Powerful Jet Engines?

[Monger]

I\'ve tried now for two days, and I can\'t get my head around this:

Are the Jet Engines really that weak? It seems pretty much impossible to me to transport any kind of payload with them. Yes, I know: there are two types of them. I tried them both, I can only lift very small planes with them. They seem barely enough to carry themselves. Or do I need to use bigger wings? I am currently just using the delta wings.

[sal_vager]

I think you already came up with the answer, more wings

Check out the spacecraft exchange, there are a lot of aircraft now, you just need to get the balance mostly right and have enough lift to get off the ground.

[Kosmo-not]

Try putting a canard on your plane. The engines are more overpowered than underpowered.

[Monger]

Are canards anyhow special, except you can move them? Do they create additional lift?

But yeah, I downloaded one of the crafts in this forum, and if built correctly, you can lift off with 65 m/s or less, instead of the 150 m/s from one of my early planes.

Currently, I am trying to build something with different jet engines to reach the higher atmosphere, and then I\'ll hopefully create something that can undock from the plane to finally reach space.

At least I\'m making progress.

[Xivios]

Canards as parts are just named, they can be used as all-moving tails too, for example, which is pretty useful, or even all-moving wings, which isn\'t a great idea, but then the Kerbal\'s aren\'t known for their great idea\'s anyways. Canards as used as the name suggests helps keeps the nose up, gives the plane better pitch authority, and can be used to tweak the center of lift. But they can make planes hard to fly. If it flips end over end after installing canards on the front, move the canards further back to reduce their authority as well as move the center of lift back. If the plane doesn\'t pitch well or pitches down too much, move them further ahead. Doing the same with the main wings will have a similar effect, though even more greatly so.

[theflyingfish]

Currently, I am trying to build something with different jet engines to reach the higher atmosphere, and then I\'ll hopefully create something that can undock from the plane to finally reach space.

At least I\'m making progress.

Just a heads-up, the High-alt engines only perform marginally better than the regular ones at altitude.

I\'ve found that the engines are not a very good representation of real engines (same with the wings). I think the main problem is too little drag at low speeds, too much drag at high speeds. And any lessons you learn in this version must be taken with a grain of salt, because most of it (besides the rudimentary center-of-gravity in front of center-of-pressure, etc.) will probably go out the window when Squad overhauls the aerodynamics system, which I hear will be soon.

[Zephram Kerman]

Prays for dynamic drag.