Finally got an early career aircraft to fly(and land).

[jedensuscg]

 

After almost 400 hours I have finally gotten a flyable AND LANDABLE design for an early career (as in the first aircraft node unlocked) to fly and fly well.

I have to admit the mod of the week Mouse Aim Flight makes my landings far easier as well, but I have struggled to build aircraft for years that handled well and could land consistently without smashing into the runway (those first unlock gear at weak).

It is a simple design, stays true to basic aircraft principals (airlons, rudders and elevators all independent, no combined control surfaces) and a set of flaps, which are GREAT for these LY1 gear that need slow, soft touchdowns.

But here is my unnamed, fairly balanced aircraft in action, showcasing the just installed MAF. I know this is like, first year grade school stuff for many of you but I am excited to start do survey missions that are around Kerbal Spaceport.

The video is split into three parts, (I had a quicksave on a left base into KSC 09). A landing in IVA, a landing with external camera, and then some mayhem where I just fly the plane for a bit and finally crash it.

 

Edited April 27, 2016 by jedensuscg

[RizzoTheRat]

I still haven't managed to land on those fixed landing gear.  My current design is twin juno powered tail dragger that flies nicely at around 100-120m/s, but no matter how gently I try and set it down the landing gear explodes.  Tried putting parachutes on it for a vertical landing, and it hits the ground at under 6m/s and landing gear still explodes. 

[T-Bouw]

Yeah, I know what you mean.
I too am having a tough time landing a plane with fixed gear.
You have to be super silky smooth at touchdown. Like under 5 m/s vertical speed and under 50 m/s horizontal.
Even then I get some bouncing...
Fun though!

Edited April 27, 2016 by T-Bouw

[OSUNightfall]

Hey man welcome to the mile high club! Planes are a heady drug. Now just wait until you make a spaceplane! Seriously though, all planes take is practice and a solid understanding of the fundamentals of flight. Once you have that down, the sky's the limit! (I'm sorry.)

[Enorats]

Last I tried using it (several days ago) the first landing gear unlocked (LY 01 and 05) was broken. Even on a light (as in, stupidly light) craft it wobbled like crazy when it worked, and when it didn't the suspension went haywire and started tweaking the craft around like mad the instant you spawned on the runway, leading to the landing gear blowing itself up in about 2 seconds flat before you even did anything.

That ever get fixed?

 

[NeoMorph]

Wo

10 hours ago, jedensuscg said:

 

After almost 400 hours I have finally gotten a flyable AND LANDABLE design for an early career (as in the first aircraft node unlocked) to fly and fly well.

I have to admit the mod of the week Mouse Aim Flight makes my landings far easier as well, but I have struggled to build aircraft for years that handled well and could land consistently without smashing into the runway (those first unlock gear at weak).

It is a simple design, stays true to basic aircraft principals (airlons, rudders and elevators all independent, no combined control surfaces) and a set of flaps, which are GREAT for these LY1 gear that need slow, soft touchdowns.

But here is my unnamed, fairly balanced aircraft in action, showcasing the just installed MAF. I know this is like, first year grade school stuff for many of you but I am excited to start do survey missions that are around Kerbal Spaceport.

The video is split into three parts, (I had a quicksave on a left base into KSC 09). A landing in IVA, a landing with external camera, and then some mayhem where I just fly the plane for a bit and finally crash it.

 

Wow... nice landing there... Your install looks more like a flight simulator though which probably helps. Those beeps brings back memories... I love flight sims.... and KSP is more of a KASA than just a plain rocketry sim after all. I really should put my cockpit together lol. Got all the bits... just not had the time to assemble the damned thing.

[regex]

Now do it on the tier 1 runway.  I promise it's easier than everyone else makes it out to be.

[Madscientist16180]

15 minutes ago, regex said:

Now do it on the tier 1 runway.  I promise it's easier than everyone else makes it out to be.

I agree with this. It's not easy for sure, but "impossible" and "broken" are way to strong word for that tier1 runway.

[OSUNightfall]

1 hour ago, Enorats said:

Last I tried using it (several days ago) the first landing gear unlocked (LY 01 and 05) was broken. Even on a light (as in, stupidly light) craft it wobbled like crazy when it worked, and when it didn't the suspension went haywire and started tweaking the craft around like mad the instant you spawned on the runway, leading to the landing gear blowing itself up in about 2 seconds flat before you even did anything.

That ever get fixed?

 

No, but you can mitigate it. Give your gear a slight inward camber, turn suspension off, and set friction to 0.0 for takeoff. This makes them quite useable, generally. You may have to up friction on landing so the brakes work better. Also I suggest enabling reverting flights because they're still finicky and will sometimes result in deadly accidents.

