Learning to fly

[MaxwellsDemon]

Okay... I think I've got the hang of the VAB and the launch pad.  (That's far from saying I've mastered it, of course, but I've got a reasonable skill level in it...)   Time for me to pay attention to that big long strip of asphalt at KSC... 

Having been a Microsoft Flight Simulator pilot, I'm not completely starting from scratch here; but this is a different system with different controls, etc., so I want to start slow/basic.   The aircraft tutorials I've been able to locate on the forum are mostly about designing and constructing them; I'm looking for a good ground school, as it were, and pointers to a reliable, stable, slow trainer aircraft (preferably stock).  In particular, I want to train my landings, since that's the toughest thing about flying... What are the recommendations?

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Load up one of the pre-made stock planes in sandbox mode and practice landing?

I'm not sure what kind of advice you want besides that really? If you've played flight simulators before you should have a solid enough grasp of how to land a plane. (Step 1:Reduce throttle, Step 2: Reduce altitude, Step 3: Repeat steps 1 and 2 until your plane is on the ground.)

KSP is about as easy as flying simulators get, I can't imagine you'll have any problems.

[Van Disaster]

If you're a big FS fan you might want to look at FAR. I'd also recommend Pilot Assistant if you're doing long flights ( I use it to land too, but I can't hold a stick with the state of my hands ), and NavUtilities.

Actually here's a pic: Pilot Assistant is the left window, NavUtilities is the one on the right with the recogniseable instrumentation, and I always use FAR but that doesn't do anything for pics other than change the airspeed units.

Spoiler

Quickest way to learn is to do & fail & not do it again, ofc, just pick something & fail to crash it

Edited July 24, 2016 by Van Disaster

[bewing]

This is my most basic jet. Very definitely a slow trainer. But for the early contract stuff, this is all you need.

Craft file -- use "save link as"

As far as landings go -- the basic landing gear are quite fragile. Since you are experienced with flight sims, it will probably be easy for you. The grass around KSC is at 66m altitude, and landing/takeoff speed is around 35 m/s. There is very little drag at those speeds. You are going to want to kill your engine very early (20 km out, 1600m altitude).

Bring the plane in around 80m altitude and 80m/s (measured at the edge of the grass), basically level flight, with the engines off. And just sit and wait as the speed scrubs off. As it gets closer to landing speed, descend to 70m so you are just off the deck. And let it slowly descend to a landing by itself. Don't force the landing, and don't come in at a 10 degree descent. Let it land by itself like a feather.

 

Edited July 24, 2016 by bewing

[dafidge9898]

2 hours ago, MaxwellsDemon said:

Having been a Microsoft Flight Simulator pilot, I'm not completely starting from scratch here; but this is a different system with different controls, etc., so I want to start slow/basic.

Get ready to re-learn. Microsoft Flight Simulator is not a realistic flight sim (the procedures and ATC is, but actual flight simulation, not really). KSP is somewhat more realistic, because you can properly stall, and get into unrecoverable spins and all that fun stuff. The best way to fly aircraft is with a joystick, but WASD is still possible. One thing you have to unlearn from FSX (or whichever one you had), if you pull up really hard, you won't just go up: you'll stall, and go down/spin. You'd have to do it gently. Now landing in KSP is kind of tricky, because you have to eyeball and figure out the proper landing speed. Sometimes you can be way off (and that's disastrous). Simply line up (which may not be that simple), keep your surface prograde vector at 3 degrees below the horizon because this is how approaches are done, you should have some angle of attack, not zero. If it's zero, you're going too fast. Adjust throttle to keep the prograde vector at 3 degrees, and pitch to control speed, while tweaking it slightly to make sure you're actually headed toward the threshold of the runway. When you're maybe 50 meters away from the runway, throttle down completely, and nosedown VERY SLIGHTLY so you don't stall. You don't want to nose down too hard, otherwise you'll hit nosewheel first, and hard (other people might not nose down, I do, because that's what I was taught in real life). Flare before you touch down to smooth out. Apply brakes. Possibly spin because the wheels are weird. 

