Alternatively, if you're returning from a high orbit or from an interplanetary trip, you can try repeated shallow passes through the atmosphere. First of all, since the launch happens horizontally, you will have to include landing gears, and you will most likely want to include jet engines for the first stage for excellent fuel and cost efficiency. This can easily cause you to crash on landing. Mechjeb Spaceplane Guidance. If your Mk3 design jam-packed full of heavy gear can't seem to survive reentry, one option might be to reduce the payload a bit. First, I'm sure this is WAY overengineered, but I haven't gotten to the point of caring about that yet. @TheEnvironmentalist There is one more method I'm sure would work in your case, although I didn't write about it because I think it's cheesy and wouldn't solve the root problem. Also, excessive use of the rudder usually causes the plane to spin out of control and crash. Display as a link instead, Having landing gears near the front and back of your aircraft can also help to ensure that you won't break your engines or smash your cockpit into the runway. Landing can be trickier for spaceplanes since they are designed for higher speeds than other aircraft and may not be able to fly level at speeds low enough for an easy landing (<50 m/s). Similar principles apply when finding suitable landing sites away from the KSC. They all had to use the runway drop to take off. They all had to use the runway drop to take off. "Type E" is the smallest you should have, and you want a set of those connected at the back of the fuselage. Kerbal Space Program 2's simulation is a lot more in-depth than its predecessor, where it was feasible for any wannabe Goddard to punch through the atmosphere with overwhelming thrust. Your aircraft might just be too heavy - there might not be enough wing lift for it to take off the ground. - SF. When dealing with high-speed landings, you may touch down too quickly and cause the front of the plane to smack into the runway. If you keep all of the fuel in the front, you may find that your center of mass drifts backwards as your fuel drains. Even a small deviation can cause serious instability, making your aircraft bounce and jolt left and right even during takeoff. They are able to operate at higher altitudes and can even continue operating in a vacuum by switching to a rocket mode. And at the extreme, producing down force, which I'm sure would cause more gear issues. You want to start by attaching a Mk 0 Liquid Fuel Tank under the wings, making sure you're mirrored so it goes under both wings. This ensures that your aircraft will go up once it achieves a high enough speed, and also helps with placing ailerons. If you use an Advanced SAS, and raise your front landing wheel so that it is higher than the rear wheels, by just turning the SAS on and going full throttle, due to the 10 degree angle of the plane, it should eventually take off by itself. . For heavy rockets, it might be required to use structure to space the gears away from the body to allow more pitch. More mass will mean it takes more drag to slow down on reentry, which will mean you go faster at lower altitudes and experience more reentry heating. You want to get up to get the gear tucked away and reduce drag. I can not get any aircraft-style spaceplane take off from the runway, they will stay on until the end, where the engines crash into the ground and explode. Your previous content has been restored. You probably won't have much luck landing the fuselage intact if your Mk3 plane gets its wings scorched off on reentry. If you've been able to successfully re-enter on previous low orbit test runs, you should be able to use this method to achieve similar rates of success once you've slowed down sufficiently. Subscribe! To slow down faster, you can increase the braking strength of your rear wheels. http://www.youtube.com/user/Cruzanak?. . So the answer is: in the SPH, click on your front gear, set the spring to .5 and set the damper to .5 -- then save it and give it another shot at launching. Is there a way to rectify this problem. Throttle up to full, activate SAS, stage to start the engine (you'll only have one stage here), and start rolling (or sliding) down the runway! For some reason, when the plane is trying to take off and pulling up, the plane begins to bounce on it's front wheels (the back wheel kicks up), whichhinders the plane taking off. