miklkit

Took out my 2nd largest spaceplane (482 tons) to see how it does. Flies fine so sent it to the Mun to test the large rover it carries. Turned out the rover would not decouple............. All dressed up and nowhere to go. So back it went and it turns out it flies way better than it looks.

Go for it. Doing that opens up all kinds of possibilities.

No one else? Ok, how about landing on Moho with almost no fuel? Had to deliver a rover there to visit the Mohole.

The front brake being too strong is a brake balancing thing and it is SOP to balance that out. That other stuff is all Chinese to me. I am surprised that no one else seems to care about this. Recently watched a Matt Lowne video where he set the brakes too high and then apologized when the spaceplane stopped almost in its own length.

The last time I experienced a forum running this badly it was being subjected to long term DDOS attacks that lasted for months at a time. It is always a surprise to me when I am allowed in.

So, no one else has problems with brakes being either too weak of too strong?

Ah! Allowed back in today!

Got on again today and it is wobbly but functional. So far so good.

Are there any mods for airplane landing brakes? I ask because the brakes are not linear. They default to 50% which is never good enough for me. I can slide them up to 95% and they get stronger smoothly and predictably but never strong enough, but at 100% and above they are suddenly too strong and the planes spin out and can crash as they stop way too fast. It would be nice if the brakes were linear at higher settings.

Just got back on for the first time since my last post. THREE DAYS. Is this the new normal? The last time I got on here it only stayed stable for a minute or so, then died. Could not even read any other posts.

OMG!!!! I got on here two days in a row! Now to see if it is stable enough to read other posts.

The forums have been down for me for days at a time. I have only been able to get on 2-3 times a week and then only for a minute or two. Is it like this for everyone?

I have found that Duna "needs" a less stable plane than Kerbin does, so moved the weight back a little on that one. Also it is pretty well balanced and the COM does not move much. I have tried them with the COM forward and back like that one and COM forward lets them fly better but they still crash. Here is the last one I built and tried on Kerbin. It has the COM forward as well as parachutes.

Oh. No screenies of that as I'm pretty busy trying to regain control. In general terms they refuse to go straight. The one above refused to fly straight once it got down into the atmosphere, but would fly sideways just fine.

This morning I just got a black screen instead of this forum. Some. I can get more of them in the SPH. This is the MK3 with the OPT wings. And at Duna.

Just got on here today. Got a 504 error this morning. They seems to be just fine as far as rigidity is concerned. Every part is auto strutted. They just will not land on their tails. I started taking off from KSC and flying up to 5000m, the altitude of Duna, and trying to get them to back down. Nope. Even tried parachutes which worked fine until the engines were lit to slow it down and it went completely bonkers. I am out of ideas.

I no longer have any of those old planes, but did go through screenies of them and that jogged my memory a little bit. I may be making them too stable. The old ones were all short and wide. I also remember how elated I was when I managed to build on that flew well in both Kerbin and Duna. Most flew very well backwards in Kerbin. You keep mentioning rigidity. To me if it falls apart on landing, then something is wrong with it and it needs to be rebuilt. Anyway, still building new designs. On V7 now.

This is what has me puzzled. Years ago I landed MK1, MK2, and MK3 planes just fine. The MK3s were rover carriers that dropped them off and then went back to Kerbin, so they were in the 240-260 ton range. All the ones I have tried now are lighter than that, in the 120-220 ton range. I'm still trying new designs trying to find any engineering mistakes, even copying old designs that I know worked before. The latest one, a MK2 passenger plane was doing fine with SAS set to retrograde until I lit the engines to slow it down and it immediately flipped over and went nose first into the ground. That is the weird part. Once they decide to go over they can not be brought back in line. They refuse to fly straight.

What has changed? I landed many planes on Duna successfully without parachutes. They did not break up on landing either. I also landed many planes on Laythe without them breaking up. They fly fine on Kerbin and can do tail landings there. Something new is destabilizing them. Nowhere else do they go out of control at speeds where the atmosphere should have no effect on them.

Those planes were designed for Duna with more wings and more oxy. I am building another MK3 now using all stock parts with Big S and mini big S wings. I have tested them by landing on the Mun and Ike first where they did fine. Except for that one with the OPT wings they all fly fine on Kerbin too. It is only when they are backing down and get below 20m/s that they go unstable.

Years ago when I first broke out of the Kerbin SOI I went to Duna. First I built a fuel depot on Ike, then dropped down to Duna. I landed rockets and spaceplanes. MK1,MK2, and MK3 all using stock parts. I landed rockets and the only crashlanding was a rocket that I did not put enough retro rockets on and it landed too hard. Then I moved on and forgot about Duna. Well recently I decided to do a rover repair contract there and the rovers I left there years ago are small and unstable, so I decided to land a better one. I have attempted to land 4 different spaceplanes there and none were successful. One never made it close to landing. Further testing showed the OPT wings made it very unstable and they were replaced with Big S wings. The problem is landing. For the 3 that attempted to land they were fine until slowing to touch down. My method is to glide in to the location, go vertical to kill all speed, and then back down like a rocket, touch gently, and fall onto the wheels. This works everywhere. Except that now on Duna they go unstable and start swinging side to side and touch down going sideways and fall apart. I have found no way to keep them stable. Not SAS, not SAS retrograde, not manually. What is going on?

Delivered a new rover to Duna. Now working on getting the crews home.

Updated CKAN and now Kerbal inventory System and World Stabilizer want to update. Did that and when starting KSP MiniAVC says some files need to be pruned and KSP restarted. Then it works fine, I guess, until the next time I open CKAN and those 2 need to be updated again. Do it, the MiniAVC deletes some files. Done this 3 times so far.

Oh, sorry. It seems it was the wings and possibly engines slightly misaligned. I did not build a new one but stripped it down to just the bare fuselage and put new wings and things on it. This is the old one. And the new version.

It turns out that I built the MK IV badly and that caused the heavy CPU loads and more importantly microstutters. They were so bad that the clouds were jerking. I built a new one and the microstutters are gone and fps is a little better.