How to Plane (first aviation node)

[Zozaf Kerman]

I just unlocked aviation but my first attempt at a plane went off the runway then crashed into the ground. I was wondering if anyone could give me a detailed guide/instructions on how to build a good plane out of only parts from the aviation node.

[Streetwind]

Whenever this question comes up, I like to link this guide.

It's very old by now, and its snarky comments regarding KSP's poor drag calculations are outdated and no longer true. However, all the construction principles remain just as relevant today as they were back then - and I have never seen them explained better in any other place.

(And yes, it does address the very common problem of veering off the runway on takeoff.)

 

[Vanamonde]

 Many of my attempts to make planes veer off and crash, regardless of tech level. Planes are hard. 

[Zacspace]

Streetwind's answer is the best one you're going to get. I'll add some tips for landing gear placement since that tends to be the next big hurdle to players after they figure out basic airplane design

1. use angle snap to make sure all your wheels are perpendicular to the ground and perfectly straight. I know it feels like it should be fine to angle the wheels in certain directions, but because of how KSP's wheel colliders and springs work it's with rare exceptions best to have them pointed straight and upright.
2. attach them as close to the fuselage as you reasonably can. I mean close in terms of number of connections, but also to a lesser degree actual closeness. directly attaching your gear to the fuselage minimizes the amount of flexing and bending they can do, every additional joint between increases it.
3. Having the landing gear far from the fuselage increases the yaw moment wheel friction can apply to your aircraft, keeping a narrow footprint minimizes that. Of course you don't want to be doing a balancing act either, so just keep it in mind. I see a lot of inexperienced players attach their gear to the wingtips to avoid tipping over only to find themselves veering off the runway (and usually still tipping over after).
4. Similarly to the above point, keeping the majority of your wheels rearward will help you stay pointed true while rolling. In the same way that in flight you want your center of mass ahead of your center of drag for stability, on the ground you want your center of mass ahead of your center of friction.

Keep all that in mind and your aircraft should reliably at least have a chance of flying and maybe even landing

[jimmymcgoochie]

One big reason for oops-I-fell-off-the-runway syndrome is that your nose wheel can “dig in” and produce too much friction, acting as a pivot point for the rest of the plane to rotate around and sending it veering off to the side. To fix this, enable advanced tweakables in the main menu settings then select your nose wheel(s) and override friction control, then set wheel friction to somewhere between 0.2 and 0.5- not 0 as this will make them useless for steering. The rear wheels should be fine as they are, friction at the back will help keep the plane stable.

You should also increase the brake force at the rear and decrease it at the front to improve passive stability on landing, though the basic nose wheel has no brakes so this is more for later when you unlock retractable landing gear and also for rovers.

Advanced tweakables has a lot of useful extra features that can be very helpful, including greater controls for rover wheels, the ability to autostrut parts together to prevent wobbly rocket syndrome and assign fuel tank priorities to drain tanks in a specific order; I usually set them to drain from bottom to top in a stage as this shifts the centre of mass upwards and helps to keep the rocket passively stable.

[Director_Valle]

This tutorial by Mike Aben might be useful:

As for veering off the runway at take off, make sure your landing gear is straight and that your plane isn’t too heavy.

[Scarecrow71]

21 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

 Many of my attempts to make planes veer off and crash, regardless of tech level. Planes are hard. 

I still cannot plane.  Plane-ing is difficult.  Instead of plane-ing, I usually end up crashing.

[Echo__3]

Airplanes can be complex. Exactly how one places the wing parts great greatly affect the handling of the aircraft. The tools in the game do not really give you all the information you need. I find the mods RCS Build Aid and Kerbal Engineer to help though.

Here is a little video guide that I made to help players get started with making planes.