Launching into desired inclinated orbit - The Navball is against me.

[Pappus]

So I read somewhere that the best results are to wait for launchpad and AN/DN to be aligned with it. However I tried but I have no luck being well off-mark so I start to think that my launchpad should actually align with pe/ap if I want to "remake" the same orbit just smaller yet. I don't need to nail it 100%, but I want at least for my efforts to account to something and right now I think I would do better just heading east and doing 2 burns to finish the job, but it pokes at me being unable to launch roughly how I want to.

It is also really hard to align the launchpad with those nodes for satellite contracts because I have no target, I can't aim for it and if the desired orbit is huge aligning those points becomes hard for me. I know I could just slap more engines and fuel to the thing, but that wouldn't teach me anything so this is the situation:

I already aligned the thing as best as I could with the AN and tried launching 135°, but the result weren't that great. At first the ascending node was decreasing and then increasing massively and since I don't understand the whole concept it was like magic.

http://imgur.com/a/WESql#3

[Feradose]

If your problem is the inclination, when you are launching, switch to orbit mode momentarily and get your prograde to desired heading (you may revert to surface mode for gravity turn but I wouldnt change heading). Your surface velocity messes up the orbit you have when you plan to make a non equatorial orbit, when launching with orbit mode, it should get a lot more accurate.

[rofltehcat]

Here is how I do it: Mind that this isn't very accurate and I still need to correct 5-10°. Mods make it infinitely easier but this is without them. I start the mission and go to the map while still parked at the launch pad. Then I move the camera so that the target orbit is displayed as a single line that intersects with Kerbin's core, kinda like your third picture, just even flatter. Then I activate warp until my ship is basically directly on the intersection between the orbit and the core. Once this is met, I launch and aim in the direction I want to go (note which way the target orbit is rotating).

Once I have some height and some speed and maybe a little time during staging I switch the navball from surface to orbit to check if the prograde is pointing in the correct direction because you already start with some velocity from Kerbin's rotation so you'll have to aim a little further west than what you are aiming for until the orbit's inclination points roughly where you want to go. If I have time I also check the general direction of the flight path with the orbit (overlap them).

So yeah, just eyeballing it but it works

[Snark]

You definitely want to launch when you're directly under the ascending/descending node. If visually identifying that point is tricky, here's a handy technique:

1. Before launch, switch to map view.

2. By default, it's centered on your ship. Double-click on the planet, this will switch to be centered on Kerbin itself.

3. If you pull back on the camera a bit, the map view will draw a little gray dot right in the center of Kerbin.

4. Rotate the camera view so that you're looking perfectly edge-on to the desired orbit (i.e. so that the orbit looks like a straight line passing through the center of Kerbin, rather than an ellipse).

5. Now timewarp until your ship moves to be right there on that spot (i.e. your ship shows as being directly under the orbit line, directly on top of the dot at Kerbin's center.

6. Launch. Immediately upon launch, use Q/E to roll your ship so that the desired orbital direction is directly down (or up) from the center of your nav-ball (this makes the next step easier, since you can adjust your gravity turn just by pitching up/down).

7. Start your gravity turn, climb to orbit

8. Profit!

[heng]

sounds to me, like you might want to read the Navball explanation.

warning: the rest of the wiki is still referencing 0.9beta, but the orbital mechanics are still the same

for repeated minmus missions:

- setup a small satellite with the same orbital inclination as minmus.

- now click on Mun - 'Set as target'

- setup sat's AP/PE coinciding with AN/DN

next time you start a mission, put ship on launchpad, set satellite as target...

and now you can easily see when to launch!