The Ability To Land Planes.

[Julian.]

I Cant Land Planes. I Cant Land A Training Plane. It Might Take The Death Of 999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999+1 Kerbals In The Attempt Of Landing 1 Plane. A Training Plane. I Can Never Land A Plane. Anyways. Can You Land A Plane? And Can You Give Me Tips?

Edited December 13, 2016 by Julian.
An Error In The Typing.

[Snark]

Hello, and welcome to the forums! 

Moving to Gameplay Questions.

There are plenty of helpful, friendly people here who would love to give you advice... but ya gotta give us something to work with.  If the only information you've provided is "I can't land planes", then the only advice someone could give is "fly them differently." 

If you could provide more specific information-- i.e. what happens when you try to land?  can you give a screenshot of the plane in flight just before landing?  etc.-- then we could provide more specific advice that, hopefully, could actually help you.

[Leafbaron]

Well first off, without knowing anything I can tell you this. Unlike landing a rocket where (generally) you only have to deal with vertical speed, landing a plane requires that you contend with to speeds. Vertical and horizontal. The vertical speed is what kills you. unfortunately the only way to identify vertical speeds is with the what i assume is a logarithmic analog dial at the top of the screen. this can be somewhat troubling to read, but if the arrow is pointed at 5 when you hit the ground you should be safe and to do this we feverishly have to tap S to acquire a somewhat "smooth" control over pitch when touching down . try practicing around the KSC where the grass is flat. I will answer with more detail. when more information is provided. 

[FancyMouse]

For design, avoid design decisions that will make landing harder (e.g. mounting stuff at the bottom of tail - that part will just become a bumper no matter what), and make sure it has enough lift to keep the plane flying at approaching speed.

For flying, vertical speed is the key. A too-high descent rate is the most common reason to blow up something.

Being aware of all above, you'll just need to practice and test. Not just practice flying skills, but also reiterate the design so that you get satisfactory numbers (designed approaching speed, vertical speed, etc.) of your plane.

[bewing]

Tip #1: don't land on the runway! That's what all the grass around KSC is for. I especially like coming in from south of KSC, just to the west of the runway. Lots and lots and lots of kms of nice flat grass to land on. You can wait and wait for your speed to drop to something reasonable.

Tip #2: More wing. The more wing you have, the slower you can go and still have control. To land easily you need to be going slow,and you need to have a lot of control.

Tip #3: Know your plane. How fast does it have to be going before you can lift off? Your landing speed has to be about the same number. How easy is it for you to maintain perfectly level flight? How slow can you fly without losing control? Because that's how you land. Bring the plane down to 5m above the ground, turn off the engines, and fly level. When the plane drops those last 5 meters by itself, you will be nicely landed.

Tip #4: Many of the training planes have not had their wheels adjusted properly. If the springs are set too hard, you will bounce and crash. If the friction has not been adjusted properly, you may spin out and crash after you are on the ground.

Tip #5: If you are simply practicing landing, make sure you take most of the fuel out of the plane before you take off. Landing a plane that's full of fuel is much harder than landing a light empty plane.

Tip #6: Know your landing area. What's the altitude of the runway? What's the altitude of the grass? Is the altitude of the grass different near the beach south of KSC? Just how lumpy is the grass?

Tip #7: Practicing ditching may actually be easier than practicing landing. You can be going faster when you ditch in the water. What's the exact altitude of the water? Turn off your engines, fly down to 5m above the water, and fly perfectly horizontal again. Do your best to keep the nose up so that it flies level until you touch the water.

Tip #8: Use the retractable wheels to practice. The fixed "Cessna" type wheels are much trickier.

 

Edited December 13, 2016 by bewing

[Jarin]

1. Plant flags at both ends of the runway. This helps you visually line up from a distance, as well as giving you something to target for approach.

2. Know your terrain and line up on the runway from a long way out. The grasslands to the west are all less than 300m altitude, so make that your target altitude for approach. Once you pass the final hill, drop altitude to the runway, which is at exactly 70m altitude, so aim for 80-90 on approach. 

2.5.  If you did both 1 and 2, plan your approach by keeping the "target" marker on your navball exactly on the 90 degree line, or due east. That way you know you're on a direct approach to the runway.

3. Test your planes and see how slow you can fly without stalling. Try to keep level flight while dropping speed and raising your nose to compensate until the plane falls out of the sky; then you know to keep above that speed. Remember, the slower you're going on approach, the easier it is to correct your aim.