That said most of my problems have been at takeoff. I've had pretty much 0 problems landing a variety of planes, even on rough terrain.

[jedensuscg]

19 hours ago, RizzoTheRat said:

I still haven't managed to land on those fixed landing gear.  My current design is twin juno powered tail dragger that flies nicely at around 100-120m/s, but no matter how gently I try and set it down the landing gear explodes.  Tried putting parachutes on it for a vertical landing, and it hits the ground at under 6m/s and landing gear still explodes. 

I went through several designs to even get it off the ground.  The hardest part was getting it so the plane didn't veer off the runway when hitting 40 m/s, not sure if it was a minor gear mis-alignment or something with the control surfaces. After that the MAF addon made smooth landings possible. I think my vertical speed had to be around 4-5 m/s. I had the NavUtility HSI set to a 3 degree glideslope.

 

It's alot important to note that I found flaps are almost required with these gear, as even getting to take-off speeds with a clean wing would rip off the gear.  Flap setting of 2 allowed a nice 70 m/s take off (in fact this is the first aircraft that would lift off on it's own). 100% flaps was used for all the landings.

10 hours ago, NeoMorph said:

Wo

Wow... nice landing there... Your install looks more like a flight simulator though which probably helps. Those beeps brings back memories... I love flight sims.... and KSP is more of a KASA than just a plain rocketry sim after all. I really should put my cockpit together lol. Got all the bits... just not had the time to assemble the damned thing.

The only addons I used to get that cockpit was NavUtilities for the HSI and ILS functions, RasterPropMonitor and Kerbinside(and Kerbin Konstructs as its a dependency), which I am not sure if it provided the marker beacon NavUtilities uses or just approach lighting visuals.  Also, FAR was installed, naturally.

10 hours ago, regex said:

Now do it on the tier 1 runway.  I promise it's easier than everyone else makes it out to be.

Ha, could not even get off the runway. Give me a set of C130 gear and I will use unpaved runways all day.

Edited April 28, 2016 by jedensuscg

[Alshain]

Good job!  One of many I hope.

You need a good lift to get off that T1 runway, your plane aims down so that is going to be great downforce for landing, not so much for take off.

Edited April 28, 2016 by Alshain

[RizzoTheRat]

5 hours ago, jedensuscg said:

It's alot important to note that I found flaps are almost required with these gear, as even getting to take-off speeds with a clean wing would rip off the gear.  Flap setting of 2 allowed a nice 70 m/s take off (in fact this is the first aircraft that would lift off on it's own). 100% flaps was used for all the landings.

Advantage of a tail dragger, I've got quite a bit of angle of attack on the wing (the low tier swept wing) so takeoff was pretty easy, but I think it's making landing harder as I effectively need to make a 3 point landing, think I need to try and mount the main gear on something lower down so I land on main gear with the tail up out of the way as I'm wondering if I'm hitting tail wheel first and then mashing the main gear in to the ground harder than they can cope with.

[Tr1gg3r]

Nice job,

ive been thinking bout some sort of mouse aim mod to fly, can i ask your opinion on it? Im currently struggling to tap keys to fly around.... Inevitably pressing wrong keys now and then. Ive checkd the thread out a bit, but wanted a personal view really.

pro's / cons i suppose? Any conflicts with other mods maybe?

cheers

[OSUNightfall]

On 4/27/2016 at 3:40 AM, RizzoTheRat said:

I still haven't managed to land on those fixed landing gear.  My current design is twin juno powered tail dragger that flies nicely at around 100-120m/s, but no matter how gently I try and set it down the landing gear explodes.  Tried putting parachutes on it for a vertical landing, and it hits the ground at under 6m/s and landing gear still explodes. 

Keep in mind gear are having some problems in 1.1

[jedensuscg]

10 hours ago, Tr1gg3r said:

Nice job,

ive been thinking bout some sort of mouse aim mod to fly, can i ask your opinion on it? Im currently struggling to tap keys to fly around.... Inevitably pressing wrong keys now and then. Ive checkd the thread out a bit, but wanted a personal view really.

pro's / cons i suppose? Any conflicts with other mods maybe?

cheers

I am currently loving it, though I don't use it a lot for making sharp tight turns, and it's not as intuitive for that yet, but it's still early in it's development.  The absolute best thing I like about it is that it is pretty much an auto trim system. I can look around the cockpit in free look and it will hold attitude. You notice the difference when you turn it off (to click a button on in IVA for example or to click a part on your craft when in external view) and the nose will drop or rise depending on conditions. Normally you have to trim all this out which is a pain.

Pros: Pretty much just the ability to not have to manage trim in order to keep level flight or a constant attitude.  It makes unstable craft easier to fly because it is providing minute inputs to the control surfaces as opposed to a go big or go home digital key press. I find it REAL hard to make my craft get into a condition where it is uncontrollable. In fact I don't think I have yet.

