Jakalth

Weight balance will be an issue. I see a huge problem when the craft is light on fuel. As you burn fuel, the COM will creep forwards. As it creeps forwards, your ability to maintain control(Pitch mostly) will be greatly decreased. The hidden canards in the front of the craft gives it more tolerance to this, but it might still be too much. The weight issue would not effect its ascent due to the craft being out of most of the aerodynamic effects before it shifts forwards too much. The front vertical stabilizer might help a bit on the ascent, but as Jens Lyn IV said, get rid of it if you can. The vertical stabilizer up front just increases aerodynamic torque. as the craft starts to turn to the right, the front vertical stabilizer will act like a vain and force the nose to turn even more. This can easily turn a slight wobble into a violent spin. Vertical stabilizers should not be any farther forward on an aircraft then it's center of mass. For example, even the winglets of modern commercial and civilian aircraft are slightly behind the center of mass of the craft to prevent inducing aerodynamic rotation, even though they are only for smoothing the airflow over the wing. Drag... The front of the craft does seem to have a slightly higher amount of drag, for its profile, then the tail. Mostly due to that cupola. But, you have the countermeasures to compensate for this. The rear airbrakes. Add an action group that lets you deploy a few of the rear most airbrakes to increase drag on the tail once your inside the atmosphere. This should help counter some of the front end drag. You should be able to retract the brakes once the craft has slowed down a fair amount and the rest of the control surfaces can keep it under control. My suggestion is to try tweeking it in the order above; Weight, front stabilizer, then airbrakes/drag adjustments.

well, it IS actually 2 Goliaths, and they are moved/clipped into place so they still use their original air intakes. Otherwise, that would be a lot of air intakes needing to be clipped into the hull. But yeah, Goliaths line up perfectly with MK:2 fuel tanks. Plus their mounting pylon makes a nice mounting point for the tail fin. It needs 2 because of the sheer mass of the submarine. Also, the link to the craft is just below the picture, it says Download: and is followed by the link, which is the name of the craft.

Yeah, it requires a lot of trial and error, mostly error. If your sub tends to list forward(nose down), you can either remove a tiny bit of ore from an ore tank near the front to bring the nose up, of shift 1 or more are tanks backwards slightly to reduce the weight on the nose. Just takes trying it out, adjusting, then trying again until you get the balance right. If it's the other way, you can shift weight froward or remove a bit from the back.

@StupidAndy I got it to sink by adding enough filled ore containers that the submarine became slightly heavier then the lift(buoyancy) of the fuel tanks. Balancing this weight can be a bit tricky. The trick with the cargo bay works because an opened cargo bay has more lift(buoyancy) then a closed one. Someone on the forums found this trick a couple years ago. A note with this, filled ore containers are a bit unstable so be careful about placement. They tend to explode if they are clipped into each other and then experience any forces directly applied to them, so either completely clip them inside the craft or try not to clip them into each other if they are exposed.

Oh, a few notes on the Marlin that I forgot to mention. 1: Shes a bit faster when fully submerged, like a real submarine, maybe 2m/s. 2: You can manually toggle the front or rear cargo bays to get the Marlin to perform a rapid change in pitch, but it does have a higher chance of causing the buoyancy to glitch, meaning you'll have to use the action group 2 fix to reset it's buoyancy. 3: Breaching the surface can be dangerous, but cool to watch. But, if you want to perform a clean surfacing, either toggle the cargo bays closed about 50m below the surface to slow the ascent before opening them at the surface. Or just use the engines to power its way up and then toggle the cargo bays.

