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Poor Pilot, Better Plane

seyMonsters
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seyMonsters

seyMonsters

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Having returned to Kerbal recently after an extended absence (so its not in alpha anymore?) I have recently started a let's play on my youtube channel of a career mode..... let me get to the point...

I'm BAD at PLANES, always have been.... both building and flying...

my challenge for you.... Send me your designs for "learning to fly" type players.... safe but fun craft for me to learn to fly in.

I will trial a group of them and make a video about the experience (giving credit clearly to the creators) 

 

 

If this goes well I would love to make further videos with different design challenges...

 

Suggestions, or submissions, please Poor Pilot Better Plane Submissions

 

if you want to see my journey so far... 

 

 

 

Edited by seyMonsters
added playlist link to past episodes
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Klapaucius

Klapaucius

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You got me back into plane building after a long hiatus.  This is based off a design I have used a few times, but I detuned it and redid the landing gear to make it easier. Despite the odd appearance, this is an incredibly forgiving airplane.  Even with SAS off, it will stay very stable, and the landing speed can be as low as 30 mps.  In fact, early on, my biggest mistake was always coming in too fast.  I spent a lot of time learning to land on the flat areas around the KSC and Dessert Airfield before I tried to use the runway.  That allows you to get your speed and flare down before trying to deal with lining things up perfectly.

 

I've set it up so that as you get better, you can take off the training wheels.  Right now, the afterburner is off, the gimballing is locked and the front canards are locked. You can unlock some or all of these with the action groups.

1. Toggle Afterburner

2. Toggle engine on or off

3. Toggle gimbal

6. Toggle canard pitch control

7. Toggle canard roll control

8. Toggle headlights (so you can practice at night).

 

Unlocking 3, 6 and 7 totally changes the plane. It will become much more maneuverable and twitchy. It really turns it into a stunt plane.

 

I've got some video but I need to edit it. I'll get that posted in the next day or two.  It shows it in both its "calm" mode and its "crazy" mode.

 

https://kerbalx.com/Klapaucius/Seuss-Easy-to-Fly-Trainer

 

1f9rhvE.png

QYYywwF.png

 

Edited by Klapaucius
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seyMonsters

seyMonsters

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On 10/5/2020 at 10:27 PM, Klapaucius said:

You got me back into plane building after a long hiatus. 

Superb, will add it to the list for recording... a nice mix so far! Hopefully get a few more and see what comes up ;-)

Edited by seyMonsters
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Klapaucius

Klapaucius

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7 hours ago, seyMonsters said:

Superb, will add it to the list for recording... a nice mix so far! Hopefully get a few more and see what comes up ;-)

Here is a video of what it can do when the training wheels are off.

 

 

 

Edited by Klapaucius
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dnbattley

dnbattley

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16 hours ago, seyMonsters said:

guess we have our second plane already ;-) thank you...

If you want the plane to look its best for video purposes, you'll ideally need the custom decals I use on top of the lights at the back to help me identify engine states (Z = zompi drive ["conventional" kraken power], K = kraken drive [extreme thrust at altitude], P = k-drive protection system [only needed outside Kerbin SOI], V = VTOL system [secondary k-drive which can either be pointed forwards or upwards]) when flying in 3rd person view.

I'll upload these tonight as a zip drive and edit the link here, together with instructions for installing them in case you haven't done so before.

Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_D1DDwEY-j9xcCt65GwcoC7c7VCZirLS/view?usp=sharing

Simply copy this to the KSP folder (the zip file should already contain the correct folder structure: GamaData/CustomDecals/Flags/[files])

Edited by dnbattley
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lucho

lucho

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Ok, I've updated my Boomerang on KerbalX. I tweakedthe controls to make it easier to fly, and on KerbalX included a short description of how to fly it. It likes to veer to the right on the runway, but that's controlable enough to get in the air

 

 

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linuxgurugamer

linuxgurugamer

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On 10/5/2020 at 5:52 PM, seyMonsters said:

Superb, will add it to the list for recording... a nice mix so far! Hopefully get a few more and see what comes up ;-)

When you quote a post, it would be nice to edit it to make it smaller.  Its annoying to first have to scroll through a very long post only to see the exact same thing in the next post

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vyznev

vyznev

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On 10/5/2020 at 6:46 PM, seyMonsters said:

Send me your designs for "learning to fly" type players.... safe but fun craft for me to learn to fly in.