4. Don't be afraid of the runway. Practice landing on the grass, sure, but even with only one upgrade, the runway is a perfectly acceptable landing surface. (It always felt cheap to me to land on the grass, then taxi onto the runway for full recovery value)

[diomedea]

Lots of very good advice above, excuse me if I'll repeat some. Sure start practicing landings with a plane that requires the least speed to stay airborne ( I especially like the stock Albatross for that), get to know what is that minimal speed a plane needs to stay level at low altitude (depends on weight and flaps if you have them, so take care you do test with the proper setting), then fly the approach from the perfect position (align with the runway far from it, have an altitude so to follow the proper glideslope that will bring your plane to to touch at the runway threshold). For the above, I like this add-on a lot: NavUtilities. Make the flare (increase pitch) just before touching, so to further reduce both horizontal and vertical speed, but keep an eye on the variometer (vertical speed indicator) as you must not gain altitude. If done right you'll lose all excess horizontal speed while overflying the threshold 1-2 meters high and keeping vertical speed = 0, so the plane will lose lift just there and come down smoothly. Use brakes, engines reverse, chutes, to lose any horizontal speed you still have. Welcome to KSC.

Note about controls. Standard attitude keys (ASDW+QE) are fine enough while flying, but may be hard to use in those hairy situations like landing. Even with precision control on, is easy to overshoot the mark; and is always possible touse a wrong key and roll while you needed to use rudder or else. I'm used to fly with a pretty good stick, such devices really help with flying planes in KSP as with other games.

[foamyesque]

Basically what you want to do is maintain horizontal velocity for as long as possible, until you're at the "almost" touchdown altitude (I find a 10 degree dive works pretty well; planes with less wing loading can go shallower), at which point you level out and gradually pitch up to keep your vertical speed at zero while your horizontal speed drops. On flat terrain, like the runway or the KSC grasslands, it's easily possible to land at speeds upwards of 100m/s, but if you're landing on a rough field somewhere you want to be touching down with as little horizontal velocity as you can manage so's you don't smash into hills or go off the top of one and flying back into the air.

Speaking of, once you've touched down, remember to bring your nose back down so that you don't bounce back into the air.

[Hydrothermalventclam]

At first, don't worry about hitting the runway, the grass next to the KSC is just as flat.  Also, make sure you are flying slowly, and level.  When you touch down, you want the rear wheels to hit the ground first, with a very small amount of vertical speed.  Also, because there is so much space, you can fly just above the ground for several kilometers to bleed off speed before you actually touch down.  If you are at just the right speed, you can keep your nose up, but have your prograde vector actually be going down a bit, so you gently float down and touch the ground.

[Reactordrone]

Try maxing out the spring and damper values on the landing gear in the hangar. Stock settings can be a little bouncy. There's nothing worse than coming in nicely for a landing and having the aircraft nose bounce up into the air as soon as the wheel hits the ground.

[fourfa]

Hard to tell from the OP, but many beginners have too much control surface, with too much authority - making the handling very twitchy and hard to control. When it's set up properly (also including CoM/CoL relationship, and a CoM that doesn't move much) it should respond at a rate that your inputs can keep up with. In a basic trainer plane, that rate should be very low. 

Then landing will be easy. Over time, you can scale up to higher speeds and more responsive handling. 

Edited December 14, 2016 by fourfa

[GoSlash27]

I've always found it easier to follow a standard left- hand landing pattern rather than try to nail it all in one go. That tends to put you in the same identical position on final, regardless of what you're flying or how familiar you are with it.

But if you're forced to dead- stick it in one pass, the most important stat is the angle of attack; the difference between your prograde and pitch angle. The angle of attack is your true measure of energy on final approach. If it exceeds 5°, get your nose down and pick up speed. If it's too little, you're fast and need to s-turn to scrub off speed.

HTHs,
-Slashy

[wumpus]

First step: can you fly a plane?  Do you put the center or lift behind the center of mass?  You first post wasn't exactly informative.

Typically building a plane that flies correctly is harder than landing.  But landing isn't exactly easy either.

[Scientia1423]

19 hours ago, Jarin said:

3. Test your planes and see how slow you can fly without stalling. Try to keep level flight while dropping speed and raising your nose to compensate until the plane falls out of the sky; then you know to keep above that speed. Remember, the slower you're going on approach, the easier it is to correct your aim.

My plane stalled at 60m/s and now I have to do the entire journey to Baikerbanur again  

[Jarin]

One generally does testing around the launch area, not at the end of a mission.