How about a functional stock submarine? The Marlin Class Explorer is currently setup as an exploration submarine with working active ballast(uses the cargo bay trick for changing buoyancy). The craft is capable of diving and surfacing under engine thrust alone, but can also use the cargo bays as ballasts to bring the craft to the surface a bit quicker, and in a more conventional way then pitching up hard. With the 4 ballasts closed, the submarine is negatively buoyant, meaning it will slowly sink to the bottom of the ocean if the engines are running slow and/or your not pitched up slightly. With all 4 ballasts open, the sub is positively buoyant and will sit a little over half way out of the water. With only two open, it sits less then half way out. The submarine only uses 2 action groups by default. Action Group 1: Standard ballasts. Two of the cargo bays are toggled, increasing the buoyancy and causing the submarine to surface at about 6m/s, or a normal climb speed you'd expect for a submarine maneuvering. Action Group 2: Crash Dive!! All 4 cargo bays are toggles, making a more dramatic change to the submarines buoyancy. With all 4 open, the subamrine nearly doubles it's ascent rate and can go completely airborne when reaching the surface. Great for dramatic cinematics, but can be dangerous for the engines, which can't always handle the impact when it smacks back into the water, making a huge slash.(think the US submarine in the movie The Hunt for Red October, when it does the emergency surface and breaches the surface hard) This action group also serves two other purposes. One, it keeps the sub at the surface for when you first enter the water(starts with the cargo bays open just a crack) and initially sets the buoyancy once your at a safe distance from shore, which is about 100m+. Two, it allows you to reset the buoyancy if the game has a physics hickup and the standard ballasts stop working for some reason. How to use: 1: Launch the submarine onto the runway. 2: Get off the runway as soon as possible and roll along the grass beside it, the steep end of the runway will kill the submarine if you stay on it. 3: Watch your speed. It has quite a bit of thrust and can get a bit out of control if you go too fast. 40-50m/s is safe(ish) until you reach about where the runway ends. 4: She's VERY heavy, a mere 476tons, so brake brake brake!! The brakes are set to max but take a while to slow her down, start braking early. 5: Slow her down to a speed of no more then 15m/s when entering the water. Too fast and she will tail slap when entering, possibly destroying her engines. 6: Run the engines to bring her away from shore. You want some depth below you when you toggle the ballasts. 7: Once your at a safe distance, use action group 2 to close all the ballasts and crash dive. This will allow her to submerge and set her buoyancy initially so the submarine operates properly. 8: If at any time the ballasts stop working properly, make sure all 4 cargo bays are closed and use action group 2 to open them, then close them again. This should reset the buoyancy so it works properly again. Shouldn't need to fully surface to do this, but it does make it easier. Her cruise speed is around 14m/s, so she's not a record breaker, just capable. She can pitch up and down pretty well with the 4 canards and turns fairly well with the big tail rudder. Nothing quick, so it feels like a submarine when your driving it around. If you deploy the landing gear, she will sit nicely on the bottom of the sea, waiting until you need her, and it is possible to drive it back onto dry land if you have a need for that. Download: Marlin Class Explorer

Alright. Got one for you guys to try out. This is easily my best turboshaft engine. Works extremely well, and only uses 8 Juno's as blowers. It is very much a lite duty turboshaft atm but I'm sure it's total power could be ramped up immensely just by adding more blowers. The engine it's self is stable, can handle some rough maneuvers now, and no longer freaks out when being tilted. The platform it is mounted to allows the turbine to be flown, and it flies surprisingly well. The craft is almost stable enough to be flown without using sas. Still has a slight torque indifference though. This craft is just a flying test bed for the turboshaft engine. Meduim turbine 1 aka: flying twin rotor testbed. Staging is setup, but ejecting the stack separator to free the turbine is a bit glitchy. Make sure the separator is completely free of the turbine housing before staging to the engines. The separator tends to not cooperate and likes to wedge its self inside the turbine housing. If this happens, simple retract the landing gear and let the turbine drop to the ground. Once the separator is free, extend the landing gear to pick the turbine back up again. The turbine is close enough to the ground for this to work. Second stage simply starts the engines and releases the docking clamps, whos job is simply to prevent the whole craft from being launched by the glitchy separator. Also, the controls are a bit odd. w/s pitches up/down, a/d rolls left/right, and q/e turns right/left. This is due to the oddly placed drone core. But don't worry, this craft can be recovered from odd angles fairly easily. As a last note, this craft has no fuel so requires infinite propellant. Once this turboshaft design is perfected with better bearings, better rotors, and better/more blowers, it should have more then enough power to lift the fuel it needs.

