Please teach me how to plane.

[Tazin]

I want to fly around kerbin. I can design and fly a spaceplane into orbit, SSTO or not, but i can't manouver in atmosphere very well . . . i don't understand very well the process of changing heading, should i roll and pull up? yaw takes forever to do a 90º turn, and it always introduces some roll. I read somewhere that i should roll and yaw, but that doesn't seem to work for me. Should i disable SAS for changing heading? What i do right now feels like my plane has an epilleptic attack that finishes more or less when the plane is in the general direction i want to go, and with a considerable loss of speed. I want to turn with elegance and precision, the way a turn feels when i am on a regular plane. Note I am flying on keyboard.

Also, landings. I suck at them. Just now, i tried to land this plane:

It's a career game, so it is low tech, since planes is the last thing i unlock. I have to put those medium landing gears, since with the smaller ones i always crash. It has a lot of wing area, i understand this helps to get a low glide speed. So i line up in some nice grasslands, kill engines, wait for speed to go down, keep my nose slightly up while my prograde is slightly down, at around 70 or 80 ms i touch down. It bounces. i level up again, this time it's going slower because of the bounce, but my prograde is a bit lower, about 15º or 20º below horizon . I touch down, it explodes on impact. What am i doing wrong? should i deploy elevons? change landing gear? sacrifice a goat? i can't understand why it bounces at a higher speed, but explodes at a lower one!

[Starhawk]

You should probably start with this excellent tutorial. It is a bit old, but very relevant.

In general, you never turn an aircraft using yaw.

You probably want your dry centre of mass in the exact same place as your wet CoM, as well.

In a plane with a lot of lift you have a lower glide speed, but that means you need to land at a lower speed as well, or you bounce. No goat sacrifices should be necessary, but you will need to pitch up somewhat before your gear contact the ground to get rid of excess speed. You could also use airbrakes to lower your speed before landing.

If you contact the ground with your nose 15 or 20 degrees below the horizon, your pilot will, most likely, not walk away. Misread that. You also need to keep your vertical speed very low at the moment your gear contact the ground.

You need to have your aircraft in the correct orientation as well as the correct velocity at the moment of contact, or all hell will break loose, goat or no goat.

Anyways, read that tutorial. It will help.

Happy landings!

Edited August 19, 2015 by Starhawk

[xtoro]

For your turning question, it's best to roll. Yaw is typically used for small correction and to compensate for drifting sideways in crosswinds. It can also help a bit when doing a rolling turn so that you don't end up falling sideways towards the ground.

[capi3101]

Roll, then pitch up - that's how you turn a plane. Try not to pitch too hard if you like your pilot and want him to have a spare supply of working brain cells; especially if you're flying with the FAR aero model, too many gees can cause structural failure. Rudder helps to make fine course corrections at best.

For landing, you need to have a reasonable glide slope - here's one place where the stock game really is lacking. If you're not adverse to mods, try NavUtilities; it'll give you a fully-functional ILS to work with. If you want to stay stock, you can make Runway markers with pretty low-tech equipment - folks have done it before with a Kerbal and flags, but I find that using low-tech probe rovers gives you something that A) you can see from further away and won't spontaneously vanish. A Stayputnik, a little batt or two, a stick-on solar panel, a piece or two of structural fuselage, a Wheesley engine and bush-plane landing gear will do (maybe also a radial chute). You put that together and park a pair of them on either end of the runway (just off the sloped bit - it's important to get them as well-aligned with the center of the strip as you can manage and off the sloped bit if you don't want the game to try and get rid of them_). When you get them in position, set the brakes and then re-class them as bases. They make handy markers for figuring out where KSC is - and as bases, you can see them from a 100 kilometer orbit pretty easily.

So anyway, when your little end-of-runway-devices are in place and you're out flying and getting ready to land, note the distance to the closest marker. Multiply that distance times 100 and add 100 to that result - the final number is roughly where you want your altimeter to read, plus or minus 200 meters. More than that and you're too high, less than that and you're too low. You can also use the markers to align yourself longitudinally with the runway; a third marker a kilometer from the land-ward end of the runway helps with that aspect of the landing. When you're within about ten kilometers or so, quicksave (always important in case you botch it), kill your throttle (or get it down to one notch, tops) and lower your gear. Airbrakes will help here if your speed is...say, above 150 m/s or so (in your case, I might recommend 100 m/s, or not much more than the minimum speed at which your plane takes off). You want to be descending at a rate not much more than five meters per second when you make contact with the Runway; much faster than that and you risk collapsing your gear - which I'd wager is what's happening after you bounce.

[Sharpy]

First off, airplanes in KSP usually handle *weird*. They are not designed by aerospace engineers after all. For example, their momentum plays much greater role than lift, making alieron roll end up with your plane flipping and flying backwards.

So you should first learn to fly a plane that behaves right, before trying planes that you've made yourself. Either pick an airplane simulation game, or pick a pre-made plane that handles really well. For example, this one, Poor ceiling, poor speed, but awesome aerobatic capabilities, plus the VTOL engine allowing for the VTOL tricks like a massively shortened turn.