The main con would be that you do have to disable (just a press of a button actually so it's easy to do) to have your mouse cursor, so you still need to shift to key board flying when you want to click stuff with the mouse. I am hoping for some sort of option to allow the mod to continue to fly the last attitude while you switch to a cursor mode.  There is also some plane wobble at slow speeds (you can see it a little in the video) and I am not sure if it's my craft or the mod, but it's still easier to keep the plane on a consistent glide path and lateral deviation.  There is also a problem that can arise from getting used to the mod. Because it DOES do such a good job of keep the plane pointing where you want it to go, that stall speeds can REALLY sneek up on you. Before you know when you are getting close to stall speeds because you fight more with the keyboard to keep the same attitude. With MAF, if will keep that attitude perfectly and you won't know you have stalled until you either try and pitch up or you suddenly start to nose over.  But if does make you think more about how you manage your attitude.  You will notice in the video I actually throttle up when close to landing to increase speed above threshold speed so that when I flare it bleeds my speed back down without stalling because I was finding MAF would allow me to fly right at stall speed and when I tried to correct back to GS or flare I would just crash into the ground or approach lighting.

tldr, give it a shot. I to my knowledge does not conflict with any of my mods.  It has a configurable button to enable/disable it.  

[Tr1gg3r]

50 minutes ago, jedensuscg said:

I am currently loving it, though I don't use it a lot for making sharp tight turns, and it's not as intuitive for that yet, but it's still early in it's development.  The absolute best thing I like about it is that it is pretty much an auto trim system. I can look around the cockpit in free look and it will hold attitude. You notice the difference when you turn it off (to click a button on in IVA for example or to click a part on your craft when in external view) and the nose will drop or rise depending on conditions. Normally you have to trim all this out which is a pain.

Pros: Pretty much just the ability to not have to manage trim in order to keep level flight or a constant attitude.  It makes unstable craft easier to fly because it is providing minute inputs to the control surfaces as opposed to a go big or go home digital key press. I find it REAL hard to make my craft get into a condition where it is uncontrollable. In fact I don't think I have yet.

The main con would be that you do have to disable (just a press of a button actually so it's easy to do) to have your mouse cursor, so you still need to shift to key board flying when you want to click stuff with the mouse. I am hoping for some sort of option to allow the mod to continue to fly the last attitude while you switch to a cursor mode.  There is also some plane wobble at slow speeds (you can see it a little in the video) and I am not sure if it's my craft or the mod, but it's still easier to keep the plane on a consistent glide path and lateral deviation.  There is also a problem that can arise from getting used to the mod. Because it DOES do such a good job of keep the plane pointing where you want it to go, that stall speeds can REALLY sneek up on you. Before you know when you are getting close to stall speeds because you fight more with the keyboard to keep the same attitude. With MAF, if will keep that attitude perfectly and you won't know you have stalled until you either try and pitch up or you suddenly start to nose over.  But if does make you think more about how you manage your attitude.  You will notice in the video I actually throttle up when close to landing to increase speed above threshold speed so that when I flare it bleeds my speed back down without stalling because I was finding MAF would allow me to fly right at stall speed and when I tried to correct back to GS or flare I would just crash into the ground or approach lighting.

tldr, give it a shot. I to my knowledge does not conflict with any of my mods.  It has a configurable button to enable/disable it.  

Awesome, cheers for taking time to gimme decent view. Deffo gonna give it a go and follow its development. Was wondering how it dealt with switching between views etc

better give 1.1.1 vanilla a go first

ta m8

 

Edited April 28, 2016 by Tr1gg3r

[jedensuscg]

57 minutes ago, Tr1gg3r said:

Awesome, cheers for taking time to gimme decent view. Deffo gonna give it a go and follow its development. Was wondering how it dealt with switching between views etc

better give 1.1.1 vanilla a go first

ta m8

 

Just an addition, holding right click to mouse view does pause MAF where it is at, so you can adjust your external camera or look around in IVA and the plane will still fly where it MAF cursor was point, it is just when trying to use cursor to click things you have to press the MAF enable/disable key. So if you have everything setup via action groups and never need to click on parts of your craft or RPM buttons, you generally don't need to toggle MAF off. However you DO HAVE TO toggle it off when going into map view, because when you move the cursor around in map view, MAF will still try and follow it leading to some interesting situations.