Well, I did figure out most of the issues with the second helicopter. They involved not using the Completely broken and useless small steerable landing gear and replacing them with the much larger small stow able landing gear. Not ideal due to size difference, but made the turbine stable enough for flight. Not it's simply a matter of me not being very good at making helicopters... :\ But on a different note: I've done some testing and got a heavy turboshaft working. One that's capable of lifting a 60 ton craft into the air. Sadly the design is only usable if you don't make any kind of maneuvers other then just flying strait up... Any maneuvers at all and it spontaneously disassembles... But I do have one success, even if it's not complete, I have a working duel output turboshaft. This turboshaft can spin a set of rotors on both ends of the engine, not just the one end. It seems to handle some pretty high rpm's as well. Don't have VOID installed, and keep forgetting to install it, so don't have exact numbers. But testing shows it's more then capable of lifting its own weight, and then some, with only basic 6x symmetry rotors. I'm not sure yet what advantages this setup might have, but so far it doesn't seem to have as much of an issue with the rotation of the rotors causing the craft to tip to one side. Of course, being one of my designs, it's not entirely stable yet and the turbine tends to pull it's self free from the bearings when subjected to lateral forces. aka: tilting

Ok, that would be a simple choice for me. My best aircraft is the Delta Kite. The reasons are simple. 1: It has a clean design that turned out better then I had hoped. 2: It's fairly maneuverable. 3: It flies stable from full tanks all the way to empty. 4: It has extreme endurance. With full tanks, it can stay airborne for up to 12 hours and circumnavigate the planet with fuel to spare. 5: It's quite relaxing to fly and gives you time to think.

Hay Azimech, it's been a long time since I chatted here. Finally got back into trying to make vanilla turboshaft engines and fell into the now common problem of landing gear being a P.I.T.A.... So I did end up finally getting one turboshaft to work, all be it very inefficiently... It has a hybred half landing gear half slide bearing design. thought you might enjoy the novelty of looking at it. 1.3 copter test3 Barely flies, terribly inefficient and underpowered, but the turboshaft engine it's self seems somewhat solid...ish... 30 Junos as blowers. The main reason I'm asking here is for some tips on the second turboshaft I'm working on. It's part of a partially completed heli, which will be redone once the turboshaft engine is bug fixed. The engine it's self has far more power then the other one and is lighter. But it has a fatal flaw... The top landing gear bearings... The engine spins up nicely and has enough torque to spin the rotors at a good clip. But when it gets close to full power, the shaft of the engine starts to hop and will eventually bounce with enough force to destroy the bearing wheels on the bottom of the engine. This becomes a fatal problem quickly. I can't quite find a solution to this bounciness problem, and I have tried several different tricks to reduce the landing gears recoil with no success. The engine is stable enough laterally, but it's the vertical glitchiness that kills it... prototype turboshaft heli 1 The heli's body is temporary, I'll be making it look and work better once I can find a solution to the engine. Got a prototype heavy turboshaft engine atm that weights in at a heavy 24.185 tons empty and is capable of lifting off with a 3/4 filled S3-7200 fuel tank, with 4 wheasleys for counter torque, weighing in at 32.6 tons, for a combined weight of 56.785tons. Is that good, bad, average???? It's using a 6x symmetry rotor make from 5 "wing connector type E", and this one does not have the maniac shaking of the above model... Uses 40 Junos as blowers. Also, still looking for any tips I can get on how to stabilize a more compact turboshaft engine. Trying to use the small stearable landing gear but getting a lot of rebound glitching which eventually leads to violent dissasembly.

Na, mostly popcorn and baby tears...

Yeah, that name was stuck somewhere in my head, couldn't quite find it...

fair enough. But the challange is still building a turboprop that can actually move an aircraft with a lot of fuel on board. If someone can pull that off though. It would be impressive. I intend to give this a try. Hopefully, if I can find the time for it now that my vacation is over...

He's talking glitch drives, infiniglide(ish), and other bugs that can be used as a form of propulsion for those crazy(or just plain skilled) enough to try harnessing them.

