OSUNightfall

For those following this thread, 1.1.1 is now live with a huge bunch of wheel tweaks and fixes. Looking forward to trying these out when I get home.

The runway is strictly a matter of opinion, but the first plane i built in 1.1, using those gear and the lightest parts possible, would literally flip itself over on the runway with no speed applied due to positive suspension feedback loop. Without taking mitigating steps (friction 0 and suspension off and inward camber) I've found it almost impossible to build a plane, no matter the parameters, that can run straight down the runway without turning into a fireball (misaligned wheel collider on small fixed gear is known issue.) None of the problems I've seen have anything to do with gear being overloaded or treated roughly, so I doubt most people's problem are impact and mass tolerances. And, the fact that you say you've had no problems is somewhat moot. Squad has acknowledged that the gear are in an interim state and have multiple problems.

Keep in mind gear are having some problems in 1.1

Not to put too fine a point on it, but a 30m/s descent in any plane is incredibly, dangerously fast. That's almost 100 feet per second. I'd expect any gear to fail in that situation and the plane to explode besides. Even 10m/s is on the fast side depending on size of plane. Yeah, you're right. It's probably everyone else that is stupid. Nothing to see here folks.

Ah, I guess I didn't get the memo on that one. Well, it's probably for the best. I never airhogged, but it was silly and this would prevent that.

No, but you can mitigate it. Give your gear a slight inward camber, turn suspension off, and set friction to 0.0 for takeoff. This makes them quite useable, generally. You may have to up friction on landing so the brakes work better. Also I suggest enabling reverting flights because they're still finicky and will sometimes result in deadly accidents. That said most of my problems have been at takeoff. I've had pretty much 0 problems landing a variety of planes, even on rough terrain.

I said the same thing when all I had used was the medium and larger landing gear, but the first two types of landing gear tend to make planes immediately flip over at 10m/s for no reason at all, killing everyone aboard. Setting friction to 0, suspension to off, and giving them a slight inward camber seems to make them at least useable.

Hey man welcome to the mile high club! Planes are a heady drug. Now just wait until you make a spaceplane! Seriously though, all planes take is practice and a solid understanding of the fundamentals of flight. Once you have that down, the sky's the limit! (I'm sorry.)

Ah, well as long as KER shows it that's fine I suppose. I generally used it to adjust pitch near the engines' ceiling in order to maximize the amount of horizontal velocity I could get before burnout. Also you needed to be careful and monitor it to avoid an asymmetric flameout, though that might not matter anymore.

I've been playing it for days with KER and some other mods, and have not crashed yet.

I have noticed that there is a downside to having friction set to 0 on Kerbin. Your brakes will be far less effective. I generally set friction to 0 for takeoff and turn it back up as I'm braking on landing.

Change craft root. Having the wrong root for your craft could cause all sorts of terrible bugs in the past. Even today, if something really bizarre happens, consider changing your root part.

Question in title. This is very puzzling if true, intake air was something I used on basically every SSTO spaceplane design. If they removed it, is there a way to get it back?

This was definitely working a while back, I guess it got broken in the meantime.

This is very odd to me. I have created 3 planes in 1.1 and taken them off and landed them multiple times without having any gear break or suspension weirdness, including two emergency landings on hills. One plane used the 3 wheel landing gear and one plane used the 2 wheel landing gear with single wheel nose gear. I had noticed some sway in one design on takeoff but quickly realized it was the suspension trying to compensate for other bendy parts of the craft. A few struts fixed this right up.

How will you decide the order to do things now that the Mk1 pod and lander can are done? Personally I am waiting eagerly for the large lander can and Mk2 spaceplane cockpit since most of my designs seem to use these. Maybe we could do a poll?

The important question to ask is why you want to return it. In the old days this could be useful, but now the MPL is a lab that just kind of sits in one place and beams data back to Kerbin occasionally. If there are people trapped in it, just send up a ship and have them EVA over.

This looks really amazing! I am looking forward to trying it tomorrow!

Actually, if you have the thing you want to dock with set as the target, you can just burn retrograde on the nav ball and this will cancel all relative velocity. Then you can line up as you said using reaction wheels.

Good for you, buddy! Congratulations on grabbing the reins of your own life!

This is nicer than any station I've ever put into orbit and I've played hundreds of hours. Very nice!

True, but there are two complicating factors. First, between potentially unlimited mods and future development adding new nodes to the tech tree, you can't depend on that unconditionally. Second, though difficult, it's possible to get yourself into a very bad spot with respect to the tech tree if you finish most of all of the easy science in orbit and on kerbin, and spend it all on useless stuff that won't help you get more science. This helps mitigate that.

Quite right. Some of what I wrote was written before I read RoverDude's replies.

This is close but it's also way off. The science lab vehicle or base itself doesn't have to actually have *any* experiment modules on it. It just needs to have the result of other experiments brought to it. For example, let's say I sent a science mun lander to the mun and did a mystery goo and materials research experiment. Now, normally, I'd then either transmit that data to kerbin or I'd bring it back to kerbin and gain its benefit when I recovered the craft. Now I have a *third* option. I can bring it back to a science lab. In the example above, on my way back to kerbin, I'd have my lander dock with say, my orbiting science station, then I'd have scientists remove the results of the experiments and carry them into the science lab module. Now those experiments reside in the lab, and I can now activate "start research" on the lab. It will now, over time produce research steadily. The net result of this will be research that trickles in slower than I'd normally get, but the final amount will be far larger than it would normally be. I haven't managed to successfully test how much more research a mobile lab gets you, nor have I determined if a lab in orbit or on another planet actually gives better multiplication than one on the surface of kerbin, but I believe I remember hearing this is the case. One other thing you might be wondering: why not just build a stationary laboratory somewhere on kerbin, maybe even just outside the launch center, and bring my experiments back to that? Well, indeed you can do that! Just remember, it's still much harder, because you'll have to actually land near it and have a kerbal cart the experiments over to it. It can be quite difficult to land a lander close enough to KSC to make this feasible. But by all means try!

@Padishar - That decoupler is a heat shield from Deadly Re-entry but I also removed all mods and tried it without that, and the problem persisted. I had already taken the screenshot though, and saw no reason to take another since they both showed approximately the same thing. Sorry for the confusion. @Gaiiden - I appreciate the help, but I do know how to plan a mission. With such a simple mission (get into orbit) I did not follow normal procedure.