The mini-gate says it can be used in space and on land, but going from one to the other is... troublesome. Sending a kerbal through a surface gate to a space gate doesn't update their status properly, leaving them "landed" even though they're in space. Doing the reverse causes the kerbal to clip through the launchpad, and probably worse if it's directly on the ground.
Also, if I were to add ground functionality to the big gate, is "rendezvousDistance = 10" the only thing I need to add or am I missing something?