That may be true if it wasn't for the fact that this is a Turboprop challenge, which means jet engine blowers. Although that might need to be specified in the rules, or have a separate class for the electric types?

Azimech, you crazy! Don't ever change! -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Started my flight on a fine, clear Kerbin day. The sun was rising into the picturesque morning sky and the Delta Kite was waiting at the end of the runway. This flight was going to be for the record books. Our Pilot, Piliana was ready to go, until she was finally briefed on her mission for the day. 2 days in the air, with a limited snack reserve? Are you crazy? :edit: Forgot to mention this... always seem to do this... 100% stock. Only mods used are Kerbal Engineer Redux for finding the right twr and delta-v. And Pilot Assist mod, for auto pilot during the long flight. Kerbal Engineer is in partless mode. :end edit: Well, liftoff was slow for the Delta Kite. All the extra fuel made her heavy and a bit reluctant to take off. She actually needed nearly 3/4 of the runway to lift. Oh the horrors... Once in the air, the craft began a slow and steady 10 degree ascent to its target altitude of 10km. With all the fuel on board, the two Wheezley engines could barely move her faster then 120m/s in the climb, initially, but I eventually had to lower the angle of ascent as we got higher just to maintain airspeed. Here we are, still climbing up to altitude, having been in flight for over 7 minutes already. With all the extra fuel on board, the Delta Kite was sluggish and slow as we continued the climb. In fact, she was getting so sluggish the I had to level off at 9500m to maintain enough airspeed to keep her stable at this height. At this point, we had already covered 248,128m. I ended up need to burn off some more fuel before continuing the ascent so I set the Pilot Assist's altitude hold at 9500m and let the craft stay at this height for a while. In fact, I let her fly for about 24 minutes at that altitude before ascending to 9700m where I set the altitude hold again until she had burned off more fuel. At this point, the craft had covered a distance of 632,316m. I left the Delta Kite flying at 9700m for a much longer time then before, so the craft could get a decent amount of speed built up cause she was a tiny bit too sluggish at the controls yet. So it wasn't until the craft had been in the air for nearly another hour that I brought her up to her cruising altitude of 10Km. By now, the total distance covered is up to 1,359,154m. After flying for more then an hour at this height, and having a tiny foible nearly ruin the flight, I decide I better set the hold heading option in pilot assist before it wanders off course again. I also do my first quick save of the craft in case something goes wrong and snap a pic of the F3 screen so I know how far I had already traveled, just in case. You know, since loading a quicksave can reset the distance traveled... Nothing really happening here. Just letting the Delta Kite fly its self around the planet. I set the pilot assist to limit the crafts max velocity to 170m/s since this seemed to be the most optimum airspeed for this craft. Or at least that is what Kerbal Engineer Redux was telling me... We've been in the air for over a day now and had already circumnavigated the equator of the planet once already. Fuel is looking good, fuel consumption is looking even better. When we had first reach altitude, we had been using fuel at a rate of 0.11, we are now only using it at a rate of 0.08. Been a few hours since the last check now. 10 hours into the flight and the craft is still putzing along. Nothing to report other then how smooth Pilot Assist is at flying the craft. Out Pilot, Piliana, was able to complete a pyramid of cards two times over in the boredom that has passed. Nothing to see here, but a nice view. Once again, our third and final quick save. Just a quick update on distance and time in the air in case something happens and we have to reload the save. This way I know how far we've already traveled. Been a long flight, most of it taking place over night while I was sleeping. The Delta Kite is close enough to see the mountains near the KSC, and our fuel is no longer enough to do another circumnavigation, so I begin preparations to come in for a landing. It's nearly flown around the world twice now, quite a feat for a semi-conventional slow flying aircraft that was not initially designed for circumnavigation flights. Once the Delta Kite was nearly over the Mountains, I killed the engines, turned off Pilot Assist, and began a slow gliding descent into the KSC. The Delta Kite is quite good at gliding so I was actually having a hard time getting the craft to loose speed as I descended. So I extended the landing gear early just to increase the drag a bit. After a bit of maneuvering to get lined up, and some quick snap turns as well as a few quick pitch ups, I was able to bleed off enough speed to land. Just before touchdown, the craft is still coming in a bit hot, for the Delta Kite anyways. Considering it can make a smooth, level landing at speeds of only 40m/s with 3600 units of fuel on board. So yeah, she's coming in fast. Touchdown is smooth, not even a bump. This is normal for this craft, with its exceptionally low stall speed at sea level and good gliding characteristics. We stop short, coming to rest well before the turn to the SPH. The Delta Kite being just as happy on its landing gear as it is in the air. Final verdict: Total distance Traveled = 15,214,469m Total time in the air = 2days, 0hours, 42minutes, 30 seconds. Fuel remaining = 585 out of 4620 units Estimated flight time remaining = 1hour 30minutes (+/- 15minutes) Estimated range remaining = 1,500,000m give or take 150,000m The remaining fuel was not enough to do another circumnavigation, and I do not know the location of KSC2, or at least I have never been able to find it... So I had to cut the flight a bit short. I could of spent the rest of fuel circling around KSC, but I also didn't feel like spending the time to do so. Call my lazy if you will. Anyways, with the remaining fuel, I took off again and got some speed and performance numbers from the craft before landing once again, on the runway. Top speed when light on fuel, at sea level, is 267m/s. Not bad from 2 Wheezlys. Performing some acrobatic maneuvers, I was able to get it to max out at 15.3G. Which is quite good for a craft that is not a fighter, and is only using the Wheezlys, which have no thrust vectoring. Finally I climbed back up to 10km and put the hammer down, she was able to max out at 236m/s in level flight. This last bit was just testing, and when I landed, I still had over 400 units of fuel. Silly Delta Kite, not quite sure what role it's supposed to fill; fighter, cargo plane, endurance aircraft...

