Rendezvou advices

[Andrey.gr]

Hello guys! Could you please provide some tips and tricks for the subj? I'm ok with circular orbits, but I do not understand how to perform rendezvous on elliptical orbits and more important with large orbital period? I mean, I can perform such rendezvous pretty accurate, but it can take crazy amount of time to synchronize orbital period, any advices on how to perform such task, and how to plan the burn?

Edited April 8, 2018 by Andrey.gr

[Vanamonde]

If the difference between the orbits is great, you either spend a lot of time bringing them together or burn a lot of fuel. There's no way around that. 

For elliptical orbits, the first thing I do is burn to bring the line between periapsis and apoapsis around to align with that of the target. Once you do that, it's really pretty much the same as circular orbit rendezvous. Of course, that can be a pretty tricky first step. It may not be fuel-efficient, but I sometimes simplify things by circularizing with my peri or apo coinciding with that of the target. Then it's a simple matter to align the other point,  match planes, etc. 

[Corona688]

When the target's an ellipse, I'm a small circle inside it.  When the target's a circle, I'm an even smaller circle.

Starting from there, I plan a burn to intercept the orbit of the target, if not the target itself, then right-click the node to hide it, then click the little plus on it to move it an orbit into the future until the markers approach each other, and fine-tune from there.

And some intercepts are just difficult no matter what.