Wanderfound

Kerbodyne VTOL Trainer. A combination fast jet / aerobatic / VTOL trainer. A toy for veterans, educational for novices. Hugely fun to fly in either mode; capable of some truly ridiculous trickery when all engines are combined. Craft file at https://www.dropbox.com/s/66dmrzs7vk3vvn4/Kerbodyne%20VTOL%20trainer.craft?dl=0

I can't be sure what's happening without experimenting, but this is how I'd go about it. 1) Replicate the test flight conditions. Deactivate all FAR flight toggles, activate SAS, install Kerbal Pilot Assistant and switch it to stock SAS mode, use the included PID tuner to cut all kp values to 1/3 of default and scalars to 1/2 default. 2) Don't touch the controls until the aircraft is up to take off speed, unless you need to correct for a low-tech runway pothole (best to do the testing in Sandbox, though). 3) If the problem reoccurs, make sure that the steering is unlocked on the front gear only. Check each wheel, don't rely on symmetry. 4) Do a takeoff run with the view swung around to below the nose looking back. Watch the wheels; check to see if they wobble, and if so, which one first. Check if it's consistent; landing gear problems are often intermittent. Look for flexing in the surfaces which the gear are mounted to. Reinforce or relocate wobbly bits. 5) If it veers without wheel wobble, do another run and watch the aero surfaces to see if they're doing anything weird. 6) If nothing else works, pull the entire aircraft into component bits and make sure that angle snap is on when you rebuild it. Eddie: KSC-> Mun -> KSC unrefuelled can be done, but it doubles the size of your ship and makes it painful to fly. You need a big lumbering beastie for that sort of range. With a refuel, you can do it in a sportscar.

I tend to do these by landing a spaceplane in the general vicinity, then taxiing on the ground the last little bit.

Set it to deflect in the opposite direction to what you want, but with a limited range. E.g. if you want it to deflect down at high AoA, give it an upwards AoA setting but with a max deflection of only five or so. It'll stay parallel to the airstream until AoA exceeds 5°, then start getting dragged down.

Haven't tested it that far, but it should be okay. The fuel lines are set to keep it fairly balanced, and the jets can gimbal enough to compensate for minor disturbances.

RAPIERs auto-throttle to delay flameout; turbojets don't. You need to throttle down or thrust limit them to keep them running at extreme altitude. I find Vernors adequate for low-grav VTOL (easy on Minmus, tricky but doable on the Mun). The key is to use your main engine to bring yourself to a dead stop 50-100m off the deck, then quickly flip over to be level and in line with any residual lateral motion and VTOL the last little bit. A flat target helps; again, easy on Minmus, tricky on the Mun. For more intense low-G VTOL, I'd be inclined to line a bomb bay with the little Rockomax radial engines. I tend to find vertically-oriented VTOL control a bit disorienting when moving laterally, but it works well for landers.

Ibis tutorial, part 3 of 3:

* RPM or equivalent. * EVE or equivalent (clouds!). * Kerbal Flight Data or equivalent. * Bug-free plug and play joystick support.

Thanks, Rowsdower. You helped to make this the exception of the internet. All hail the Mighty God King Rowsdower!

There's also a lot of potential in "delivery" missions. * Deliver small item X to location Y in space with short timeframe: urgent repair mission. * Deliver huge (50+ ton) item X to location Y on Kerbin: heavy airlift/trucking mission. * Drop a tank of size X while flying above location Y, short timeframe: frame as waterbombing for firefighting purposes, add fire/smoke visuals to location. Pacifist bombing mission.

Ibis build tutorial, part 2 of 3: - - - Updated - - - I never did figure out how to use the Simulation mode. If anybody knows how it works, please do tell.

I'd prefer to do a Mk3 vid after they release the upcoming larger gear and wings, but if 1.0 takes too long to arrive I might get in earlier.

A new build tutorial: part 1 of 3.

Yeah, I realised that shortly after posting. In mitigation, I was thinking of a single-stage horizontal spaceplane landing rather than dropping a fully-fuelled ship on chutes...

With piloting and design skill. Spaceplanes can control altitude aerodynamically, adjusting the length and intensity of the aerobrake as it goes. Capsule style things can be designed to be aerodynamically stable in the desired orientation.

Depends on where they put them. If there are resources on Eve, return trips to and from there are about to get a whole lot easier... ISRU also makes Grand Tour style exploration a lot simpler; one moderate-sized ship can explore the whole system if it can refuel each time it lands. But I'm more keen on science/strategy/funds rebalancing, to be honest. I've pretty much given up on career mode until they get it sorted out. As is, it's too easy on moderate difficulty and too tedious on hard.

The O-10 monoprop engines are also very good for small probes, to the point of being rather dramatically overpowered. You can go interplanetary off less than a single FL-R10 tank.

As always, the answer varies a lot depending upon what aero model you're flying in. Here's how to do it in FAR:

Walking takes too long. Do it in style...

What it needs is stockified RPM. IVA views are pointless visual fluff without it.

Inevitably:

Have a look at posts 2 & 3 in the Kerbodyne thread linked below. You may also get some use from the video tutorials at https://www.youtube.com/user/TheWanderfound/videos

You might get some use out of a few of the tutorials I've put together. Particularly http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1353891&viewfull=1#post1353891 & http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/craigmotbey/Kerbal/Tutorials/Hangar%20to%20Landing/story &

Kerbal Flight Data and Kerbal Flight Indicators, both by DaMichel. Highly recommended. As for climb rate: the stock game provides a Vertical Speed Indicator dial at the top of your screen, just to the right of the altimeter.

Does the instability begin with yaw, roll, pitch, or some combination of those? In that image, it looks like you might not have the autopilot heading control engaged; I'm not sure if SSAS is holding your heading and bank angle for you or not. I'm not too familiar with the SSAS and autopilot modes of KPA; I normally use it just as a PID tuner on stock SAS. There's nothing obviously wrong there, but as a first diagnostic step: Turn off the vertical control autopilot and fly manually. In KPA, switch the SAS to "stock SAS" mode instead of SSAS, make sure the SAS is turned on (just the T-key toggle as usual) and use the PID tuner to cut all of the kp values to 1/3 default (i.e. 5000/3000/5000) and lower all of the scalar values to 1/2 default (500). Give that a try and let me know if the problem reoccurs.