There are 2 schools of thought for distance records really. 1: fly as high and fast as possible, that way you cover as long of distance in a shorter period of time. 2: load as much fuel as you can and use the most efficient engine available, then fly at an optimum height for as long as possible. Both schools of thought are correct. Both result in long distance flights. And there are advantages and disadvantages to both. Going high speed allows you to fly the distance without having your computer running ksp for a long time. Not everyone has a completely stable computer that can reliably run unattended for hours at a time. But, going fast burns fuel quickly and less efficiently. While going slow, efficient, and lofting for a long time lets you squeeze every drop of time and duration out of the fuel you have. But requires a long term use of the computer, hoping it can run stable for the entire duration of the flight, and constant monitoring of the craft during this flight so it ties you to your computer for a whole day or so. Anyways, 1 day, 4 hours, and 40 minutes into the flight, still got 1092 out of 4620 units of fuel left. Not going to break a 5 day duration or anything like that, but it's going to go the distance. 12,900Km so far. circumnavigation number 2 closing in on completion. Also the farthest I've ever flown on Kerbin.

So far so good. 1hr 22m 21 seconds in and the aircraft has finally reached it's intended cruising altitude of 10,000m. Still have 3904 out of 4620 units of fuel. It's only really designed to fly with 3420 units of fuel @ 10,000m but I loaded all the extra fuel I could pack into the aircraft, without adding any extra tanks. This is a clean aerodynamic design with no droptanks, so everything she took off with, she'll bring back home with her. Using the Pilot Assist mod because MechJeb was incredibly unstable and was wasting so much fuel flopping about, while Pilot Assist is completely smooth and is using less fuel then I would if I flew her myself. I only have keyboard and mouse to fly with, haven't had a joystick for 2 years now. Anyways, so far so good. Soon I'll be able to start throttling back a bit and increase its efficiency even more. That is, once I've burned off a bit more fuel and made her a bit lighter. One foible though, forgot to lock heading in Pilot assist so she started to drift off course and list to the left a few degrees. Easily corrected though but I'm sure that cost me a minute or two of flight time as well as bled off a bit of airspeed.

Hmmm, I might just have to give this a try. I even have the plane to try it with. Didn't even know why I had built it until I saw this challange. My entry: the Delta Kite. I'll have to get mechjeb or pilot assist for this craft is slowish and has a crazy amount of predicted flight duration.