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account. Keep in mind that lift rating and control surfaces are not connected: lift rating is basically the capacity of your wings to sustain the weight of your spaceplane, while control surfaces are parts of wing that can be moved to change the flow of the air around the plane and through this change a plane's direction, angle of attack or inclination. Secondly, it would suggest that your spaceplane's center of lift is too far forward compared to its center of gravity (causing the uncontrollable spin). - Have enough lift, either by a big wing area or high speed. However, I want to place my wheels where i want to and not only on X parallel surfaces. What you ought to be using is the Swept Wings and Elevon 1s instead of the Delta-Deluxe Winglets. You may also want to deploy your landing gears to increase your drag, as well as airbrakes if you have them. I scoured the entire web for a solution, but found no working solution or at least dont work every time. Drive gently off the runway and use the huge grassy field to take off, without care in the world about the plane veering to a side. If the front landing gear touches down first and has its brakes on, it's going to make the rest of your aircraft pivot around it as it's pressed into the ground. When your altitude reaches 35km, start pulling up gently. Upload or insert images from URL. DO NOT ANGLE THEM! It helps to have a center of gravity which is close to your engines so that the landing gears can be close to both. To survive re-entry, it's recommended to start your approach back into the atmosphere at a shallow angle, ideally with a periapsis of around 30-35 km. Hot ground causes air to rise, cooling as it moves away from the heat, which leads to increased density and a resulting fall back down. This can turn into a fatal scenario if the center of mass gets behind the center of lift and you enter a flat spin. Go on, and take the plane capsule which looks like a converted fuel storage device. All rights reserved. Even with a stable landing, you may find that you don't have enough room on your desired landing area to come to a stop before you reach the end. All I have are the parts from the Aerodynamics tech and the gear bay (wheels). Remember how you want your center of lift/drag to be behind the center of gravity? Note: This tutorial was last updated for version 1.7.2. KSC's runway is slightly north of Kerbin's equator and perfectly flat. A good example of this is at the KSC runway when landing on a 90 degree bearing. KSP v.22 Takeoff Troubleshooting Guide/Tutorial Lots of info to help get your plane off the runway! Check out the following guide for some good info: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/52080-Basic-Aircraft-Design-Explained-Simply-With-Pictures This allows you to takeoff at lower speeds and on shorter runways, and likewise for landing. This page was last edited on 19 February 2020, at 07:08. For your first flight, it may be easiest to ignore yaw altogether and just maneuver by rolling slightly and pitching. Either one of those being misaligned will cause instability on the runway during takeoff (and the engines misaligned will cause flight problems). You can post now and register later. So I have played the game for 200 hours and I love it. All trademarks are property of their respective owners in the US and other countries. [KSP 2] I'm trying really hard to make a Mun capable ship but this rocket . If the problem has to do with lift then travelling very slowly, possibly even slower than that, should counteract the effects of lift and you won't drift nearly as much. the I place on the wing and attach landing gear on those, it sometimes takes a few tries to find the right spot but well worth it. They all had landing gear placed at the front and at the back. How do I fix this? Notice how the landing gears are placed out on the wings. Another trick is to move the rear landing gear forward, closer to the center of gravity. However, it's not a matter of "atmosphere or not", just a matter of air pressure which decreases rapidly with altitude. It is due to the spinning up of the engines. 2022 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. How to Fly a Plane - KSP Beginner's Tutorial - YouTube 0:00 / 25:53 How to Fly a Plane - KSP Beginner's Tutorial Mike Aben 30.6K subscribers 78K views 2 years ago KSP - Absolute Beginner's. EDIT: It was the b9 procedural wings. Do you have new pics after you moved the rear wheels forward? A plane is any craft which flies horizontally in an atmosphere utilizing lift primarily generated by wings, winglets, or control surfaces. 4. FAR says it would take an Angle of Attack of 24.3 degrees at 119 m/s to generate enough lift to get it to take off. All trademarks are property of their respective owners in the US and other countries. As you approach 35-50 km, your aircraft will most likely level itself out, at which point you can try aiming about five degrees above the horizon line. Need to move them up. Safety note: Disable the brakes on the front landing gear. Because of how small Kerbin is and how high its gravity is, a perfectly flat surface just north of the equator will cause planes taking off to bias to the right of the runway, as if they were rolling downhill. The SSTO I took to Laythe recently has only one minor flaw using this design, I have to raise the landing gear and pull back slightly to take off. If there is, I would have found it long ago. Please consider starting a new thread rather than reviving this one. Close to empty tanks will allow you to fly slower, decelerate faster, and reduce