How to fly airplanes

[Garrett Kerman]

I have played KSP for a while, and even though I have gone to many places in the Kerbol system, I have not mastered the art of flying planes. So, do you know any tips on how to fly them? A full tutorial, if any exist, would be nice. Thanks in advance!

[bewing]

Didn't watch the tutorials, but this one seemed appropriate: 

In some sense, there are 3 parts to flying a plane -- takeoff, turning/maneuvering in the air, and landing. Any chance you could narrow down where you are having trouble?

 

[Garrett Kerman]

@bewing manuvering. I can take off and land just fine, it's turning that gets me.

[bewing]

Basically, you roll your plane in the direction you want to go, and patiently, repeatedly tap the S key to make it turn in that direction. If your nose is not balanced over your prograde marker, this will tend to make your plane roll further in one direction or the other. You keep the nose "above" the prograde marker by using A and D to control the rudder. And I bet that explanation didn't help you at all.

The main point though is that you don't want to mash the S key, because such a forceful maneuver will often make your plane go unstable -- especially if you are flying fast.

[ForScience6686]

Get a stick.  They make it much easier fort fine tuning, primarily on landing.  What kind of maneuvers are you trying to do?  There's a lot to consider when flying, which is why not everyone does it.  You could even get by without ailerons and use rudder to turn.  But that can be difficult in its own way to someone who is already used to 3 axis control.  But if you've never flown, many rc pilots suggest starting on 2 axis, yaw and pitch.

[fourfa]

I bought a stick, and I found it less convenient than the keyboard.  I do however spend a lot of time tweaking my planes so their CoM doesn't move as fuel burns out, the CoL is tight to the CoM but stalls gradually and stably, and my control surfaces are adjusted so it's hard to over-control.  When set up like this, everything flies wonderfully with keys.

And just guessing, but I think you meant "you could even get by without rudder and use ailerons and pitch to turn" (this is my default flight mode), and "suggest starting on 2 axis, pitch and roll."  With all the weird asymmetric lift forces KSP has, zero roll control will mean a lot of crashing.

Edit - on second thought, if the plane is under ~5t, command pod torque alone is enough to fly with no control surfaces at all. That isn't a bad place to start learning planes - little Cessna-looking things.

Edited January 22, 2017 by fourfa

[pincushionman]

2 hours ago, Garrett Kerman said:

@bewing manuvering. I can take off and land just fine, it's turning that gets me.

How are you trying to do it now? A common mistake is to try to use rudder to do it. What you want to do is roll in the direction you want to turn, and use elevator (and rudder, to a lesser extent) to control your flight path angle (that is, the angle up or down you're trying to go). The combination of angled wings and increased pitch will pull your nose around.

[Garrett Kerman]

1 hour ago, pincushionman said:

How are you trying to do it now? A common mistake is to try to use rudder to do it. What you want to do is roll in the direction you want to turn, and use elevator (and rudder, to a lesser extent) to control your flight path angle (that is, the angle up or down you're trying to go). The combination of angled wings and increased pitch will pull your nose around.

Yeah, that's what I try to do. I guess the planes I build are a little unstable. I'll fly one of the stock ones as soon as I have time.

[pincushionman]

2 hours ago, Garrett Kerman said:

Yeah, that's what I try to do. I guess the planes I build are a little unstable. I'll fly one of the stock ones as soon as I have time.

Well, you're on the right track then.

Do note that airplanes, both in KSP and in real life, are far more complicated and sensitive beasites than are rockets. Rockets are hard, yes, but the trouble is getting them to work reliably and safely, and most of complicated bits are in the internal workings of the motors themselves (which is abstracted in KSP); conceptually the whole package is little more than speed stuffed into a tube. On the other hand, airplanes are beholden to a whole bunch of complicated, non-intuitive, and occasionally contradictory aerodynamic effects, and are very sensitive to exactly how the vehicle is made and laid out. Many, many things that go into aircraft designs even today are simply because we know they work and changing them would be an unacceptable risk. With the exception of Northrop Grumman and Burt Rutan. They laugh at convention a little bit.

Basically, airplanes are slaves to the aerodynamics of the regimes in which they operate, whereas rockets' answer to aerodynamics is brute force.

[ForScience6686]

15 hours ago, fourfa said:

I bought a stick, and I found it less convenient than the keyboard.  I do however spend a lot of time tweaking my planes so their CoM doesn't move as fuel burns out, the CoL is tight to the CoM but stalls gradually and stably, and my control surfaces are adjusted so it's hard to over-control.  When set up like this, everything flies wonderfully with keys.

And just guessing, but I think you meant "you could even get by without rudder and use ailerons and pitch to turn" (this is my default flight mode), and "suggest starting on 2 axis, pitch and roll."  With all the weird asymmetric lift forces KSP has, zero roll control will mean a lot of crashing.

Edit - on second thought, if the plane is under ~5t, command pod torque alone is enough to fly with no control surfaces at all. That isn't a bad place to start learning planes - little Cessna-looking things.

No I was correct in what I said.  However that applies to advice from rc pilots.

[bewing]

22 hours ago, Garrett Kerman said:

Yeah, that's what I try to do. I guess the planes I build are a little unstable. I'll fly one of the stock ones as soon as I have time.

You might want to try downloading and flying this one. It certainly doesn't look like much, but its capabilities and stability are pretty amazing considering how low-tech it is.

http://pastebin.com/raw/6Mbp6mp0

(Make sure you use up almost all the fuel before you land! It's at the very very top end of what the landing gear can take when it's full of fuel.)

 

Edited January 24, 2017 by bewing