Wanderfound

Weird bug: stock SAS PID tuning seems to like confusing my presets occasionally. My standard pitch/roll/yaw kp values are 5,000/3,000/5,000 and that's how I set up my preset. However, although it isn't all the time, quite often KPA will load them as 3,000/5,000/5,000. No idea why. I suspect that what's needed as much as a detailed PID tutorial is just some good-enough default settings for FAR, so that users have a base to start from before they start fiddling with the tuning. Doesn't have to be perfect, just has to be usable. But some plain English functional tips (i.e. "lowering kp should reduce SAS overcorrection, but lowering too much will cause drift; lowering clamp should reduce the tendency to drift off target..." etc.) wouldn't hurt.

You may still have some install problems, but: 300m/s is transsonic, i.e. faster than a Spitfire in a flat-out power dive. That's not something you want to be doing at less than a few thousand metres of altitude until you've got the hang of it. If you're getting dynamic pressure warnings from FAR or Kerbal Flight Data, fly with caution. Can you define what you mean by "touch the stick"? At that speed and altitude you should be tapping the keyboard, never holding down the pitch controls. Control input intensity by varying tapping rate. Does using Fine Controls (capslock key) improve things for you? They're not necessary, but they may help.

If you can, post screenshots or vid of it losing control at various altitudes and speeds. Was the plane stalling at the time? Do you get similar results if you build a small plane yourself? Until you've got the hang of it, keep the AoA below 15°. If the SAS was on and tuned right (use stock SAS mode, cut all kp to 1/3 default, clamp to 1/2 default) and you weren't flying at extreme AoA, the only thing that should make it spin is lack of airspeed (<100m/s in a low altitude climb, much less if flying flat) or asymmetric thrust on a multi-engined plane. Unless you've somehow managed to drain the batteries... Use the FAR window or Kerbal Flight Data to watch for stalls. Back off on minor stalls until the stall stops, immediately recover to prograde on major stalls. That's the spin recovery technique as well; get the nose to prograde and gradually pull out. Without more data, I'm not sure what's going on.

Most likely problems: 1) Are you using a PID tuner such as the one in Kerbal Pilot Assistant? Stock SAS will tear the wings off most things. 2) What altitude? Things that are safe to do at 5,000m are often suicidal at 500m. 3) Is it the latest version of FAR? Prior to the introduction of the mass/strength tweakable for wings (around when KSP .24 was released), FAR wings were eggshell-fragile; about equivalent to 0.25 on the tweakable. 4) Tap the controls, don't hold the buttons down. Watch the G-meter. Regardless of speed, 20G is 20G. That said, Kerbotrainer ​was built for aerobatics. It should be fine with anything below 10G, and can handle much more than that if flown right. - - - Updated - - - 1) I built a lot of Spaceplane Plus stuff before it was stockified, 'cos Porkjet makes good parts. 2) Cargo bays are useful. 3) Mk2 cockpits have a very pretty RPM IVA. But lift and density play a role as well. Apart from very small things like the Aero R, planes that make heavy use of 1.25m parts tend to need very large wings.

The obscure titles are a bit deliberate; I'm still working out what I'm doing, so I don't want too many folks seeing my early screwups... Compared to airbreathing RAPIERs, Turbos provide slightly better thrust and substantially better fuel efficiency. Mostly, however, they just sound a lot nicer. Also, however: a very effective design is one central Turbojet flanked by RAPIERs. You keep the Turbojet on until it dies, making the most of the oxidising RAPIER-driven ram-air effect. By the time the Turbo dies and a RAPIER there would become useful, you've usually already got the Apoapsis to 70km or so.

Good to see some non-soupy competition. Nice landing.

Homer voice/ Mmmm, strategic bacon. /Homer voice

The forward surfaces are set with a -100% AoA deflection; any time that they aren't being actively disturbed, they hold themselves parallel to the airstream. And it is indeed extremely stable at insane AoAs. This is a slightly more conventional design using canards with a similar setting; it should demonstrate what I'm talking about: That picture is at neutral stick, not trying to pull the nose down; it flies stably in that posture (the canards are parallel to the airstream, you can figure the AoA from that) hands-free.