touchdown strain. Heavy transport seaplane inspired to the Soviet Beriev A-40 Albatros which also appears in Evangelion 2.0! You can also use parachutes on landing, but care must be taken to ensure that an adequate length of runway remains since you'll only get one chance to use them. This thread is quite old. Finally you need to make sure it's all balanced, this means the centre of lift marker needs to be very slightly behind the centre of mass marker. The problem could be due to several issues. Conversely, if you keep all of the fuel in the back, you may find that your center of mass gradually drifts so far in front of your center of lift that you can't keep your nose up anymore, also potentially resulting in a fatal scenario. I feel tat it is either due to the symmetry placement in this game being inaccurate or certain parts where i anchor my landing gears on are not perfectly symmetrical and the physics calculation is just too sensitive about even the slightest misalignment. But also check to make sure that your wheels are placed symmetrically and your engines are aligned properly. If your rear wheels are too far back the aircraft will not be able to pivot on the wheels and lift its nose up. Privacy Policy. Next you need landing gear. It is also common to add an Inline Clamp-O-Tron, which, unlike all the other docking ports, can be placed in the middle of the spacecraft (a handy solution, since there is not much space at either end of the craft) to allow your plane to dock with space stations or other spacecrafts. In an aircraft with two or more engines, this can potentially cause you to enter a flat spin which can be unrecoverable if your center of mass is behind your center of lift. This aircraft can takeoff at just above 50 m/s and can glide for a few minutes without engine. everytime i make a powered plane, it always flips over and points backwards after i take off. There are multiple ways to place them: Ailerons control the roll of the aircraft, and are (almost) always placed on the wings, as far out as possible and as centered (compared to the center of mass) as could be. Ideally, the wings should be tilted upward at an angle about 3-5 from the fuselage for optimal lift-to-drag ratio.[1]. These have an ISP of 800 in a vacuum which is significantly better than all other rocket motors except the very weak IX-6315 ion rocket. Increasing the number of intakes will not allow you to continue using your jet engines at higher altitudes. I was wrong. Enable mirror symmetry to save yourself some alignment effort. https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/124380-wing-lift-amp-wing-lift-to-drag-ratio-charts/, https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?title=Tutorial:_Spaceplane_basics&oldid=100619. After externsive testing and bloodpressure rise, results: it doesnt matter where you place the wheels, as long as they are not angled on the X (nose-tail) axis. Plane wobble during takeoff - KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials - Kerbal Space Program Forums Is there a way to place landing gear so that i can guarantee my plane can remain stable on the runway even at high speed in excess of 200m/s? Clear editor. An alternative is making sure you have complete control of the craft. I have built lots of spaceplanes. The Mk1 fuselage parts only tolerate up to 2000K, while Mk2 fuselages tolerate up to 2500K, and Mk3 fuselages tolerate up to 2700K. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Now stick a jet engine on the back, and don't forget to put an air intake or other air-sucking device (you can find them in aerodynamics) on the airplane. If your spaceplane is able to fly and land steadily at low speeds but just you're having difficulty slowing down as you approach the runway, try to reach your desired speed first and then approach the runway in almost level flight. Geometric shape of the body you attach the landing gear to. Then you want to put something called a "Small Circular Intake" on the front of the tank, and a "J-20 Juno" engine on the back of the tank. When your nose is stable at about 10 degrees above the horizon, pull up hard and keep it pulled. You can deploy your chutes just prior to touchdown for rapid deceleration. Clear editor. This is also the same reason why planes start rolling toward the middle of the runway; because both ends of the runway are further from . It provides a wider, more stable wheel base while keeping the wheels straight up and down (no camber). Why is it doing this? This is also the same reason why planes start rolling toward the middle of the runway; because both ends of the runway are further from the center of Kerbin than the middle (because it's totally flat), the runway is a valley from a gravitational frame of reference. 