Once you learn what makes a plane that handles right, you'll be able to distinguish the errors you make in the air from the ones you've made in SPH; blaming and fixing plane misbehaviors by fixing the plane, not trying to overcome them as a pilot, and conversely, recognize your piloting errors and not try to fix them by modifying the airplane.

[Fearless Son]

Have you adjusted your break torque? The torque on your rear tires should be set high, while your front tire should be set low. You want to touchdown with the rear tires first and immediately start breaking. The extra breaking force rear to the center of mass will snap the front of the plane down to the ground and hold it there, preventing the nose from rising and minimizing the plane's bouncing.

Also, practice runway landing before you try landing on the rougher terrain elsewhere. Even grasslands and deserts have gentle slopes across their surface, and while that might not be enough to stop a landing attempt if the plane has a lot of lift and cannot shed its speed fast enough then passing the ridge of even a small incline can send it gliding back into the air.

[Vegetal]

First of all, flying with the keyboard is very bad, the controls are too abrupt to turn elegantly (in an easy way), but you seem to be doing things right, don't use yaw, it's roll and pitch like you said.

If you can, try at least getting a gamepad, I use an Xbox one and it is quite enough for my needs.

If you can't, there is a mod that allows you to use mouse control, I just forgot its name. I tried it once and it seemed to work well, except for too big of a deadzone for my taste.

There's also Pilot Assistant, which I just found out and it's excellent, it's pretty much identical to an actual aircraft autopilot. It isn't good for landing though, as the usual autopilots in actual planes (Cat 3 ones can, I know).

As for landing, people already said it, you need to touch down rear gear first, as gently as posssible. 80 m/s seems a bit high for that plane though, it has quite a lot of wing, you have to come in slower, say 60 m/s, maybe even less.

EDIT: Oh you also said about SAS. It's only use for planes is to keep them pointed on the same direction, when you want to turn, they are only an annoyance. Turn it off when maneuvering.

Edited August 19, 2015 by Vegetal

[LN400]

Just a quick word on landings that works for me at least. Before takeoff, note the natural pitch of the aircraft on the runway and remember it, it will be your minimum pitch up during landing, preferably you'll land pitched up 3-5 degrees more than the minimum pitch since you don't want to land on the nose wheel. Next, in flight, play with the throttle and airspeed but stay clear of stall speed. Note how the aircraft will lose altitude when you throttle down, unless you compensate by pitching up. Use throttle as your main control for the descent rate during finals, with the nose pitched up a few degrees up from your minimum pitch, ease up carefully on the throttle and the plane should descend nicely. If you drop too quickly, throttle up a tad, if you don't sink fast enough, ease up carefully on the throttle and let the engine settle on the new rpm. Use throttle, not W or S to control the descent. If you have a good line-up to the runway (I normally line up from 5 to 10 km out), use yaw to fine adjust the heading, only use bank turn if you're way off and have high enough speed. As you approach the edge of the runway a few meters above ground, close the throttle all the way and do a very careful and smooth flare to bleed off speed but don't overdo it so you climb. Watch the VSI needle. If you bounce, the speed is too great or you're too aggressive on the S key. As the speed drops, keep the nose wheel up and land on the main wheels. At this point you should be near stall speed. Let the nose drop on its own while you engage the brakes. Of course, design matters and some designs have a very high stall speed but most designs that are flyable should have an at least semi-sane stall speed.

[Slam_Jones]

You should probably start with this excellent tutorial. It is a bit old, but very relevant.

-snip-

Absolutely read that tutorial. It explains basically everything you'll ever need to know about basic plane construction. I've been doing jets and SSTO's for quite a while now, and I still go back once in a while to read up on something. It's a truly excellent resource with a lot of excellent knowledge, and the pictures help make the more complicated ideas a lot easier to digest. If you haven't read it yet, definitely do so! You won't be disappointed.

You can ignore the part about flat-spins, as I believe 1.0 changed up the way IntakeAir works, and prevents asymmetric flame-outs. I could be wrong, though. Also, the drag system is 100% different from when it was written, but the concepts should still be solid.

Edited August 19, 2015 by Slam_Jones

[Edax]

If the plane has good pitch authority, typically what I do is point the nose at the front of the runway when landing which will increase my airspeed but ensure I wont overshoot, then pitch up when I'm close to the ground and level off. I'll begin to bleed off excess speed until I can pitch the nose up without raising my prograde, and I'll gently glide to the runway nose-up.

[The_Rocketeer]

i don't understand very well the process of changing heading, should i roll and pull up? yaw takes forever to do a 90º turn, and it always introduces some roll. I read somewhere that i should roll and yaw, but that doesn't seem to work for me. Should i disable SAS for changing heading?