Seeing as the hardest part of flying planes is landing them safely, I thought I'd make you a plane that's extra safe to land. As a bonus, it also highlights the silliness of Kerbal aerodynamics.

Let me present to you: The Flying Brick

Nbt26Ju.png

More screenshots on imgur.

This is a spiritual successor to my old "CuBoid" 8-way symmetric aircraft, trading some symmetry for ease of use and raw power. It's powered by three Panther engines with afterburners (off by default, use action group 3 to enable) and thrust vectoring (on by default, use action group 4 to disable). Despite its awkward and unusual appearance, it's quite stable and aerodynamic (at least as far as KSP's stock aero model is concerned) and flies very well both with and without SAS.

Takeoff works just like in any other plane: stage, throttle up, pitch up when speed is high enough. Due to the unconventional landing gear placement, you'll need to get this plane up to about 100 m/s before it will rotate on takeoff, but this is easy to achieve even without afterburners. Once you're airborne, retract the landing gears and enjoy the flight.

The Panther engines will push this plane past the sound barrier even in dry mode, and with afterburners it can easily go above Mach 3. Yet it's still quite maneuverable even at low speeds, but not so maneuverable as to feel "twitchy" or unstable.

The ideal landing speed is around 50 m/s, although higher speeds are OK as long as you don't come down way too steep. The multiple landing gears act as pretty good airbrakes for slowing down, but I also included a pair of actual airbrakes (bound to the brakes action group, as usual) for extra deceleration if needed. Landing as a glider (i.e. with throttle all the way down at zero) works fine, although a little bit of maneuvering thrust won't hurt either.

Due to the landing gear placement, this plane does have a tendency to spin while braking at low speeds that I haven't managed to fully correct. Sometimes it'll even flip over or do cartwheels. Fortunately, this is almost never a problem, since the plane is nearly indestructible at speeds below 50 m/s and will eventually come to rest in one of two stable orientations. And if it happens to land upside down, that's not a problem, either — just use action group 2 to switch control to the secondary upside-down probe core (and action group 1 to switch back)! :cool:

You can also switch probe cores in flight, if you find yourself flying upside down for any reason and don't feel like doing an actual roll to correct it.

Do remember to check that the navball is blue side up before takeoff! Accidentally pitching down instead of up at 100 m/s will crash even this plane. Fortunately this is an uncrewed drone plane, so even if you do manage to crash it, at least no Kerbal lives will be lost. Well, at least unless you crash it into the Astronaut Complex or something. :D

Ps. With some care, this plane can also land in water. (Somewhat counterintuitively, deploying the landing gears is recommended also for water landings!) While its nose-heavy center of mass prevents it from easily taking off from the water's surface, it can take off from underwater! The recommended procedure is to retract gears, pitch down and throttle up, which will push the plane under the surface. (Yes, jet engines work underwater in KSP! :P) Once well below the surface, turn afterburners on, pitch up to between 45 and 90 degrees and watch the plane leap out of the water! With afterburners, this plane has a thrust-to-weight ratio above 1, making a straight vertical ascent from the surface possible.

Of course, if you like, you can also just keep the nose down and use the plane as a submarine to explore the uncharted depths of Kerbin's oceans. :)

(BTW, the only "exploit" this plane uses is the fact that KSP's simple aerodynamics model doesn't really consider the placement of parts relative to each other. So the wing panels this plane has above and below the engines provide just as much lift there as they would if placed more conventionally off to the sides. Other than that, and the extra probe core and the surplus landing gears, this is just a completely ordinary KSP plane.)

