How do i turn my plane?

[MajorGosnell]

https://youtu.be/MoYY0DJB8FY This is my first working plane,however it has a minor design flaw;.;,I cant turn her.Im playing career so only have a few parts unlocked,any tips?

Also why do i have to constantly adjust the roll?

Thanks to all the helpers,hopefully there wont be anymore cognitive failures in my designs.

Edited November 7, 2015 by MajorGosnell

[Tex_NL]

Compare your 'plane' to a real life plane. Where is your vertical stabilizer? Where are your control surfaces? You only have pitch control but no roll and yaw.

Edited November 5, 2015 by sjwt

[Gojira1000]

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/52080-Basic-Aircraft-Design-Explained-Simply-With-Pictures

[Oafman]

Firstly, you have no tailfin, or any other vertical fins, so there is nothing maintaining yaw stability, apart from SAS. Those 2 nearly-horizontal fins on the tail are maybe providing some pitch & roll stability, but aren't really necessary, given that you have a horizontal control surface for this purpose.

You need a tailfin, ideally with a rudder attached (a vertical control surface, set to adjust yaw). The tailfin will provide roll/yaw stability, meaning you won't constantly have to adjust roll, and the rudder will help you turn.

Then take the horizontal control surface off the tail, and put one of them on each wing. Right click them in the SPH, and set them to control roll and pitch, but not yaw. Then right click your rudder, and set it to only control yaw.

Also, isn't your parachute on the wrong side of the decoupler?! And, your wings look quite far forward; is your centre of lift behind your centre of mass? Can you provide a picture from the SPH showing the CoM and CoL markers?

[MajorGosnell]

Well tex,im not familiar with flight simulators or planes in general,i have limited parts at my disposal,im fairly new to kerbal and this might surprise you but im asking here because i want to learn.People advised widening my wheel base i did,and it worked.It dosent sound condecending it sounds unhelpful.

[Hodo]

https://youtu.be/MoYY0DJB8FY This is my first working plane,however it has a minor design flaw;.;,I cant turn her.Im playing career so only have a few parts unlocked,any tips?

Also why do i have to constantly adjust the roll?

Ok, I will take a more polite route in explaining what is wrong with that craft.

First I will say, you are lacking any real control surfaces for the craft. Aircraft need ailerons, rudders, and elevators to operate. The one you made has none of those things and is turning and steering strictly with the reaction wheel, which is not a good control system.

On the up side your aircraft is at least stable and flies pretty much on its own. I would look into placing elevators, and ailerons for your aircraft. You are lucky you are not using Ferram Aerospace Research... the results would be uh comical to say the least.

Lastly I would start simple, your craft is a bit over powered for what you need, a single jet engine would suffice for that size of an airframe.

Like take this old airframe of mine, the F-119C/A Akula....

Notice how it has ailerons at the ends of the wings, those control the roll.

Elevators at the back of the aircraft, those control the pitch (nose up down)

and a rudder, which controls yaw, (nose left right)

[MajorGosnell]

@oafman Thanks for the tips didnt know i could set yaw roll and pitch options by right clicking,i placed the wings that far forward because of a tutorial on wiki advised it.As to the Decoupler i only added it as i had a strange bug where the fusilage wouldnt conect to the cockpit.

[MajorGosnell]

I did it brought me here.

[Oafman]

@oafman Thanks for the tips didnt know i could set yaw roll and pitch options by right clicking,i placed the wings that far forward because of a tutorial on wiki advised it.As to the Decoupler i only added it as i had a strange bug where the fusilage wouldnt conect to the cockpit.

Well, any tutorial worth anything will telll you to get your centre of lift slightly behind your centre of mass. It may be that you have already, I can't tell without seeing the markers in the SPH. Do you know how to show those? They have buttons in the bottom left of the SPH screen, next to where you select symmetry etc. If the blue CoL marker is slightly behind the yellow CoM marker, you're good. Given that your plane more or less flies itself (until it wants to change course!), your CoL/CoM relationship is probably ok already.

To be a little more clear than I was in my last post, the fact that you can't easily roll your plane is because your only control surface is in line with your CoM. To roll, you need to impart upwards force on one wing, and downwards force on the other. If your only control surface is right in the middle of the plane, there's no way it can impart a different direction of force onto each wing. It does the same to each wing, so that control surface can only control your pitch, it can do nothing for roll. A control surface on each wing is the solution.

And tbh, the rudder is kind of a luxury, though I would still recommend it. The tailfin however, is essential, because it will greatly stabilise the plane.

[Belphegor]

well.. airodynamics might have failed in this thread but it sure managed to send my sides into orbit

take a look at this gosnel,this is how i learned how to plane

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/52080-Basic-Aircraft-Design-Explained-Simply-With-Pictures

[Hodo]

MajorGosnell, just ignore Tex_NL he is obviously mad about something.

Gojira and Belphegor both gave good advice.

[Tex_NL]

I am not mad about ANYTHING! It's just that basic plane design has absolutely NOTHING to with KSP but instead with simple physics. And if you can't even figure out what a real life plane LOOKS like and how it works then no, I am not going to help you.

[Hodo]

I am not mad about ANYTHING! It's just that basic plane design has absolutely NOTHING to with KSP but instead with simple physics. And if you can't even figure out what a real life plane LOOKS like and how it works then no, I am not going to help you.

