Why does my plane always start above the runway and then drop onto it?

[sjreynolds143]

Flying planes in KSP is rather frustrating. 

But one of the things that I find most infuriating is that my plane always arrives about 10 feet above the runway, and proceeds to drop down onto it. Invariably, it then bounces on the totally inadequate wheels (I only have the stock basic landing gear at the moment) and explodes.

Why does my plane always start so high? I've built it on the floor of the hanger, but it makes not the blindest bit of difference - launch 10 ft off the ground, drop and boom.

[Guest]

They always do that. I believe it's to stop planes from accidentally materialising partly underground which would be worse.

If it explodes when you drop it, your landing gear isn't strong enough to support it. It would never be able to roll down the runway in a straight line even if it did survive the drop. I.e. make a smaller plane, or wait until you can get at least the basic retractable landing gear. The first-tier landing gear is weak and finicky and it will only work on very light planes.

[sjreynolds143]

1 hour ago, Brikoleur said:

They always do that. I believe it's to stop planes from accidentally materialising partly underground which would be worse.

If it explodes when you drop it, your landing gear isn't strong enough to support it. It would never be able to roll down the runway in a straight line even if it did survive the drop. I.e. make a smaller plane, or wait until you can get at least the basic retractable landing gear. The first-tier landing gear is weak and finicky and it will only work on very light planes.

OK, thanks. I'll have to find a different way of getting those temperature readings then!

[Not Sure]

Hm. It shouldn’t be 10ft high you may be able to put it on the ground of the hangar and put a launch clamp on the wing tip. This should put it at the lowest possible altitude of the runway. 

[bewing]

In stock, the drop height is supposed to be half a meter. Additionally, explosion physics is supposed to be turned off until the vessel comes to rest. If these things aren't happening properly, I'd expect that you are running a mod that changes things.

 

[Geonovast]

This mod is a life saver for this stuff.

 

[Rocket In My Pocket]

It's weird, I've run into this issue before but only on certain planes; I'm not sure what triggers it?

Like 95% of my planes start just a bit off the runway, drop a half a foot or so, and it's fine; works great.

Every now and then I get a design that the game decides to drop from like 10 feet up though, every time I launch it.

Edited March 13, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket

[bewing]

2 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Every now and then I get a design that the game decides to drop from like 10 feet up though, every time I launch it.

Please post the craft, if it's stock -- the next time you have one that does this.

 

[Rocket In My Pocket]

8 minutes ago, bewing said:

Please post the craft, if it's stock -- the next time you have one that does this.

Sure, I can think of one off the top of my head but I haven't checked it in 1.4 yet.

EDIT: So it's either not as bad as I remember or it got better in 1.4? It definitely drops it further than other planes, but not 10 feet; more like 2 or 3?

The other thing is the plane is very complicated, and there are like at least a dozen plus versions of it, I remember very distinctly that at some point in developing it, it started dropping from higher up, I recall being quite frustrated about it, as it was breaking the plane; and after a few more iterations and moving the plane about in the VAB, I got it to drop a bit closer to the ground so it wouldn't break. It still drops noticeably higher than any other plane I have though. Not sure if it's gonna help you nail this down at all but here's the final version:

https://kerbalx.com/RocketInMyPocket/BobDog1D

(Don't judge it too harshly lol. It's a prototype stock swing wing F-14 style. It works but sometimes you have to "jiggle" the mechanism.)

Edited March 13, 2018 by Rocket In My Pocket