This aircraft is completely stock with no modded parts and no mods used other then Kerbal Engineer Redux. (I like the constantly updated delta-v and twr readings while building) The Delta Kite was an experiment to see how close to a true hybrid wing and lifting body design I could get in KSP. During it's initial test flights, this craft surprised me with how well it could fly. And after only a few modifications, I have the craft you see here today. The Delta Kite is a long range... aah... experimental aircraft! Yeah. It's powered by 2 Wheezley turbofan engines mounted in engine nacelles above the tail of the aircraft. It's total mass is only 33 tons when normally fueled, but that weight goes up a bit if fully fueled and heavy. This craft is a medium sized bomber/passenger type aircraft, but flies like a smaller fighter type aircraft. It's surprisingly maneuverable and pretty nice to look at. With how much "wing" the Delta Kite has, it's capable of lifting off the runway at fairly low speeds. In fact, you can start pulling up at as low as 80m/s on the runway. Speaking of runway, who needs the whole thing when only half is all you really need. Once in the air, the twin wheezleys can push the craft up to a top speed of Mach 0.76, or 260m/s at low altitude when flying with a normal fuel load. At low altitudes, the Delta Kite can perform some high G maneuvers, maxing out at 14.3G while pulling up into a steep climb, or about 10G in a sharp banked turn. It's fully capable of performing a complete loop at altitudes below 900m without risk of hitting the ground. It's optimum service ceiling is at about 10Km running at 200-215m/s. At this height, it has a predicted flight time of up to 11 hours while flying heavy, or about 6-7 hours with a normal fuel load. The delta Kite carries over 3600 units of liquid fuel, but can be fuel up to carry over 4200 units if longer range is needed. While fueled heavy, it is not as maneuverable but is still capable of performing some tight turns and loops if flown at a higher latitude for safety. With a standard fuel load, the Delta Kite is quite good at gliding, so landing the aircraft is quite easy. It's stall speed, while still full of fuel, is as low as 40m/s at just above sea level, or about the height of the grasslands around KSC. Slowing the craft down is another matter though. The Delta Kite is very good at maintaining momentum so it does not slow down quickly on its own. Using the wheezleys in reverse thrust mode is your best bet to slow the craft down to landing speeds( 60-80m/s is easiest for runway landings, close to 40m/s for grass landings). Otherwise, just shut down the engines while a ways out from the space center and glide her in, bleeding off speed with turns and short, sharp, pitch maneuvers. Enjoy! Download: Delta Kite After doing some more tests I can confirm this. With a heavy fuel load(the wings full of fuel as well), the Delta Kite can stay in the air for over 2 days or about 13 hours strait without refueling. She's able to perform 2 consecutive equatorial circumnavigations and still have plenty of fuel left over as long is she's flown economically and at an altitude of 10,000m. Pretty crazy for a craft not actually designed for endurance flights.

Well, for one, do you have the Vector engines unlocked? They have a higher efficiency then the twin bore engines and can be doubled up on the bottom of the tanks to match the twin bores thrust, since they are surface attachable. At this point it just seems to be looking for ways to increase how far you can go on a given amount of fuel. That and srb's can help, even if it's only to lighten your main engines load for the first few 1000m or so. Even that helps increase efficiency.