[Clipperride]

If your plane is too "twitchy" then caps lock toggles between normal and fine control.

And, practice, practice, practice!

[ForScience6686]

Flaps need some more attention here.  They are a great way to slow down as well as increase lift.  As for the suspension I would argue that you should increase damper and decrease spring, unless you're maxing out the wheels, but either way increase damper.  This allows the plane to squat as well as reducing the spring back.  It also helps with swaying on the ground.  Beyond that look at how the pros do it.  They line up way out and maintain specific speeds based on the planes abilities.  This helps to control your descent much easier.  They also don't do big flares since they don't nose down towards the runway, always keep positive aoa.  Lastly, don't be afraid of the runway.  I really disagree with people suggesting you learn by missing your runway, as long as it's not the tier 1 runway you should be plenty fine.  Just seems counter productive, making the mark is half the battle.

[bewing]

40 minutes ago, ForScience6686 said:

Lastly, don't be afraid of the runway.  I really disagree with people suggesting you learn by missing your runway, as long as it's not the tier 1 runway you should be plenty fine.  Just seems counter productive, making the mark is half the battle.

I disagree with your disagreeing. Landing at all is 90% of the battle for a beginner. Landing on the runway only gets you style points. First you learn to land, period. Then you start getting fancier. Beyond that, it's more important to be able to land in the wilderness than it is to be able to land on the runway. Landing on the grass is practice for wilderness landings, runway landings are not.

And in any case, I never bother to upgrade my runway at all. All my buildings are T3, and I still have a dirt runway because I don't waste any money on upgrading it.

[fourfa]

4 hours ago, bewing said:

And in any case, I never bother to upgrade my runway at all. All my buildings are T3, and I still have a dirt runway because I don't waste any money on upgrading it.

How do you deal with the mass and size limits for runway launches then?  Stick to tiny planes?

[bewing]

19 minutes ago, fourfa said:

How do you deal with the mass and size limits for runway launches then?  Stick to tiny planes?

On those occasions when I want to launch a largish SSTO spaceplane, I launch it from the VAB to the launchpad, then drive it onto the grass to take off.

[Sharpy]

First, unless you're already rather good, and you fly a nice plane, yep, forget the runway, land on the grass. And have the rear brakes stronger than front brakes.

Then - before even attempting landing - learn to feel your plane and maintain descent velocity and forward velocity.

Start. Throttle down. Just a notch or two above the bottom is usually the right power. Maybe a bit more if your plane has poor lift and is draggy, but for "graceful" planes, one notch above bottom is exactly the right power.

Then try to get your pitch such that numbers on your altimeter change by no more than 1 per second. Maintain that, wait until your horizontal speed stabilizes. It will be different with different planes, ones with great lift and superb aerodynamics will stabilize at 40m/s or less. Lean rocket-like heavy SSTOs may stabilize at 200m/s and require way more throttle not to drop. All are fine. Lower is better, but you CAN land your plane at 250m/s. It's just harder.

You'll notice your plane has rising or dropping tendency - left alone it will either start dropping faster, or stop dropping and start rising. No problem here, just learn which way it goes.

By the time, you should be waaay out to the sea.

Turn towards KSC. Aim somewhere off so that you don't crash into anything. Get your altitude to 100m, changing it very gently.

Try to learn how to guide your plane so that you cross the 70m level going downwards very slowly. Try this a few times. Pitching very gently up or down, manipulating your vertical velocity and altitude.

Finally, Land Ho! Get to some 80m and let your airplane start dropping, very, very gently. Don't touch anything.

If you have airbrakes, activate brakes just before touchdown, If you have just wheels, you can activate them way early out over the sea.

As your wheels touch the surface, shut down the engines.

Then keep not touching anything. Trying to correct is more likely to get you crashed than whatever "bad" happens due to not trying to correct.

 

Really, simple steps:

- level your flight and stabilize speed waaay early. Since then only very gentle corrections.

- maintain altitude around 80m until you're really close to the land.

- start losing that, very gently.

- brakes on, engine off.

- don't touch anything.

[katateochi]

as well as the other good suggestions already mentioned, I would also suggest practicing just flying really low and level. Not fast (at least to start with), just fly as low to the ground (or water) as you can and get a feel for how much input is needed to either climb or descend gradually. 

[ForScience6686]

11 hours ago, bewing said:

I disagree with your disagreeing. Landing at all is 90% of the battle for a beginner. Landing on the runway only gets you style points. First you learn to land, period. Then you start getting fancier. Beyond that, it's more important to be able to land in the wilderness than it is to be able to land on the runway. Landing on the grass is practice for wilderness landings, runway landings are not.

