The Osprey and Yaw Capabilities

[specialopsdave]

When I built my first successful plane, I always had difficulty landing due to a lack of Yaw controls actually changing my velocity vector. Yesterday, I decided to fly the stock vehicle Osprey. (I DID replace a structural fuselage with a precooler, but that's it.) Suddenly, Yaw control is good enough to change my heading by 45 degrees in less than five seconds. What makes the Osprey's Yaw so powerful?

 

I use PC.

[moogoob]

Might be the size and location of the vertical stabilizer(s) control surfaces relative to the centre of mass. This has a huge effect due to the lever principle. Also, could be that it's not that aerodynamically stable (so doesn't want to fly straight as hard as a really stable one would, thus more maneuverable) or that it's got a lot of thrust vectoring. I'm not familiar with the stock vessels, but all these can affect how well it turns.

[NathanKell]

Yep, IIRC both of those, plus that it uses an all-moving tail (like the RA-5 Vigilante) rather than just control surfaces on the trailing edge.

[Red Iron Crown]

Gameplay question moved to Gameplay Questions.

[mk1980]

i tried that Osprey stock plane. it's really nice to fly. it's very light (only ~7 tons), has pretty large wing area ( >10 m²) and fairly big control surfaces for its size. it also uses the panther jet engine which has quite a bit of thrust vectoring.

so it's extremely maneuverable. 

i think there are 3 things worth pointing out (that may not be imediately obvious at first glance)

- it uses dedicated control surfaces (pitch/roll is disabled for the tail fin, roll/yaw is disabled for the BigS elevons, yaw is disabled for the outer elevons). such a setup can help a lot with making control inputs more precise.

- most of the fuselage elements are lightweight structural fuselages. there is only one mk1 fuel tank on that plane somewhere in the middle of the fuselage (which is also why it's so light and easy to control). 

- the small mk0 fuel tanks on the bottom are empty. they serve as floating bodies (the plane can land on water and also take off from water)

[Guest]

Here's a detailed writup about plane design, if you want to go into a lot of detail.

The comments about KSP's drag model are outdated since 1.0 though, afaik.

 

Edited July 22, 2016 by Guest