Calm down, there is no need to yell, or use caps. Dont belittle someone because what you consider simple and they have never done. If you have nothing constructive to say, dont comment.

[MajorGosnell]

then dont,just dont comment on my threads.

[Hodo]

then dont,just dont comment on my threads.

I cant stress enough you should check out the thread that Gojira linked. It is invaluable as a learning tool for basic aircraft design. And even I who has thousands of hours in KSP vast majority of them building space planes and aircraft in FAR, a realistic atmosphere mod, still use it as a base for many of my test platforms.

[KerikBalm]

I think his point is that the problem here is not KSP specific at all, but is basic aerodynamics...

I just went to wikipedia and looked at the entry for airplane, and found this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_flight_control_system#/media/File:ControlSurfaces.gif

Which should explain the problem...

Beyond that... it seems like basic common sense... he has nothing on the plane that should make someone think that it would turn.

Its perhaps a result of KSP's overpowered "magic" reaction wheels... in space, at least with the early rockets one might build, they turn without the player having to put any thought into to a control system.

As the craft gets bigger, the pod's basic reaction wheel is not sufficient.

He seemed to grasp that he needed control surfaces, and he added an elevator... so... I don't understand the congitive failure that prevented him from adding ailerons or at least a rudder...

I think a coordinated turn is probably going to need to be explained too.. combining roll, yam, and pitch... because just pitch and yaw don't work (unless you have massive vertical stabilizers), and pitch and roll lead to sideslip that is best corrected with a rudder, but a sufficient vertical stab wil suffice.

[Alshain]

You guys are being kind of mean. He's looking for help, if you can't offer it, then move on.

OP, you need to place some control surfaces on your wings, because those aren't active. The roll you are getting now is from your cockpit torque which isn't ideal. When you do, right click them and set them to roll. That control surface at the rear might work for pitch but your vertical stabilizers are quite small, I think you will need more. Optionally you can put Yaw on the vertical stabilizer (it's not required for flight). Finally to turn, you will roll the plane and pull up. Yaw is for holding the nose down as you do this, not for turning itself (except very minor corrections). The guide that was linked is still very relevant.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/52080-Basic-Aircraft-Design-Explained-Simply-With-Pictures

There are planes that use what is called a Delta Wing, the Space Shuttle is one such plane where Roll and Pitch are in the same control surfaces. I don't reccomend that for beginners, below is a picture of my most basic plane. Roll on the wings, Pitch on the horizontal stabilizers, yaw on the vertical stabilizer. (Note, that is stock, the pic was taken with Ven's Stock Part Revamp). You can't tell it but that first fuselage is the inline air intake, the intake is behind the wheel. The inner control surface on the wings can be used as flaps, it also isn't required, but it helps in landing. That takes some setup with action groups and it's deployed state.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=511867301

I apologize for the rudeness of the others, sometimes they forget they were beginners once too.

Edited November 5, 2015 by Alshain

[DancesWithSquirrels]

MajorGosnell - As others have mentioned, your plane is rather lacking in control surfaces. Generally you need surfaces for pitch and yaw (located ahead of or behind the CoG so they have a lever arm to rotate the plane) and roll (located out to the sides to give a lever for roll).

Given the lack of those on your plane, and the lack of a vertical surface for yaw stability, the only thing giving you roll/yaw is the reaction wheels in the cockpit - and that can lead to the control reversals and poor stability you noted.

Some suggestions for controls:

* A V-tail, two control surfaces on the tail at 90 degrees to one another - pitch, yaw, and they should extend far enough out to give you some roll control. With that you don't need anything on the wings.

* Standard tail with vertical and horizontal surfaces, plus ailerons out on the wings - with that you disable all but the appropriate axis for each surface (SPH tweakables) to get the best stability.

* Two-axis controls: ailerons and elevator, with a fixed vertical stabilizer. Roll and pull up to turn, pitch to get your speed. [counter-intuitive, but pitch for speed and throttle for climbing/descending is really the proper way to control a plane, see Stick and Rudder if you want to geek the interactions].

Build notes:

* Turn on and check center of gravity and center of lift in the SPH, check them both with full fuel and empty. The CoL should be just behind the CoG (feathers go on the back of the arrow for stability). Not too much separation, or you're going to be using all your pitch authority just to keep the nose up.

* The main gear should be just behind the CoG so that you can rotate for liftoff.

Finally:

Have fun!

[Alshain]

One other thing, here are a few design references I've collected.

Edited November 5, 2015 by Alshain

[Randazzo]

https://youtu.be/MoYY0DJB8FY This is my first working plane,however it has a minor design flaw;.;,I cant turn her.Im playing career so only have a few parts unlocked,any tips?

Also why do i have to constantly adjust the roll?

Kerbal aerodynamics are a lot more forgiving than the real world, but you do still need all the basics to keep your plane stable. As mentioned by a few helpful souls, you need a better vertical stabilizer and control surfaces.

You can find some actual example planes to download in this thread, as well as more information.

...I am not going to help you.

Then you could just not post.

Edited November 5, 2015 by Randazzo

[MajorGosnell]

{@{Alshain those references helped a bunch.Im hoping to have a new model ready for tomorrow ,ill let you all know how she flys.

[Hodo]

{@{Alshain those references helped a bunch.Im hoping to have a new model ready for tomorrow ,ill let you all know how she flys.

All of those are in the thread that others pointed you to.

But glad to hear you are still progressing and not giving up.