Summary: 3 degree decent, pitch for speed and throttle for vertical speed, throttle to idle when almost to the runway threshold, pitch to prevent stall, flare, touchdown.

 

[Geschosskopf]

6 hours ago, MaxwellsDemon said:

Having been a Microsoft Flight Simulator pilot, I'm not completely starting from scratch here; but this is a different system with different controls, etc., so I want to start slow/basic.   The aircraft tutorials I've been able to locate on the forum are mostly about designing and constructing them; I'm looking for a good ground school, as it were, and pointers to a reliable, stable, slow trainer aircraft (preferably stock).  In particular, I want to train my landings, since that's the toughest thing about flying... What are the recommendations?

Landings...   Well.....

The 1st thing is to always build planes with a reaction wheel part the same diameter as the plane.  KSP reaction wheels have beaucoup leverage so will keep your plane very stable.  Always turn on SAS 1st thing when you launch a new plane and keep it on at all times (unless you do certain mods which I won't get into).

Next thing is to disable gimbal on all engines.  The only reason to use gimbal is for ACM (air combat maneuvering), which you're not trying to do.  Gimbal is horribly implemented in KSP.  Instead of being a useful trimming tool, it's a ham-fisted, stability-destroying Hellspawn of zero practicality for any other atmospheric airplane or spaceplane use.

So, with all that taken care of, your plane, whether it's a hypersonic spaceplane or a basic trainer, should be perfectly stable at any speed, even with physical warp on  (unless you just totally hosed the design by misplacing the CoM, CoL, or thrust line).  If the plane is stable, and you already know how to fly, then you should be OK if only you can get slow enough.

Landing a KSP plane is all about making ground contact with a vertical speed <= 5 m/s and a horizontal speed <= 50 m'/s.  It is, of course, possible to "grease one on" at 200 m/s on the KSC runway, but that's the ONLY place in the game where such silliness is possible.  Out in the field (on any planet with an atmosphere), there is no such thing as more than a couple hundred meters of ground at the same orientation before you hit a change of slope, so there's a premium on STOL performance.  This is not just not stalling at low speed but also being able to stop forward motion quickly once down.

To kill airspeed, the game gives you various tools.  There are the A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E. parts, reverse thrust (on only some engines, not all), drogue chutes, and HARD S-turning on final approach.  Back prior to 1.0, it was possible to apply opposite rudder and aileron and just lose altitude without gaining speed as you can with a real plane, but that no longer works very well since 1,.x.x.

The main issue with getting slow is that KSP planes actually stall at about 1/2 the airspeed they need to ROG by themselves (assuming the plane has a slight nose-up attitude when sitting on its wheels).  There is no actual ground effect but it acts like there is one.  So if you left the ground at 70m/s, don't expect to stall until you reach 35m/s.  And because you've got lots of torque and SAS on, stalling just means you drop vertically while maintaining the same attitude.  So the goal is, as in a real plane, to have the wheels hit just a hair before you reach stall speed, which usually means getting below ROG speed considerably short of the threshold, which means substantial braking is needed during the approach.

 

 

Edited July 24, 2016 by Geschosskopf

[AeroGav]

Here's a super basic, lowest tech "trainer" jet I shared on Kerbal X.   It's underpowered but has a nice low landing speed which is of course, essential for survival on the starting landing gear -

https://kerbalx.com/AeroGav/simple-bird

I built this in under 10 minutes to help someone who was having issues with landing gear alignment (his plane was ground looping uncontrollably on takeoff) so it's not perfect.    If you feel like modding the design,  adding a pair of ailerons would be a very good start.  I like to lower aileron authority in tweakables menu when flying on keyboard, since it limits deflection angle and which means you get less drag (and therefore yaw) for a given roll input.

It's a little nose heavy too from what i remember, which reduces efficiency but makes it very forgiving.  Use the fore/aft adjustment  on the wing perhaps to correct that if you like.

Finally I normally add a little dihedral to the outboard wing segments, but as this was a rush job, didn't happen.   Pros - a bit more roll stability.   Against - it will probably acquire some Dutch Roll.

Edited July 25, 2016 by AeroGav

[MaxwellsDemon]

Thanks for your input, all!