Noob with a possibly overly ask noob question

[MachStyle]

Sup guys. Just bought KSP last night. Been tinkering around in sandbox to get a feel. so far Im addicted. My only question is, why is it that every single plane when taking off or flying, wants to swerve to the left? Im building some of my own planes as well and its kinda hard to take off when the thing cant even travel straight down the runway. Some planes, if I yaw to counter, The large wingspan cause it to roll.

Anyways, is there a reason for this?

Thanks gang!

[Awaras]

There can be several reasons, could you post some pics of your plane to make it easier to figure out?

[ThatBum]

Put your rear landing gear farther apart and level with the ground. The wider wheelbase helps with takeoff.

[MachStyle]

Everything is symmetrical using the symmetrical option while building, so the left side should not have more drag than the right.

Keep in bind that Im just screwing around right now. but even the stock Kerban planes like to drift a bit to the left on take off

I realize the front is heavy, but I can get it off the ground

Edited April 21, 2013 by MachStyle

[MachStyle]

Double post..

Edited April 21, 2013 by MachStyle

[Wjolcz]

whoa. you said you used symmetry on everything so it might be 2 front wheels clipped in each other causing that.

[MachStyle]

friction between the two? Didnt think that would be a cause. Let me try it out

[MachStyle]

I feel dumb. That was it. travels straight down the run way now.

Thanks for da help

[FourTee2]

Same thing has been happening to me since the runway was introduced. I have no clue why, but I do have a workaround. You'll find that each plane you build has a certain speed that, if you exceed while on the runway, will cause it to lose control and veer to the left. There is also a very specific place on the runway, at least in my game, where it tends to happen; somewhere around the midpoint. I am usually able to overcome this problem by staying below the aforementioned speed until I pass that point, at which I throttle all the way up and take off. Let me know if this works! For the past few months, I thought this was only happening to me, and am hesitant to report it as a bug until I know otherwise.

[MachStyle]

Only one more question. I noticed that the stock Kerban planes he both a large landing gear and a small. Why cant I find the large landing gear anywhere?

[ThatBum]

IIRC those are just two landing gears next to each other, there's only one size of landing gear in vanilla. I don't have KSP on this machine, can't check. Surely it's not rover wheels...

[CalculusWarrior]

No, there are no rover wheels on any of the stock spaceplanes. Besides, they'd burst and send you tumbling before you got up to any reasonable speeds.

[MachStyle]

thanks guys. I should be good for now

[loppnessmonsta]

Large and a small? On the planes, or on the Landers? Because there's only one type of landing gear (with wheels), and its the white ones you used on your behemoth up there. Landing legs (as well as rover wheels, which can't handle as much impact, but are powered), on the other hand, have a few sizes. All of them, rover and landing wheels included, are in the Utility tab. Whenever I install a new mod it takes me a bit to re-adjust to every part's location, so just take your time looking for them.

edit: Ah, beaten.

[rakutenshi]

one thing that I've noticed is that if you mount your wheels on wing sections, when the dihedral effect kicks in, the lift isn't always perfectly symmetrical. Especially given the fact that your planes do not start perfectly lined up with the runway, amplifying the effect of the dihedral when you correct to the left or right, often times resulting in a spectacular tumbling explosion.

[ROFLCopter64bit]

Especially given the fact that your planes do not start perfectly lined up with the runway

the number 1 killer of all my spaceplanes

[Van Disaster]

one thing that I've noticed is that if you mount your wheels on wing sections, when the dihedral effect kicks in, the lift isn't always perfectly symmetrical. Especially given the fact that your planes do not start perfectly lined up with the runway, amplifying the effect of the dihedral when you correct to the left or right, often times resulting in a spectacular tumbling explosion.

And on that note, wings tend to flex more than other components anyway, so even before they're generating enough lift to start moving relative to the fuselage they're likely to make your landing gear a little wobbly.

I tend to fit canards to most planes - other than some go-anywhere STOL ones with light wing loadings or really small ones - because they're positive lift generators when you pitch up, rather than elevators which push down and in this case load your landing gear even more just when you want it loaded less. Also helps pitching up in the upper atmosphere where you want every scrap of lift, but that's a different matter. Canards are inherently unstable though - like balancing a stick from the bottom rather than letting it dangle from the top - so used carefully.

As a last note OP, try and make your plane pitch up slightly when it's at rest on it's wheels, you may find it'll take off sooner than you think.

[MachStyle]

one thing that I've noticed is that if you mount your wheels on wing sections, when the dihedral effect kicks in, the lift isn't always perfectly symmetrical. Especially given the fact that your planes do not start perfectly lined up with the runway, amplifying the effect of the dihedral when you correct to the left or right, often times resulting in a spectacular tumbling explosion.

the number 1 killer of all my spaceplanes

+10000000. I've only had a few successful takeoffs

[rakutenshi]

As a last note OP, try and make your plane pitch up slightly when it's at rest on it's wheels, you may find it'll take off sooner than you think.

This is worth its weight in gold.... I started doing this and most of my planes are able to break the plane in about 100 meters or so (rough guestimate)... plus by mounting the rear gears on the outboard side of nacelles and rotating them down to vertical, gives the craft a wider stance on the ground, nose up.. they practically want to fly, as long as you balance CoM with CoA.

Also- does KE Redux calculate wing loadings?

Edited April 21, 2013 by rakutenshi

[shand]

if you accelerate slowly to 60m/s before you apply full thrust you will be a lot less likely to swerve. throttle up slowly and gradually until that point.

[erkha343]

Did that monstrosity take off?

I'm interested now, it's damn huge!

[rkman]

it might be due to this bug related to symmetry: http://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/290

[CalculusWarrior]

This is worth its weight in gold.... I started doing this and most of my planes are able to break the plane in about 100 meters or so (rough guestimate)...

I agree--pitching up can allow a plane that originally had to wait until the end of the runway to take off before it even reached the halfway point. I find that going too fast on the runway (>150 m/s) is a recipe for disaster, no matter how stable your plane is. Better to pitch it up/ add more wings than to try and get it going fast enough.

Also- does KE Redux calculate wing loadings?

No, I've never seen anything like that, and I use that mod a lot... It seems to be optimized for rockets only; it doesn't even calculate delta-v for jet engines.