Hmmn... It depends a bit on if you're playing Career with limited tech. Most of the Gull/Skua/Simplicio/Bushranger/Investigator variants are good, easy to fly and practical light cargo spaceplanes. However, they were all built in .25, so they may need a tiny bit of tweaking for .90. They'll probably work okay, though; the major change in aero from .25 to .90 was the enhanced skin drag, which doesn't affect design too much. Of the recent batch, the Alkahest (http://kerbalx.com/Wanderfound/Kerbodyne%20Alkahest) was designed specifically as a low-tech option. Replace the cargo bay with another fuel tank and it should be good for what you're after. Or, for something a bit more high-tech, check out the Stratos N (http://kerbalx.com/Wanderfound/Kerbodyne%20Stratos%20N). As an in-between option, have a look at the Sledge (http://kerbalx.com/Wanderfound/Kerbodyne%20Sledge). But if you're new to FAR piloting, what you really want to do is grab a light atmospheric aircraft like the Kerbotrainer (http://kerbalx.com/Wanderfound/Kerbotrainer) and take it for a spin. Take it up top and see how fast and high you can get it, pull it back down into the mountain passes and try some high-G aerobatics, etc. Astronauts start with test pilot training for a reason. - With the older stuff, you'll have to take it into the SPH and look at the action groups yourself. Newer things that are mirrored on KerbalX (http://kerbalx.com/Wanderfound) have their action groups listed there.

The test-flight sequel to the Demonstration Gull build video! Now in higher resolution! I should have a higher-res version of the build video up in a while as well. - - - Updated - - - Higher-res version of the build video:

Okay... I made a thing. This thing: http://kerbalx.com/Wanderfound/Kerbodyne%20Dragonfly%20X And, despite bizarre appearances, it works absurdly well. The question is: just how unrealistic is this thing? I know that reverse-sweep wings work in reality (although strength limitations restrict their use) and that leading-edge slats are a real thing. But this is a rather extreme example... Would something resembling this be possible in reality? If not, what is the limiting factor stopping it?

Check your inclination. You're almost certainly in the correct orbit but headed in the opposite direction to what is required. If you look closely at the required orbit in the map screen, you'll see little whizzy things zooming around showing the required direction. If it's not that... Do you have a solar panel? Do you have an antenna? Did you turn your SAS off and wait a few seconds?

In .24 , when funds were so gratuitously oversupplied, I ran testflights in Career as a way of burning off my bank balance. Now I'm back to testing in Sandbox.

The first horizontal attempt; nicely done.

1) Launch interplanetary ship on minimal boosters, using all of its fuel to get to orbit. 2) Launch spaceplane tanker, refuel interplanetary ship. 3) Land tanker at KSC for 100% recovery minus fuel. 4) Profit. This is much easier in FAR than stock, however. Large spaceplanes are painful to fly in stock air.

You can get a crazy amount of delta-V out of those ultralight probes:

Yes, it's always best to launch directly into the correct plane. However, when you do have to make an inclination change (e.g. using one probe for two contracts), it's much cheaper to do the inclination change as high as possible.

Coincidentally... Spot the two mistakes.

Lotsa folks here saying to match inclination, then raise the orbit to the required height. You'll save a lot of fuel if you do it the other way around.

Episode #2 The voiceover audio goes a little quiet at the end; still getting the mike situation sorted out.

Complicated explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller Simple explanation: Stock SAS is horrid for spaceplanes. It's designed for rockets and stock aero, and it reacts badly to vehicles with a lot of control authority (e.g. spaceplanes). This leads it to continuously overcorrect, resulting in pitch and yaw wobbles of increasing severity. The best solution is to get a mod that includes a PID tuner, and use that to reduce the sensitivity of the SAS. For a good PID tuner, see http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/...-piloting-aids Go into SAS setup, change it to Stock SAS mode, then get into the PID tuner settings. Exactly which PID settings are best depends upon craft and preference, but a good starting place is to cut all the kp values to 1/3 of default, and reduce the scalars to 1/2 default.

Dodgey has it right. Cut your throttle; if no engines are activated, throttle controls RCS forward translation so that you can use it as a last-mile emergency thruster.

Okeydoke: Wanderfound's Flight School, test broadcast #1:

I was thinking of weight penalty vs circular tank alone, relative to circular tank + cargo bay. If I'm carrying 1.25m tanks, I tend to mount them like this: The Mk2 fuselage parts are less weight efficient than the 1.25m tanks, but they do provide more lift. I tend to find that ships that make heavy use of rocket parts struggle to gain sufficient lift, whereas ships with plenty of Mk2 fuselage can get away with less wings. - - - Updated - - - Just found some free audio/video editing software that works. Wanderstream may be a go within a week or two. Any suggestions? What would folks want to see? Building, flying, aerobatic, interplanetary, etc?

Ditto for FAR, BTW: you'll never make that turn unless you drop to subsonic on the way in. I cut throttle and hit the airbrakes while in the near-vertical climb up to the pass, taking the turn at around 250m/s. The tight version as race 2a sounds fine to me. Think you could manage a touch & go that passes under one of the KSC bridges?