I wonder whether people realize what a messy and complicated bit of hardware a rope is... After much blood, sweat and tears, I have now a rope code which performs at least plausible in the air and on the ground. The rope can take a load as well as just dangle and it can be reeled in - and one of the most complicated things, it interacts with the ground based on your history (it does ground motion and reeling on a segment by segment basis, so it doesn't move very smoothly but in 20 cm increments - can't have everything I guess...):
Rope lowered from the Alouette hovering still - the rope coils on the ground:
Hovering to the left partially uncoils the rope and straightens it along the flightpath:
Stopping the left hover and hovering forward instead changes the path along which the rope uncoils (also note how the hanging piece of rope feels the ground drag force and is no longer straight):
Continuing to hover forward aligns the fully uncoiled rope with the flightpath (reversing the hover would coil it up again on the endpoint - while this isn't actually the correct dynamics, it's better than just sliding it back...):
Hovering right changes the direction of the alignment after a transition period:
Reeling the rope in makes it dangle...
... and lowering erases all dragging history and coils it again on the ground, hanging straight and without tension:
I'll soon have some documentation written - anyone who needs ropes dangling from his aircraft/helicopter/airplane is advised to get in touch now and see whether the code is suitable for his use case.