Low inclination launches?

[saskwach]

I've been playing my way through career mode and doing reasonably well with the new aerodynamics, but one thing that's been bugging me is my launchers always wobble North and South when I ask them nicely to turn East. I've been ending up with several degrees off equatorial, which isn't a big deal but does cost some dV when I'm trying to do cheap rescue missions. Is there a trick for getting rockets to keep from straying during launch?

Edited May 1, 2015 by saskwach

[KatzOhki]

It depends on how tall and thin your rocket is, but you can try adding fins, reaction wheels and RCS to help stabilize.

[Empiro]

Using fins and turning off SAS might reduce wobble and let you get a cleaner turn. If you look closely at the navball you can see if your velocity prograde is slightly north or south. Just steer your rocket in the opposite direction to bring it back. You should be able to launch most of the time to an inclination of < 0.5 degrees.

[TopGull]

I've encountered the same sort of thing since before 1.0, although it's definitely more pronounced now. Even with lots of control surfaces and SAS modules I tend to get random oscillations that put my rockets slightly off due east. The only way I've found to combat it is to constantly watch the navball during ascent and steer the prograde marker back to where I want it. It's annoying, but easily correctable with vigilant piloting.

[Jouni]

Use short taps on the controls to keep the rocket on course. If you can't control the rocket precisely enough, you probably have too much control authority. Using less fins, less control surfaces, less reaction wheels, and less thrust vectoring might help.

In my experience, rockets are harder to fly in stock 1.0 than in 0.90 + FAR. The aerodynamics are similar enough, but the increased gimbal range in the engines makes fine control harder.

[Shpaget]

If using keyboard to control, try hitting the CapsLock. It toggles a mode precise control mode indicated by blue roll, pitch and yaw markers in lower left corner.

[Suicider]

Use short taps on the controls to keep the rocket on course. If you can't control the rocket precisely enough, you probably have too much control authority. Using less fins, less control surfaces, less reaction wheels, and less thrust vectoring might help.

In my experience, rockets are harder to fly in stock 1.0 than in 0.90 + FAR. The aerodynamics are similar enough, but the increased gimbal range in the engines makes fine control harder.

Lock the gimbal at a lower limit. 50 works nicely in some cases.