2 will usually do nicely, but 3 or 4 are usually better (but of course heavier, and this tutorial assumes you use 2). Make sure that all of your landing gears are pointing in exactly the same direction. One final point to consider is the mass you're planning to store in the fuselage. But, likely guess is your craft is not producing enough lift. A control surface with 100% control surface portion will weigh twice as much as a wing with the same lift would weigh. Here is an example of landing gear place on a complex geometric surface: Unstable plane Rear landing gears only seems to work on cylindrical fuselage, if you place them on a fuselage intake or anything other than a cylinder, the wheels can behave strangely. Or maybe launching it in a vertical, Space Shuttle-style config. Mk2 aircraft may be able to get away with it, but even then it's often best to space them further out. Rapiers generally provide less thrust than a Whiplash at speeds below mach 2, but provide more thrust at higher speeds. Managed to fix it with some different wings; idk what was going on with the other ones but I was just thr FAT aeroplane wings. Here, the. Although I usually only need 50 m/s for most planes to wobble out of control. The same principle applies here. Espaol - Latinoamrica (Spanish - Latin America), http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/65638-Basic-Airplane-Space-Plane-Aero-Tutorial. This aircraft handles smoothly, no matter how you turn, roll and flip this aircraft, it will never lose control. I have doubled the max stress value for aerodynamics failure in FAR for every category. This makes them a very effective choice for SSTOs since they do a good job of getting maximum velocity out of air-breathing mode, and then allow you to use oxidizer without needing the added weight and drag of a separate rocket engine. (However, it must be noted that it is bad practice to use ailerons as elevators since it makes it hard to control the aircraft), The rudder moves the tip of the plane left and right; it is rarely used, since it is hard to put it both up and down due to the possibility of hitting the ground. For an example, see the A-10 Warthog's landing gears: link. How wide is the base. If you pull up and cause the tailwheel etiher to hit the ground if it was already up or push it into the ground if it was still in contact, you will create bounciness. This allows you to avoid the extra weight and mass of additional fuselage parts, so you only have to deal with the extra weight of the fuel itself. To do this, take a few barrels of your jet fuel, stick them on the back of your aircraft. Brakes in the back keep you stable. Also note that shock cone intakes appear to provide the best air supply at all mach speeds, and unlike other air intakes, they do not decline in performance beyond certain mach speeds. 1. make sure your main gear is not wobbling (ie. I made a KSP replica of the Horten Ho 229 while trying to make a short takeoff plane.If you have any questions or suggestions, let me know in the comments.My. (Idea is moot, if you haven't unlocked them yet.) Note that canards are somewhat more efficient than horizontal tail fins since canards provide an upward force with upward rotation, and downward force with downward rotation. Also, lift is usually placed in the middle-to-back of the wing, depending on the shape. Slowly pitch up to avoid overheating. All you need to do is add landing gear (one right before the cockpit, and two on the tips or middle of the wings), and you're done! This would indicate two problems. To avoid swerving on takeoff and landing, it is strongly recommended to turn off or reduce the strength of the front brake on your aircraft, as well as to reduce the friction control. S5 moon rocket by lightbreaker_64. 2022 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/13851-The-woes-of-building-a-space-plane?highlight=woes+spaceplane. The issue is my plane rolls very sharply to the left any time I pitch up. Paste as plain text instead, I also used Intake build aid to balance the intakes. I worked through the tutorials and I think my problem was most often a lack of lift, or perhaps more accurately sufficient control surfaces. When I use it for spaceplane guidance it keeps me on the correct heading, but the flight is very busy sine wave of a path. Spaceplanes generally ascend best on a 10-30 degree incline, often leveling out towards higher altitudes to pick up the maximum horizontal velocity before switching to rocket motors. Wow, if you need 200 m\s to take off, you should think about adding more lift. These occur at their worst when your center of gravity is far ahead of your rear landing gears and you have a heavy plane at high speeds and a high angle of attack on landing, resulting in your front landing gear rapidly striking the runway after your rear landing gears touchdown. Note: This is ONLY to be used to report spam, advertising, and problematic (harassment, fighting, or rude) posts. You main problem is your landing gear. While having the same stock parts as in the VAB, spaceplane design is obviously quite different from pure rocket design. Also, try this mod: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/99660-0-25-Adjustable-Landing-Gear-v1-0-4%28doors-fixed%29-Nov-14 (still works in 0.90 