Stock Craft

[Red Shirt]

Probably been discussed before but I did a forum search and came up empty.

I occasionally grab the Kerbal X ship when I just want to throw something into space. Seems to work well enough.

Recently I went into the SPH and grabbed the Gull. Turns out it is a nice slow plane for those of us who don't normally fly jets. After a failed attempt to land in water, I added struts to the pontoons. Now it goes into the ocean without falling apart. I really thought I made take off at 30 m/s on the runway. In the ocean it maxes at about 32 but won't lift out of the water. Is it too under powered to do so or am I going at it wrong? Yes landing gear is raised.

I have also tried to fly the Dynawing (shuttle). I sort of once almost had enough speed to think it might make orbit (not really even close). Generally it spins out of control. Tried using MJ. It did even worse. What is the design flaw with this one? If this is normal shuttle behavior I'll most likely never make it to orbit. It demands constant control fiddling.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

4 minutes ago, Red Shirt said:

Probably been discussed before but I did a forum search and came up empty.

I occasionally grab the Kerbal X ship when I just want to throw something into space. Seems to work well enough.

Recently I went into the SPH and grabbed the Gull. Turns out it is a nice slow plane for those of us who don't normally fly jets. After a failed attempt to land in water, I added struts to the pontoons. Now it goes into the ocean without falling apart. I really thought I made take off at 30 m/s on the runway. In the ocean it maxes at about 32 but won't lift out of the water. Is it too under powered to do so or am I going at it wrong? Yes landing gear is raised.

I have also tried to fly the Dynawing (shuttle). I sort of once almost had enough speed to think it might make orbit (not really even close). Generally it spins out of control. Tried using MJ. It did even worse. What is the design flaw with this one? If this is normal shuttle behavior I'll most likely never make it to orbit. It demands constant control fiddling.

Adding struts adds drag, could be slowing you down just enough. That and you usually need a higher take off speed in the water than you do on land, wheels rolling on a hard surface cause a lot less friction than pontoons being dragged through the water.

Can't offer much help with the Dynawing but yeah to confirm what you are saying, Space Shuttles are notoriously hard to fly and design. (Both in KSP and real life.)

As with all the stock vehicles they are designed to not be "perfect" so as to encourage you to make alterations or design your own from scratch.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

I read that most stock craft are intentionally designed w/ minor flaws to tease you in to fixing them.

Not enough delta V for orbit? more fuel or more thrust!

/I never use stock craft so i dunno.

[Snark]

Moving to Gameplay Questions.

[bewing]

A lot of things changed with version 1.1, and AFAIK, none of the stock planes were updated. Which probably means they work even less well than they used to.

Without a tilt-probe-core, pretty much all planes require a little fiddling to fly them, once a minute or so. I haven't ever tried the Dynawing -- my SSTO shuttles fly just fine, so I don't want to mess with silly stock ones.