How to steer planes?

[Skylab]

I'm just starting to fly my first planes, but I don't know how to steer. Can someone help me please?

Edited November 28, 2014 by Skylab

[Hodo]

Steering planes is simple.

Q/E control the roll left and right

W/S control pitch up and down.

A/D control yaw left and right.

Past that, you need to have control surfaces on the aircraft to have any control over it at all, or a lot of SAS modules.

[Master Tao]

Roll with Q or E to start turning left or right, then pitch up with W to increase turn rate. The other controls are only needed for fine tuning for the more advanced maneuvers like... landing.

Also, you may want to install FAR or NEAR, since stock aerodynamics makes no sense and SQUAD announced that the system will be replaced.

[RainDreamer]

I am no expert at flying things, but this is what I do: Roll your plane to whichever side you want to turn, then pitch up. Depending on how agile your plane is, the angle of the roll differ. Some can do 90 degree roll and turn super sharply. Most of the bigger planes gotta do it gradually with shallower angle turn.

[Zylark]

You only use the rotate keys (pitch, roll and yaw) as opposed to the translation keys - and of course thrust. If you've played any Flight Sim games, it is pretty easy, eventhough the aircraft in KSP don't behave anything like what you are used to in Flight Sims. Mostly due to the wonky drag and atmosphere model in the stock game I suspect. And flying around using keys rather than a stick.

One thing to keep in mind, is that in KSP, up and down pitch is reversed compared to how you'd fly in a Flight Sim with a stick. You could of course reassign the keys, but that would also switch around how you pitch space-craft when using RCS and/or Reaction Wheel.

You could also assign a stick to rotate craft if you got one, making it easier and more intuitive to fly. Though I've had a bit of a problem with mine. Pitch and roll is fine, but the game won't recognize my stick-twist handle for yaw.

[Pecan]

The wiki may also help.