yeah... if the LY-01 gear are attached correctly, somehow, on the first try, they work just fine. the rotate tool can be used on them and no issues arise, at all. So they are safe to rotate at least. Also, after some trial, and a lot of having to revert, it seems the LY-05 steerable gear are simply unusable. At speeds over 10m/s, they go into a self feeding left/right oscillation if any steering input is applied to the craft they are attached to. Even if the landing gear themselves have their steering disabled. If the LY-05 is placed on the front of the aircraft, in a tricycle landing gear arrangement, the aircraft will wobble and spin out, or cause the failure of one of the other landing gear, before the craft has even reached take off speed. But if the LY-05 is used in a tail drager arrangement, the LY-05 in the rear of the craft, then this oscillation goes away. but, other problem arise.. I have not found a way to safely land with the LY-05 landing gear on the craft. Even at speeds as low as 50m/s, with no more then 1.2m/s vertical speed, the LY-05 landing gear is destroyer on touchdown. Not only is their hitbox bornked, their stability in severe question, and their ability to take even the lightest touchdowns in question, but they also seem to never loose the wheel stress they accumulate as long as they are in contact with the ground. Yep, tested this next to the runway with a wide wheelbase test vehicle. As long as the LY-05 land gear are in contact with the ground, then any stresses they feel are added together and the stress never goes down, even if the vehicle is at a full stop. Turns out that, other then the move tool bug with the LY-01 land gear, they actually are quite stable. Using ONLY LY-01 landing gear on an aircraft turns it into a craft that travels down the runway smoothly and is able to safely make slightly bumpy landings in the grass next to the runway at speeds over 70m/s. But using only LY-01 gear means your aircraft will not be able to turn, at all, unless you have enough sas authority to force the wheels to slide.

I HAVE spotted a pattern with this, or at least one of the triggers. If any part of the craft is active or moving; engine running, wheel spinning, dislodged "Unneeded" part still falling to the ground, etc, then the game is quite a bit more likely to crash when reverting to the vab/sph. It's not the only cause of the crash, but it does seem to be one of the more common causes of this issue. solution: wait for the parts to stop moving before reverting. not always a practical solution, but it does reduce revert to sph/vab crashing.

I'll try the dampener and spring option and see if that helps any. As it stands I can't even get the plane to take off without flopping about on the runway like a fish, once it gets over 40m/s. At that point, either the craft kicks to one side and goes into a "slight damage may be acquired" roll, or one of the LY-01 gear explodes causing the craft to vault into the air and fly. Either way, the craft is lost since I need to be able to land it for the missions I plan on using it for. The part snap issue with the LY-01 isn't the initial placement. It initially places just fine. It's when I have to move it using the move tool. For example: 1: landing gear is placed on left side of fuselage with attachment point being on the center left of the fuselage 2: select move tool 3: click on ANY of the move arrows 4: landing gears attachment point instantly switches to the top right of the fuselage so that the gear is mostly inside the fuselage and no longer even reaches the ground. 5: using move tool to bring it back to where it was only causes it to jump even further to the top right 6: landing gear has to be removed and placed again to get it to attach properly again. as for the LY-05, well, it just seems to have an odd (hitbox?) that doesn't always seem to recognize where the ground starts. As for bigger landing gear... It's early in career mode and I don't have the science to purchase any of the other 4 landing gear. I can't get the science without doing these survays since mission control only gives me missions I can not complete this early in the game. In case your wondering, I've been playing this game for 911 hours and I bought this game over 2 years ago. So feel free to get a bit technical with your ideas if you think they might help. I'll try them out.

Both of the early game landing gear have issues that are making early career aircraft nearly impossible to use in 1.1.3 of KSP... The craft I am trying to fly is only 6 tons and designed for flying observation missions. The LY-01 landing gear has a severe attachment problem after I attach them to the side of the mk.1 liquid fuel tank(has the same problem with the science jr.) of my tiny early craft. They initially attach to the craft fine, but if I have to move them slightly using the tool:move, they instantly snap to the opposite side of the fuselage, glitching completely through it. Any attempts to move them further just causes them to move even further to the opposite side of the fuselage, and move up higher. This brings the wheels so close together they it completely defeats the purpose of using these landing gear. The LY-05 steerable landing gear has an odd issue with interactions with the ground and other objects. About 1 out of 3 times I try to take off, these landing gear clip into the ground, acting like a strong brake, preventing the aircraft from getting up enough speed to take off, and sometimes preventing it from moving all together. When this happens, the info box for the landing gear says the gear is "blocked", even though the same gear, when I restart it from launch, have no errors when the landing gear is not "stuck" in the ground. This issues just as often happens when trying to land. The stearable gear sticks into the ground on touchdown, tearing the whole aircraft apart due to the sudden resistance.