Edited by vyznev
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seyMonsters

seyMonsters

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4 hours ago, vyznev said:

Seeing as the hardest part of flying planes is landing them safely, I thought I'd make you a plane that's extra safe to land. As a bonus, it also highlights the silliness of Kerbal aerodynamics.

Let me present to you: The Flying Brick

 

Superb addition, I think I’m almost ready to film episode 1 now... and Iv got quite a few ideas if that goes well ( or even if it doesn’t) 

 

 

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Pds314

Pds314

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The Ya-1

VwZvhJx.png

It is designed to be stable but have a slight pitch up tendency so there is no constant messing with elevator. In fact, I am letting it take off and fly without SAS as I type.

It has no ailerons, but the rudder effectively controls the roll of the aircraft. It cannot yaw, so something like a forward slew is not possible, but that's not really very beginner-y anyway.

It is designed for sparing (recommended) or even nonexistent (only if you know what you're doing) use of the elevator.

SAS: I do not recommend SAS with this aircraft. It certainly does not need it to fly and it can cause wobble. It isn't overly twitchy and it's not unstable so I recommend keeping SAS off. It can also alter the behavior of the craft during an ejection.

Landings (on land): go into a 38 m/s uncontrolled, unpowered glide with about 5 degrees nose down and 9 degree prograde down. Flare a few meters from the ground as needed to drop speed below 28 m/s in order to avoid a bounced landing. If a bounced landing does occur, gently flare to control the bounce and arrest the descent, but do not stall the aircraft.

Takeoff: on a runway, bounced takeoffs are safe. So simply press Z to max engine power and wait to start gaining altitude. On less forgiving terrain, either hold pitch up or throttle back at takeoff to avoid bouncing.

Maneuvers: almost anything besides sideslip maneuvers (which are not really possible) is fine. The one thing you should be careful of is that very low speed, power off, highly aggressive pitch up maneuvers can result in a severe stall (read: backflip) This stall requires roughly 100-250 meters of altitude to recover straight and level flight. It is recommended that full pitch up not be applied at 30 m/s or below if you have power off and are less than 400 meters above terrain, except for flaring on landing.

Emergencies:
1. Ditching in water: : go into a 38 m/s uncontrolled, unpowered glide with about 5 degrees nose down and 9 degree prograde down. Note that this is ditching, not a water landing. While the sudden stop definitely won't break anything, this is not a sea plane and has no ability to take off, or indeed, even level its wings, on water.

2. Ejecting from the aircraft: Press abort (backspace) to eject. WAIT to clear the aircraft, including the wings, THEN press P to open your EVA chute. Ejection below 100 meters above ground, or below 400 meters above ground in a steep dive is not recommended. That being said, in level flight at 100 m/s, it will work at an altitude of even 10 meters thanks to the way the aircraft rolls and throws the pilot up the wing. Note that the aircraft will almost certainly crash because of the ejection procedure, as the automatic roll to ensure the pilot clears the aircraft will cause it to nosedive.

Edited by Pds314
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Klapaucius

Klapaucius

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6 hours ago, Pds314 said:

The Ya-1

It has no ailerons, but the rudder effectively controls the roll of the aircraft. It cannot yaw, so something like a forward slew is not possible, but that's not really very beginner-y anyway.

I was curious and gave this a go. This is a great little plane. It is incredibly nimble.  It took getting used to. I usually do all my turning by banking, and many of my planes don't even have yaw control. This was the opposite.  I hope you will enter it into my landing on the SPH Roof Landing and Takeoff challenge.

https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/197367-land-and-takeoff-again-from-sph-roof/&tab=comments#comment-3865219

 

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seyMonsters

seyMonsters

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1 minute ago, epicfailure2020 said:

good! if you want i can create a swing wing plane! (swing wing not required but looks cool)

That would be cool! im just finishing up the first episode of this (only 4 planes in it basically) so will be putting up next episode ideas probably tomorrow, one is likely to be flying wings, one is likely to be swing wing, and one large transport planes

 

 

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