[Tr1gg3r]

34 minutes ago, jedensuscg said:

Just an addition, holding right click to mouse view does pause MAF where it is at, so you can adjust your external camera or look around in IVA and the plane will still fly where it MAF cursor was point, it is just when trying to use cursor to click things you have to press the MAF enable/disable key. So if you have everything setup via action groups and never need to click on parts of your craft or RPM buttons, you generally don't need to toggle MAF off. However you DO HAVE TO toggle it off when going into map view, because when you move the cursor around in map view, MAF will still try and follow it leading to some interesting situations.

yer sounds similar to how i play albion prelude with their mouselook controls.... innocently doing something in menu to switch back and find uve destroyed some friendlies  

very kerbalesque

[A_name]

Nice landings there.

[STS Fallacy]

I might be coming late to the party, but nevertheless:

 

Built those two for the early career survey missions. The first one is able to take from the rally track as well, if you turn down the friction control. The second one has been used to do surveys in the arctic. Both fly well, with the second one, I could even go AFK for three minutes and it hasn't crashed.

Edited April 29, 2016 by STS Fallacy

[NeoMorph]

On 28/04/2016 at 4:51 AM, jedensuscg said:

The only addons I used to get that cockpit was NavUtilities for the HSI and ILS functions, RasterPropMonitor and Kerbinside(and Kerbin Konstructs as its a dependency), which I am not sure if it provided the marker beacon NavUtilities uses or just approach lighting visuals.  Also, FAR was installed, naturally.

 

Which mods adds the runway additions and the radio inner/middle/outer marker beeps? I use FAR and RPM so I am guessing that it's NavUtilities that is doing the work.

[jedensuscg]

3 hours ago, NeoMorph said:

 

Which mods adds the runway additions and the radio inner/middle/outer marker beeps? I use FAR and RPM so I am guessing that it's NavUtilities that is doing the work.

Ya NavUtilities adds the HSI and marker beacons, but the physical additions to the runways (approach lighting, hangers, etc) are all KerbinSide and KerbinSide Campus, which adds a bunch of runways, helipads, and launch facilities around Kerbin (for purchase of course) and Campus expands the main KSP facility to have roads and dorms and stuff you can drive around.  There is also an addon called KerbinSide GAP which is a spin off of Giving Aircraft a Purpose but includes contracts for all the extra KerbinSide facilities, all these additional facilities also have integration into the NavUtilities HSI..which is sorta of annoying because you have to click through all of them to get to the one you want the HSI to give guidance too, but it's nifty as it gives you DME, Course Glideslope for runways and localizers.

7 hours ago, STS Fallacy said:

I might be coming late to the party, but nevertheless:

 

Built those two for the early career survey missions. The first one is able to take from the rally track as well, if you turn down the friction control. The second one has been used to do surveys in the arctic. Both fly well, with the second one, I could even go AFK for three minutes and it hasn't crashed.

I was trying to do a high horizontal stab setup but was having a pain getting any wing surfaces to attach to the vertical tail. Ya my plane has some decent range (though I doubt it can get anywhere near the arctic, but I have attached extra wing mounted tanks but have yet to try the new distance) but is has a limited flight ceiling of about 14km. Nice designed...I might "borrow" some design elements for my next plane.

Edited April 29, 2016 by jedensuscg

[NeoMorph]

The problem you had getting those wing surfaces to attach to that vertical stabiliser is because you are trying to attach it to a moving part. Instead of using a tail you used a canard which only has the bottom bit which doesn't move and the game thinks that is the only place you can attach parts to.

[STS Fallacy]

7 hours ago, jedensuscg said:

-snip-

I was trying to do a high horizontal stab setup but was having a pain getting any wing surfaces to attach to the vertical tail. Ya my plane has some decent range (though I doubt it can get anywhere near the arctic, but I have attached extra wing mounted tanks but have yet to try the new distance) but is has a limited flight ceiling of about 14km. Nice designed...I might "borrow" some design elements for my next plane.

The 14km ceiling is courtesy of the Juno engines. They lose their power at higher altitudes. In practice, during my flight to the arctic (One way, mind you, wouldn't have enough fuel to get back), I've never surpassed 10km. It was just a painfully long cruise at 300 m/s. 

Another thing, I have a hint for you: In editors, try to pitch the wings up by about one tick of the angle snap placement, and pitch the stabiliser down one tick (or two ticks if you use the symmetric plane tail, or more if your plane is underpowered, though that will give you more air resistance). That way, the SAS will have an easier time maintaining pitch. You can then go AFK for about 3-5 minutes at a time and just correct the flight when you come back. 

For the rudder, you can use the the tail fin or standard canard - those parts can have things attached to them. And for the stabiliser, I've had best results with AV-R8 winglet (or another standard canard). These have fixed bases, so it doesn't look too silly when they move. Although you could probably use anything, as long as it generates lift. 

For the aircraft I've posted earlier, the T-tail is a necessity. With a standard tail configuration, those engines would give no thrust for some reason...

Edited April 30, 2016 by STS Fallacy