You should roll and pitch up. Yawing is really for fine-tuning alignment, for example IRL you'd need it for dealing with cross-winds. If your steering input is having an extreme effect, try turning on fine-controls with the capslock key, which should make things more gentle. Also, try setting your inner elevons just to pitch and the outer ones to pitch and roll. Flying on the keyboard is fine, but it's digital steering - you need to be gentle, do everything a bit at a time.

I have to put those medium landing gears, since with the smaller ones i always crash.

Choice of gears is up to you, but you should be able to land on small gears on that aircraft, and using longer/larger gears will make the craft more top-heavy, so it's more likely to tip over.

Also, potential design-issue, your nose wheel is longer/higher than the rear landing gears. That's fine for take-off, but it means if u land with too much speed ur plane will try to take off again. A better solution is to put the rear gears at the same final height as the nose wheel, but position them just a little behind the CoM. Then a gentle bit of pitch-up once you're up to speed will lift the nose, and when landing you won't generate any extra lift after touchdown.

It bounces. i level up again, this time it's going slower because of the bounce, but my prograde is a bit lower, about 15º or 20º below horizon . I touch down, it explodes on impact. What am i doing wrong?

This could be a few things.

1. It could be that you're touching down with too much vertical speed, in which case you need to pull up harder at the last moment to bring your prograde to <5 degrees (near 0 is great).

2. If could be you're touching down too with too much horizontal speed, and because of your wing-angle (see the gears problem I mentioned above) you're then taking off again.

3. It could be that you're rolling too long and going over rises in the ground that u sort of 'glide' off and then stall. Try stopping sooner - brake balance is one way to do this.

In any case, the issue is that you're stalling (flying too slowly to make enough lift) after the bounce and coming down much too hard, hence explosion. If you do bounce high, immediately hit full power and try to climb - if you come down wrong, you'll always crash, but if u take off and go around you can try again.

Wish you luck - practice makes perfect!

[Kurld]

Flying with a keyboard absolutely makes it way harder than it needs to be.

[Ten Key]

Flying with a keyboard absolutely makes it way harder than it needs to be.

This. Space planes to orbit are one thing, but circumnavigating Kerbin with an aircraft is something wholly else. If you're going to put in the time and effort to learn how to do it, I would suggest looking into a joystick, or at least something like an Xbox controller. It will be worth it.

[capi3101]

Y'all suggesting types of flight other than keyboard should point the OP to a tutorial for how set that up in KSP. I mean, I'd like to know - you guys are absolutely right in that it overcomplicates things (particularly with FAR on an underpowered box), I also fly with the keyboard and I've got a flight stick sitting there gathering dust...

[Vegetal]

I didn't get what you are saying, learn to setup a joystick in ksp? It's just like in any other game.

Unless you found a bug. That's very usual in this game...

[The_Rocketeer]

I fly with the keyboard most of the time just cos I'm too lazy to set up my stick. Analogue control is nice and all, but keys work fine as long as u understand what happens when u press them. If Tazin doesn't have a stick there's no need to get one just to be able to fly atmo in KSP.

That's my 2 cents.

[Vegetal]

It's actually more enjoyable with analog control, and as the pilot I am, I enjoy just screwing around in the atmosphere.

There's no need to, it's just better. As I said, I use just a gamepad, and it's good for other games too.

[Vegvisir]

Dunno if anyone has mentioned it, but turn on fine control (caps lock by default). Planes behave nicer then

EDIT: I've often been reckless with landing. Sometimes it works, but for best results - throttle down and descend slowly from some way out of your chosen landing area. Come down as slow as you can. If you do it nicely and your craft can handle it, pfft runways, who needs 'em

Edited August 20, 2015 by Doslidnyk

[problemecium]

TBH, I fly with the keyboard and have tried using a joystick, and the difference really wasn't that great to me. So if OP does not have a joystick, please don't resign yourself to buying one just yet (inb4 "but you can get such-and-such joystick for like four bucks on Amazon..."). It's like buying expensive pencils to draw with - if you learn to draw, the difference between a cheap pencil and an expensive one isn't crippling, and if you learn to plane, not having a joystick on hand shouldn't ruin it for you.

On the topic of landing: 70-80 m/s is kinda fast, especially for a small one-seater. Try for 50-60, or under 50 if you can, and try to keep your vertical speed above -10, because while the wheels can roll really fast, they don't generally handle slamming into the ground too well.

[Vegetal]

Oh, yeah, I can fly fine with a keyboard too, I just recommend a joystick because the game got more enjoyable to me.

But anyway, flying is a little hard for some people, landing especially so. If you are really struggling to land, experiment using a braking parachute. Some suggested landing completely on parachutes, but that can be dangerous and require lots of them if your plane is big. If you use one on the tail just as you touch down, the drag is going to be so high that you will DEFINITELY stay on the ground.

I used that in my recon/survey plane to land on rough terrain, it stopped very quickly and allowed for very safe landings.

[peachoftree]

Those wings look like overkill, you could definitely get away with making them a good deal smaller, so that your plane can space