Low level landing gear

[stormdot5]

I'm having trouble with low tech level planes. The landing gear doesn't seem robutst enough and causes a potentially fatal wobble on take off/landing.

Here's my basic planes. A simple one and a rocket boosted one for surveys at altitude.

 

When spawning the heavier plane, it may drop onto the front landing gear, boounce once, and then break the landing gear when the nose comes back down. Putting the landing gear nearer the CoM makes the initial bounce less and sometimes lands safely, although this ruins stability.

During the takeoff run the plane rocks left to right in an increasing oscillation with speed. The landing gear never reads as stressed but at some point it gives up as "overstressed", especially at close to take off speed.

When landing the tiny amount of force they take to break means even a perfect landing is liable to snap off landing gear with catastrophic consequences. This is with landing speed of between 50-60 m/s and vertical speed of less that 5 m/s. If it does land, OK it's still likely to destroy the landing gear while decellerating. Rough terrain landing is unlikely to be survivable.

Settings are usually on default. Turning off suspension is ineffective at stopping the wobble. Biasing friction to the rear appears to delay the onset.

 

Any advice?

Edited April 22, 2016 by stormdot5

[MajorNr01]

The fixed landing gear is not working at all for me.

I can take off, but I have yet to land any plane with it. I get a touch down but then the oscillations kick in. At that point the break button might aswell be a suicide button.

[Mare Veris]

There is a bug reported (and confirmed): http://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/9360

 

You may want to try the workaround suggested by dwilliam16: edit the files "GearFixed.cfg" and "GearFree.cfg" from "Squad/Parts/Wheel/Landing Gear", and change the values "stressTolerance" and "impactTolerance" from 1,000 to 12,000.

(Do a backup of these files and your game save - just in case)

[BoggyDG]

Interesting. I've almost always landed without my fixed landing gear breaking(the exceptions are when i flipped over). You can place the radial parachutes above the center of mass; Your plane will just fall straight down. But as i see now, it might be that your wings are too much on the front. Your center of lift should be behind the center of mass, not in the middle or in front. Try also placing your rear landing gear more to the back, this will require more torque to lift the front part up, so it might not happen. And if you don't already know, use SAS.

Edited April 24, 2016 by BoggyDG

[Mahnarch]

Landing gear?! Real men land on their bellies - and then crack a cold ones afterward!

 

Disclaimer: Author has never successfully landed on his belly, nor has he cracked a cold ones in celebration afterwards. One cold ones per customer. Void where prohibited.

[dpitch40]

I am having this issue too! I built this plane in career mode and am able to take off with it (though because of elevon shenanigans it isn't easy, and I had to upgrade my runway), but whenever I try to land, the landing gear gets overstressed and is destroyed instantly upon contact with the ground. My plane isn't terribly big or heavy, and even when touching down at 50-60 m/s as lightly as possible, the gear still blows up instantly, usually followed by the rest of my ship. It's a pretty major blocker to being able to do all the survey missions in early career mode.

Edited April 24, 2016 by dpitch40
Typo

[GoSlash27]

All,

 I have a temporary work- around for this.

 

It's not perfect, but it's a big improvement over stock.

Best,
-Slashy