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How can I build a usable plane?


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So, after me toying (I sure hope that's a proper word) around with the plane parts in KSP, I can't seem to lift a single plane off the runway without

slipping off the runway and falling into the nearby ocean around KSC. I need HELP!! ;.;

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Yeah, that tutorial above is fabulous.

The other key question here is, "Stock or F.A.R.?"

Ferram Aerospace Research is a mod which completely replaces the stock aerodynamics (in which drag is based on the mass of the part) and replaces it with something realistic (in which drag is based on the shape of the part).

If you're using F.A.R., then your wing shape and configuration are going to matter a ton -- for that I strongly recommend "Procedural Dynamics" procedural wing mod.

Also, the single "Small Landing Gear" from stock doesn't handle a plane's weight perfectly -- it works much better to do them in pairs, two together with the same orientation. (So, instead of 3 wheels, you'd use 6 for a tripod configuration.)

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^^^

This.

General guidelines-

1 Turbojet per 9-12 tonnes of payload

200-250 units of liquid fuel per turbojet

1 pair of swept wings or delta-wings per six tonnes of craft

At least three Ram air intakes per Turbojet, no more than nine. The more intakes you have, the more of a payload fraction the turbojets can handle.

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Keptin's article is very good. And here's a shameless promotion for my own hands on demo that goes along with Keptin's article.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/65638-Basic-Airplane-Space-Plane-Aero-Tutorial

Like Amaroq said, Stock or FAR will also greatly effect the answers you get from this forum. And Capi's rules of thumb work well if you're aiming for a space plane.

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I couldn't for the life of me make a plane fly, not even by strapping a rocket to its aft and launching it from the VAB, then I followed Keptin's tutorial.

Quick and dirty solution that WILL get you into the air:

Fuel, stupidly more than you can ever possibly use. Engines, more than you need. Gigantic wings, more than you need, preferably one-part wings to keep part count and flexibility to a minimum. Drain and fill your fuel tank(s) in the VAB and make sure the center of lift is behind it by a bit, even whilst empty. Then stick a gigantic tail-rudder on the back and some gigantor wings on the sides of the top of that. Fiddle a bit with the wings' exact location (you may or may not want them directly out from the sides of the craft,) stick some canards on the front and fiddle a bit with the rotation of the canards and the tail plane until your center of lift is behind and a little bit above your center of mass.

Use the procedural mods' procedurally-generated control surfaces to add whatever surfaces you need and make them gigantic, and then add some airbrakes (possibly from B9 Aerospace) to the tail plane and the rear fuselage/back of the wing roots.

That will get you airborne, and flyable, if not exactly perfectly stable.

There's an advanced tip I like to use, too, that's especially useful for takeoff. Assuming you're using a tricycle landing gear arrangement (two in the back, one in the front,) and have the gigantic landing gear from B9: use two long landing gears in the back, to the sides, and two different, one short and one long, the front. The long landing gear in the back should have its wheels farther from the plane's body. (The S2 Wide chassis from (I believe) B9 is ideal for this, but you can bodge something together, I'm sure.)

What you want to do is take off with the front landing gear long, but land with it short. Taking off with the front gear longer than the rear gear will put the nose and the wings up, giving you bouncy, bouncy lift that will get you off the ground and flying. That's good on takeoff, but the exact opposite of what you want on landing, so when you come in for a landing, lower your gear and then retract the long gear, so it comes down on the short one. That puts the nose down, angles the wings down, and the same principle that was giving you lift when trying to take off is now giving you downforce, thus planting your wheels firmly on the ground. Toggling all those airbrakes briefly can also help you take off if your tail-plane is very high: that much drag at the back of what is essentially an enormous lever will pull the nose into the air, and away you go.

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I put together a plane the other day and tried to do a split-S ... it didn't really work so well, I ended up just reversing direction and thrusting which SHOULD have been a disaster (though not so much as the time my engine exploded at 20 km up).

I then ended up touching down on the runway at 120 m/s and just bouncing up again. I came down again a few km downrange.

I think I'll be placing some reference markers sometime soon if I want to try planes again...

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Make sure that the plane is angled in such a way that it either takes off on its own, or needs very minimal control input to take off. E.G. don't make it so the wings are leaned forward. Also, make sure you put the rear landing gear just behind the center of mass (although you can have an "emergency landing gear" behind that but higher up if you want to avoid tail-striking).

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Manley covered in his video on planes, if you have elevators at the back then in order to pitch the nose up to take off they need to push the tail down. If you have landing gear right at the back they can't do that, so the nose will stay down and you won't lift off.

To fix this you can do any of the following:

Move the rear landing gear forward so the tail can be pushed down for takeoff.

Make the rear gear lower or front gear higher so the plane naturally sits nose-up and thus takes off by itself.

Angle the wings a little so they've got a non-zero angle of attack even when the fuselage is horizontal, again letting the plane take off by itself.

Add canards at the front that will lift the nose directly for takeoff.

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