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Can't fly near south pole. Plane drops out of the sky and crashes no matter what I do


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I built a jet and it flies great. I take off and fly south toward the south pole. Before I ever get there probably 35-40 minutes into my flight the plane stops responding to the elevation controls and just nose dives into the water. I have fuel I have fuel flow I'm creating thrust with my 4 Panthers and my rudders and control surfaces are all working. I can watch them move but it's like the air and lift ignore it. Whether I have SAS on or not the plane can't get anywhere near the southern continent. Does anyone have a work around or solution for this? I'm assuming this is a bug since other people have definitely flown to the south pole before.

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Is it a manned flight or a probe? Depending on your difficulty settings, a probe needs a CommNet connection to keep control. The CommNet connection strength is displayed in the lop left corner and if it is gone, you'll probably end up with a partially or non controllable vessel (partially = SAS still works and afaik full/no throttle).

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It's a manned flight. I'm travelling at around 250 - 400 m/s at around 5k meters up. My friend just tried a flight on his game and it seemed to work fine though he had some bigger engines and was flying higher up. I don't know if this is a bug or what though.

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4 hours ago, kartoonist435 said:

I built a jet and it flies great. I take off and fly south toward the south pole. Before I ever get there probably 35-40 minutes into my flight the plane stops responding to the elevation controls and just nose dives into the water. I have fuel I have fuel flow I'm creating thrust with my 4 Panthers and my rudders and control surfaces are all working. I can watch them move but it's like the air and lift ignore it. Whether I have SAS on or not the plane can't get anywhere near the southern continent.

Load your craft in the SPH, turn on the CoM (yellow ball) and CoL (blue ball) indicators. Since it starts out flying great, I will assume the CoM is likely in front of the CoL, but close.

Now empty all of the fuel tanks, and then look at the CoM position again. My guess is, it has now moved way to the front. This means most of your 'dry' weight is far in front of the CoL, so when you consume fuel during flight, the CoM starts to move to the front. If it moves enough, it will change your perfectly flying plane into a lawndart that is almost impossible to pitch up and only wants to dive into the water.

 

There used to be a bug in the game a long time ago that actually caused planes (and orbital craft) to go haywire or even explode when passing right over the pole. For a minute I thought from your OP title that this might have resurfaced, but I haven't seen it happen in a very long time, and honestly, the above (CoM shift) is a much more likely cause.

 

2 hours ago, 4x4cheesecake said:

Is it a manned flight or a probe? Depending on your difficulty settings, a probe needs a CommNet connection to keep control. The CommNet connection strength is displayed in the lop left corner and if it is gone, you'll probably end up with a partially or non controllable vessel (partially = SAS still works and afaik full/no throttle).

While this does indeed happen, the result of a drone-controlled plane with SAS losing connection is that it will maintain SAS hold; in effect, it will slowly keep pitching up as it doesn't follow the curvature of the planet anymore. That's the opposite behaviour of what the OP describes, so I suspect it's a CoM shift issue.

Edited by swjr-swis
auto-merging does weird stuff
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4 hours ago, kartoonist435 said:

I'm assuming this is a bug since other people have definitely flown to the south pole before.

For what it's worth, this logic is backwards; a bug would affect other people (often everyone).

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47 minutes ago, kartoonist435 said:

It's a manned flight. I'm travelling at around 250 - 400 m/s at around 5k meters up. My friend just tried a flight on his game and it seemed to work fine though he had some bigger engines and was flying higher up. I don't know if this is a bug or what though.

the plane's drag force might make the plane nose-dive, due to the fuel is becoming empty, the centeer of mass moves towards the back (heaviest part of the plane) and the lift force is in the same place.

put some RCS, or test flight it without any fuel with cheat menu on the same speed.

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1 hour ago, swjr-swis said:

Load your craft in the SPH, turn on the CoM (yellow ball) and CoL (blue ball) indicators. Since it starts out flying great, I will assume the CoM is likely in front of the CoL, but close.

Now empty all of the fuel tanks, and then look at the CoM position again. My guess is, it has now moved way to the front. This means most of your 'dry' weight is far in front of the CoL, so when you consume fuel during flight, the CoM starts to move to the front. If it moves enough, it will change your perfectly flying plane into a lawndart that is almost impossible to pitch up and only wants to dive into the water.

 

There used to be a bug in the game a long time ago that actually caused planes (and orbital craft) to go haywire or even explode when passing right over the pole. For a minute I thought from your OP title that this might have resurfaced, but I haven't seen it happen in a very long time, and honestly, the above (CoM shift) is a much more likely cause.

 

While this does indeed happen, the result of a drone-controlled plane with SAS losing connection is that it will maintain SAS hold; in effect, it will slowly keep pitching up as it doesn't follow the curvature of the planet anymore. That's the opposite behaviour of what the OP describes, so I suspect it's a CoM shift issue.

I didn't check the CoM without fuel this I will definitely take a look at and sound pretty likely. Thank you.

Edited by kartoonist435
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