And in any case, I never bother to upgrade my runway at all. All my buildings are T3, and I still have a dirt runway because I don't waste any money on upgrading it.

Well we can agree to disagree, but the grass around ksc is not equivalent to anything you'll find in the wilderness, except for minmus, and planes are not effective there.  Everywhere else you're dealing with uneven terrain.  Real pilots don't practice by not landing on the runway.  And by beginning your training landing on the runway, you must line up properly, which is more important when landing in the wilderness and picking the right lane, IMO.  Anyone can land, gravity guarantees that, whether you survive or not is a different story.

I would say the style points come in when you can land in the wilderness successfully, not on an even, flat, nicely paved runway.  I mean we expect the pilot to get us on the runway, and bonus points if we survive an off runway landing, not the other way around.  

I'm also opposite of you in that I never use the dirty runway, I've always upgraded it before moving to planes.  I mean it really isn't that big of an investment, and I'd rather not waste my time taxing from the launch pad.

But hey if it works for you then by all means, I was just giving a different point of view.  I just prefer to learn how to do it right first, then expand my abilities.  

Edited December 15, 2016 by ForScience6686

[AeroGav]

1 hour ago, ForScience6686 said:

Well we can agree to disagree, but the grass around ksc is not equivalent to anything you'll find in the wilderness, except for minmus, and planes are not effective there.  Everywhere else you're dealing with uneven terrain.  Real pilots don't practice by not landing on the runway.  And by beginning your training landing on the runway, you must line up properly, which is more important when landing in the wilderness and picking the right lane, IMO.  Anyone can land, gravity guarantees that, whether you survive or not is a different story.

I would say the style points come in when you can land in the wilderness successfully, not on an even, flat, nicely paved runway.  I mean we expect the pilot to get us on the runway, and bonus points if we survive an off runway landing, not the other way around.  

I'm also opposite of you in that I never use the dirty runway, I've always upgraded it before moving to planes.  I mean it really isn't that big of an investment, and I'd rather not waste my time taxing from the launch pad.

But hey if it works for you then by all means, I was just giving a different point of view.  I just prefer to learn how to do it right first, then expand my abilities.  

The thing is, landing on the runway isn't great practice for a rough field landing.     Landing on the runway teaches you 

a) to manage the plane's kinetic energy so it touches down reasonably near to start of the paved surface reasonably close to landing speed (ie not coming in hot, not overshooting)

b) how to line up laterally with this long but very narrow strip of tarmac.  Ie. to line yourself up so you don't land to the left or right of the runway and also touch down with a lateral heading of 90 or 270 degrees so you don't run off the side after touchdown.

For off airport landings, body attitude on touchdown, control of forward velocity and rate of descent are the only factors under the pilot's control that really matter.  Much comes down to aircraft design (stable gear config, strong structure, low landing speeds) and luck plays a part too.

Minmus landing - 

 

Landing on Duna...       speeds are really high, huge turning radii, terrain v uneven,  takes ages to slow down.   You don't really have much idea of what the terrain under your wheels will be like at the moment of touchdown,  it's not really under your control.

The thing i'm getting from the OP though, is that his landings are "99% fatal".    This should not be.     My bad landings (on kerbin) result in tail strikes, break the wings or gear, and result in self disassembly, but the crewed parts survive.  Which makes me think he's designed something with a really high landing speed.       Whilst you can do that if you want,  bear in mind it is not necessary to sacrifice low speed handling to that extent to make a space plane.       Fully loaded interplanetary nuclear SSTO...

 

[Empiro]

It's really just that practice makes perfect. I had tons of trouble too, and eventually I could land with ease.

Start with a good plane design so you're not fighting the plane itself. One of the small pre-built ones should work well.

Next, it's really about being patient, gentle and making small adjustments.

• Turn on Fine Control Mode (caps lock, which turns the pitch indicators in your lower left from orange-brown to light blue).
• Stay flat. Use SAS and never roll more than a tiny bit to adjust your heading.
• Shallow pitch. Look at your vertical speed indicator. It shouldn't be more than 2-3 m/s downward as you get close to the ground.
• Go slow. In stock, it's surprising how slow you can fly without stalling. Most planes can land well under 100 m/s. I always have air brakes to quickly bleed off speed because I'm impatient.

If you're having trouble, try landing on the grass near the runway, and just focus on those above 4 points without having to worry about lining anything up.