if you get updated firespitter.dll). So I have played the game for 200 hours and I love it. Depending on which surface you place them on, they might not be parallel to the axis in which case. KSP 2 speculation: I believe terraforming will be a feature of the game. After that, you face the challenge of touching down on the ground and coming to a stop safely without rolling and breaking off a wing or taking a nosedive and blowing your aircraft up on touchdown, or rolling off of the runway and into the ocean. I'm trying to do some of the surveying and taxi-ing missions because now that's all the games giving me but flying with a regular rockets just not working for me. Otherwise, you can either shift your wings till it's right (though this may crowd them near the back), or you can very slightly rotate the big wings so they're slightly higher near the front of the plane. All of these problems can be exacerbated or reduced by adjusting the amount of fuel in your tanks during landing. Consider placing your rear landing gears close to the spaceplane's center of mass, but be careful to avoid an engine collision with the runway. Having said all that, these are the issues you must contend with. One FL-T100 tank can't power any rocket into space, yet a Shock Cone Intake, a Mk1 Inline Cockpit, a half-filled FL-T100 and a J-X4 "Whiplash" Turbo Ramjet Engine aimed in the general direction of "up" will let you laugh your way past the 70km mark at nearly 1200m/s. My plane tends to wobble on the runway with the stock game so i decided to download FAR, but the problem still persists. As long as you're in space, your spaceplane won't differ from any spacecraft: you will probably want to add batteries and generators to prevent the command pod from running out of power. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. Here's a quick installment in to the. Powered by Invision Community. Landing speed (minimum speed for level flight) can be reduced by adding components to increase maneuverability, by using larger wings, by increasing wing angle of attack on the fuselage (3-5 degrees is the recommended range for a spaceplane to achieve the best lift-to-drag ratio [source]), and by decreasing the weight of the aircraft. This helps to keep the performance of your spaceplane stable with any amount of fuel. My plane usually take off at a little over 120m/s. https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?title=Tutorial:_Your_First_Plane&oldid=103052. Note that when your jet engines shut down simultaneously while climbing in otherwise normal flight, it is generally due to a lack of pressure from the altitude you're flying at. Now for the engines. Pasted as rich text. But be careful and don't crash it! Mods needed for this aircraft to work: Procedural wings, Adjustable Landing Gear, FAR. While I am not a great plane builder there is a part in the structural (I think it is a pylon?) As with everything in KSP, experiment, experiment, experiment. Is there a way to place landing gear so that i can guarantee my plane can remain stable on the runway even at high speed in excess of 200m/s? I took off and at 60 m/s I was in the air! Such as not producing lift, which is not what you want with a plane. 3. make sure your center of mass is slightly in front of center of lift force. Any plane needs speed - so you need thrust (usually). It is also said that a good landing is one you can walk away from. Lift maxes out at 30 and declines beyond that point, so avoid excessive fuselage tilt.[1]. This tutorial was created primarily based on a Reddit post by the incredibly helpful u/AnArgonianSpellsword. As you reach 100m/s, hold S to pull the stick back, and you should be in the air! I have created planes that have landing gears place right under the wing tips but they still won't work. First try speed over land reached over 210 m/s before flipping in the last second. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. Display as a link instead, An aircraft without control surfaces is like a rocket without RCS or reaction wheels - it will hardly turn and will be equally hard to control (perhaps even impossible!). Try getting the wings to deflect the air down, either by lifting the front end up using canards or by mounting them at an angle using shift + wasdqe. 