator and reach the anomaly using its own means. The chossen landing spot was some point at the lowlands, so the tricopter would have more time to brake in the atmosphere before crashing against the floor. (at the pic you can see still attached to the platform another balloon artifact, this one designed to fly at laythe)
At first it was a nice descend, however the chutes were not very well placed apparently becuase while they stopped the descend, once deployed the tricopter started to rotate crazily like a huge anemometer while the ground was getting closer. It was funny but dangerous (sadly i had not time to take any screenshot) so it was needed to cut the chutes and deploy the ballon. At the lowlands, air pressure is enough to make the tricopter float using only the ballon, so the final approach was pretty comfy.
Once in the ground the rotors were deployed and to the air again. The balloon alone gives enough lift until 1200m, going higher than that required rotors. The max ceilling is around 4300 meters, but at that point the air is to thin and the horizontal propeller can catch enough air so speed gets lower, it was question of finding the idoneal altitude where air was thin enough to reduce drag but dense enough for the propeller works properly, so the cruise altitude, which was around 3800 meters, speed being 42 m/s.
Maneuvering the tricopter is interesting, becuase you must play with the balloon, the rotors and the propeller, which is connected to the rotors (i guess i am the second spanish guy discovering the autogyro) fortunatelly it can be set in reverse to stop advancing. So to go at max speed at a low altitude you must maximize engines and deinflate the balloon, and to slow down you must cut the engines and inflate the balloon again.
It can also fly with the ballon completely retracted, flying like a normal chopper without the huge balloon drag and pitching the nose down, reaching a max speed of +70 m/s, but this way the max altitude is about 2500, not enough to fly over the highlands and since the engines must work at full power the batteries get empty quickly.
Well, the fly was without a problem and after less than two hours finally it reached the crater. However not anomaly was in sight, the zone was explored in detail but nothing appeared. What is wrong there? Is this the right place? Is mapsat a joke? Is this a new kind of invisible anomaly?
Meanwhile the misterious is solved, it was decided to make a tour to the southern ice cap which was not too far away and take some beautyful pics. Here they are:
(BTW although the main objective has not been reached (yet) this time not reloads were needed. It seems i am getting the knack of all this)
PD: Damn, writting these reports is even more funny that doing the missions itself!
)
my platform which currently is orbiting duna carries a tricopter (well, i have some strict rules: the new platform cant weight more than the old one, since a tricopter weights five tons only it will fall easily into the limits). So i will scan all the place and then land the tricopter to take a look.
