landing practice without the takeoff?

[fommil]

After playing KSP for many years, I've finally decided to work out how to land one of these plane thingys.

My experiments have shown that I need practice landing. A LOT more practice.

But my practice involves:

• take off
• climb
• turn 180
• fly to the mountains (around that nobbly bit) at about 10km
• turn 180 again

then the landing begins:

• keep correcting my angle
• glide to 1km-ish just as the grasslands end, speed 150m/s-ish
• combine pulling up and aerobraking to reduce speed to sub 50m/s
• keep correcting my angle
• hope plane doesn't blow up
• hope plane stops on the runway
• keep cursing myself for forgetting to deploy the parachutes

From watching youtube videos, this seems to be pretty normal... but the first bit (getting to the mountains) is a really boring pain.

Is there any way to skip straight to the landing?

 

[Superfluous J]

Two ideas off the top of my head:

1: Immelmann turn. Take off, go perfectly straight out a few km (not 10, that's a lot). Then pull back on the stick slowly until you turn around 180 but are upside-down. Then roll over.

2: Quicksave on approach. This only works with the same plane, but you should be able to F5 on the way down and then keep F9ing until you are happy with your landing.

[RA3236]

Not without using mods. I don't know any that may be usefull, either.

[Tex_NL]

7 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

Quicksave on approach. This only works with the same plane, but you should be able to F5 on the way down and then keep F9ing until you are happy with your landing.

This.
Or use a mod like HyperEdit or VesselMover to place your craft near the mountains, take-off, fly and land on the runway.

[fommil]

28 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

2: Quicksave on approach. This only works with the same plane, but you should be able to F5 on the way down and then keep F9ing until you are happy with your landing.

I hadn't even thought of quicksave... I am practising my landings in sandbox whereas I usually play in Hard career. This certainly improves things! It would be better if I could do this for new planes, but I'll take what there is.

[Vanamonde]

You can also use the set orbit function on the F-12 menus, under "cheats." 

[Tex_NL]

19 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

You can also use the set orbit function on the F-12 menus, under "cheats." 

But that would put you in orbit.
Yes, it would work but would also add a whole level of difficulty. Since the OP is merely talking about landing, adding a re-entry would probably be overkill.

Edited January 1, 2017 by Tex_NL

[Vanamonde]

Oh, misread. I thought he wanted to land from orbit. Nevermind.