Vto-hl

[Synapse]

It's probably been done before - make a vehicle that takes off from the launchpad vertically and lands horizontally.

RULES

Your vehicle MUST be made in the VAB NOT the spaceplane hangar. Do not transfer your save!

Your vehicle MUST land on wheels and unpowered (no boosters and no landing legs). The final 2000m of your descent must be unpowered.

Your vehicle must reach an initial height of 10,000m.

My pitiful attempts:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/y7li4d9z0fmaf01/ZiyOtyh3fz

[koshelenkovv]

Actually, it's pretty easy.

Just build a lightweight SSTO with 3-4 intakes and a lot of wings for long glides.

Here my entry: SSTO with small satellite payload. Totally unpowered reentry and landing.

At launchpad

Accelerating

Reached speed over 1900 m/s just before air ended. Now time to turn rockets on.

Placing a sattelite at 90x100 km orbit

Slightly too short of KSC

Ohmygod, ohmygod...

Whooooo!

Jeb checking the engines.

Edited July 17, 2013 by koshelenkovv

[koshelenkovv]

My pitiful attempts:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/y7li4d9z0fmaf01/ZiyOtyh3fz

Your first craft is too heavy and have back gears placed too closely.

Your second craft is too short for such wide wings and again have landing gears placed all wrong. Just place it on wings (and fine-align with Shift+WASDQE if nessesary). Also, such tiny craft will barrel roll like crazy with two large control surfaces.

[Synapse]

Your first craft is too heavy and have back gears placed too closely.

Your second craft is too short for such wide wings and again have landing gears placed all wrong. Just place it on wings (and fine-align with Shift+WASDQE if nessesary). Also, such tiny craft will barrel roll like crazy with two large control surfaces.

Are my gears causing the awful handling? Cos everything I made with gears on wings crashes off the runway before I can even take off, so I figured that was the problem

But yeah I really don't understand aircraft I wanted to see some examples

[Tw1]

I've done this, but not on Kerbin. But it was a very practical way of landing cart mod rovers, even though the landing pictured didn't go as planed.

[allmappedout]

I'm really upset, I thought this would be 'Vertical Take Off - Hard Landing' I was going to enter every VTOL craft I've ever made.

[koshelenkovv]

Are my gears causing the awful handling? Cos everything I made with gears on wings crashes off the runway before I can even take off, so I figured that was the problem

Then place gears not on wings, but far enough away from each other.

It seems either wings are too wobbly or there too little lift - wobble can be caused by lift: when you accelerating, lift rises enough to cause wobble but not enough for takeoff.

Make you runway roll shorter. Place more wings and control surfaces or tilt wings - good plane can take off at 100 m/s and less when you press S key.

Place back gears not far from CoM or it be hard to overturn at takeoff.