2. (Yes, you personally, you lucky thing! As such, you may want to line all forward Mk1 radial nodes on your aircraft with shock cones, if possible. While all other cargo bays are fine for making spaceplanes, the Mk3 Cargo Ramp produces obscene amounts of drag, which can easily prevent reaching orbital velocities by itself. Just like with rockets, get some courageous Kerbal in the cockpit and let's get started! With a tail-dragger, the plane is already angled up just sitting on its wheels so once the speed is high enough, it should just float up by itself. When landing, you can achieve the highest lift for a given speed by raising the total angle of attack of your wings to 30 degrees (although this induces a great deal of drag). These should be in the bottom left next to the display of the cost of the aircraft. Your wings provide the lift, and they cant provide lift if your wheels are too far back because then your base is to stable and the craft wont pivot upwards. After a successful touchdown, high-speed motion on the runway (let alone uneven ground) can be unstable, causing the aircraft to careen to one side or the other, potentially resulting in loss of a wing and sometimes the entire aircraft. When your spaceplane rolls shortly after touchdown, veers to one side and then explodes on the runway, you have a problem with landing stability. In fact, nothing will happen at all, and that's probably bad, so put an air intake on your plane anyway. If your spaceplane is difficult to land when full of fuel but easy to land when empty, then it may be helpful to burn off or transfer out most of the excess fuel before landing to make the aircraft lighter. As such, don't use control surfaces as substitutes for wings, and don't use more control surfaces than you need. As lift increases you remove some strain on the gear, however you've just increased the amount of sag. An active front brake can cause your aircraft to rapidly and uncontrollably pivot left or right during landing, and high friction from the front wheel can potentially cause your plane to swerve violently both in landing and takeoff. Angled landing gear create rotational force for whatever reason. I have done everything imaginable to try to remedy this problem. I started investigating why this was happening. LV-N exceeds 75% of its full power at just 7700m altitude on Kerbin. That's over 2x the normal recommended max. As the title says, my plane dips and turns to the side, clips its wing on the runway and loses it, does the same on the other side, then crashes and explodes, without even getting airborne. 1. make sure your main gear is not wobbling (ie. All the weight is pushed on the middle and it can't pull up. Just after having taken off, the plane will immediately start rolling to the right, and completely uncontrollably. For more information, please see our Everything looks perfectly symmetrical as far as I can tell. This plane will be able to take off, travel somewhere, perform a crew report, and then land. Note that a Wheesley or Goliath engine can reverse its thrust to allow rapid deceleration during landing, but these are not recommended for a spaceplane due to being unreasonably heavy and inducing excessive drag when attempting to transition to orbital velocities. Though, I use the FAR mod which will change things, so I can't guarantee the results will be useful, but it might be interesting. Keep at around 15 degrees to allow the plane to accelerate past 1000m/s. mods used are OPT for most of the body and the front canards and tail plane, B9 procedural wings for the wings, and mk4 spaceplane parts for the engines. Here is the best aircraft I have created to date: Jet Aircraft. Your plane is almost finished. This page was last edited on 14 April 2021, at 01:04. Controllability of a plane is on you. The most dangerous part of a spaceplane flight is returning from orbit. Unstable Aircraft: "FAR Firehound" (Stock). ), Stable aircraft: "Untitled" (lost the file upon loading after aircraft), Stable jet car: "Untitled" (Lost the file), Speed over land > 350 m/s before veering off the runway, Sometimes Stable Spaceplane: "Hypersonic Experimental". I dunno why but this picture makes the one side look like it is tipped in but I know they are straight, I believe it just the angle that the picture was taken that is causing it to look like this. Then at the top, we'll put one tail fin, centred on the end of the fuselage. So if I start encountering wobble it's time to pull back on the stick and get in the air. - Make sure the landing gear is as close to the center of gravity as possible, just slightly behind it (for nosewheel aircraft). This thread is archived . Keep your nose pointed prograde as you descend through the atmosphere. Hello, I am having a small problem with a plane I have built. The centre of mass was between the 2 landing gears. A FedEx cargo plane in Austin nearly landed on a runway where a Southwest flight was preparing to take off. Description: "Originally called the Cockpit-plus-two, the 5 seat "Cockatoo" is a second-generation command pod that provides both safety and comfort It is rumored to have enough room to pack several days of emergency snack rations and board games" Useful stats: As the description states this large command pod holds 5 kerbals They could go up to 120 m/s on the runway and still not lift up. It doesn't really matter if you angle them or not, there is not a single configuration for the wheels that can work on all plane parts. When you are near the end of the runway, quickly activate then detach them to get the nose pointing up. This makes design easier, eliminating all concern for balancing jet fuel against rocket fuel. The rudder is mostly used when landing and when attempting to line up a shot (in a fighter plane).