How did you learn how to rendezvous and dock?

[SuperWeegee4000]

I didn't.

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[CaptRobau]

I think I used Scott Manley's video, but learned a lot while doing it. I'm still most proficient when using one of the Smart ASS settings in MechJeb, but I still manage to do most manually. It can just take longer, depending on where my approach ends up. The Romfarer docking cam helps a lot too. The crosshair on the camera shows you when you're perfectly aligned.

[Bunsen]

Practiced proximity operations a little as soon as RCS existed. Didn't actually get much good at it.

Persistence came into the game, and I decided to start catching and deorbiting debris. Spent a while with a calculator, paper, and the Wikipedia page on orbital mechanics to figure out rendezvous. Skimmed a Ph.D. thesis by some MIT student named Edwin Aldrin, which didn't turn out to be very useful but was kinda cool. Can't tell you how happy I was once the nonrotating reference frame view of ellipses and the rotating frame view of centrifugal/Coriolis forces finally clicked with each other. Got rendezvous figured out. Then they added maneuver nodes and target indicators on the nav ball, and it got easy.

Practical proximity operations and docking were another matter. I think my trial and error perioid caused a worldwide shortage of monopropellant, but I got it down eventually. The target indicator on the nav ball also helped this immensely. Learned the importance of RCS balancing and lights.

[annallia]

Before Mechjeb I usually did it in a higher orbit (almost to mun). This way I could make my new vessel slow way down while near the same path and wait for the object I wanted to dock with to come around then it was just a matter of several quick small burns to get us close enough. It was tough, it had a lot of hit/miss and more than a few collisions but it got the job done more often than not. Honestly my biggest problem was matching speeds.

After Mechjeb I more or less just watch... But I can now do it in lower orbits.

[aftershockzap]

I watched every video I could find on docking. I designed ships, attempted to dock, redesigned. It took me AGES before I completed a docking attempt. Yep.... ages... Turns out having docking ports on backwards gets you really really good at aligning docking ports!

The truth is reading this thread helped me understand how to have two ships intercept, and having a good RCS balance for your first docking attempts is key. Balanced RCS meaning sometimes less is more.

[espm400]

Unlike 90% of you guys, I hadn't heard of Scott Manley until I became active here on the forums. After fumbling around for a couple days by myself (don't read too much into that one:huh:), I came across a youtube series by 'StompThompson.' After a couple vids I came across his docking tutorial. As soon as I understood what the symbols on the navball meant, and how to interact with them, docking quickly became a snap, time consuming, but fairly easy nonetheless.

I just wish the guy didn't drop off the face of the Earth a few months back, he had a good series going there (and a great speaking voice).

[HockeyToad28]

By the genius we call Scott Manley.

[Sma]

Lots and lots of practice lol. Though I got most of my tips for it from watching Scott Manley, which even still I couldn't get the hang of it, except for the basics of canceling out relative velocity and what not. My biggest problem still though is RCS ballance and propper translation, as most of the time when i "translate" i end up spinning.

Now though I have LazorCam, part of the LazerSystems. As part of LazorCam, all docking ports have docking cam. So we'll see how that goes now.

[HeadHunter67]

So I spent the last two hours studying blizzy78's rendezvous thread, watching that video and

, and spent a little time last night practicing on blizzy78's in-game Interactive Docking tutorial plugin... and I think I have got the basics of all this figured out. I'm going to launch a couple of rockets and give this thing a try now.

[SkyHook]

I started to learn how to dock in 0.16, after I decided not to leave my kerbs in orbit, instead I would just send a ferry with kerbs. To do that, I had to learn how to rendezvous, and it was difficult! I basically had to learn without maneuver nodes, or any official aids, really. I didn't even put RCS on my craft. That's how terrible I was. Eventually, I was able to do it, and was on my way!

[legoheli]

I can't say I ever found docking hard. I've flown military combat simulators for way too long and done too many air refuellings to think that fine maneuvering is really that much of a deal.

Rendezvous I figured out based on my physics classes. Higher orbit->longer period and so forth, then it was just a matter of raising the orbit in small steps until rendezvous. That was back in orbiter, though.

In my serious business KSP savefile I still use this real rendezvous technique in KSP, but usually I just carry enough dV to go straight for the object I wanna rendezvous with.

EDIT:

My first KSP Docking was with the 0.15 CERES Orion-esque spacecraft where I har mounted SAS units with landing legs on the nose, and then the landing legs on each craft would clamp down on the other CERES, locking them in place. I've lost all the screenshots I had of that when I formatted my computer, unfortunately.

Edited July 27, 2013 by legoheli

[asae]

I learned to rendezvous by accident the first time (lucky launch) and by practice after that. Docking on the other hand, as with many others, scott manley.

[DevoidLight]

From this...

Rendezvous Made Easy

This was back in .16 I think, and possibly one of the first guide/tutorial on a reliable way to rendezvous using the information at hand. This was before maneuver nodes, targeting and docking.

A time before maneuver nodes? As somebody who struggles even with them, this just boggles the mind.

[Hoa_Binh]

Saw a short tutorial on Youtube with the "wash and move towards" way and tried it. Worked fine to get close enough. The actual docking I just brute forced my way through, trying and trying again until I started to understand.

[Red181]

Scott Manley, lots of frustration and trial and error of course.

[Caelib]

I learned by trying again, and again, and again, and again. It took about 10 hours of practice before I really figured out all of the mechanics.

[RoboRay]

A time before maneuver nodes? As somebody who struggles even with them, this just boggles the mind.

You really had to think about what you were doing, to rendezvous back in 0.16 or 0.17. Bringing along MechJeb to determine your precise orbital parameters helped, though.

This would have been my first docking, if docking ports had existed back then.

Edited July 27, 2013 by RoboRay

[AlexanderB]

Official developer livestream before 0.18, that was all I needed to understand how to rendezvous and dock. First thing I did after installing 0.18 was of course to try to dock... did it successfully on first try and to this day I cannot understand what is so hard about it everytime I hear/read someone saying that docking is hardest thing to do in KSP, I guess I'm some kind of natural docking-master

Pretty much this, once they added the navball indicators, I was docking right away. Before that, I didn't bother because I didn't use mods and didn't like the landing leg docking thing either, I did minimalist moon/minmus landing instead.

[Lordherrmann]

I started to play around with rendezvous in 0.15. I didn't look at any tutorials and just figured it out myself pretty fast. Once you understood how orbital mechanics work, it really isn't that hard. When the warp clamps mod came out around 0.16, I started building space stations. I also pulled off an Apollo-style mun landing.

Since 0.18 docking really is a piece of cake for me.

[Feldynn]

I've watched Scott Manley's and a few other videos about rendezvousing I think I've got a basic understanding of what / how to do it but I have yet to actually try it, though I will have Jean Michel Jarre's "Rendez-vous" playing along in the background to give me inspiration when I do .

[bobcook]

I watched

video then spent a lot of time practicing. A lot of time. Now I am pretty good at it, can rendezvous and dock every time I try with a minimum of fuss.

I never learned to use the Docking Mode though, just do it with the regular Staging Mode controls and RCS controls. Do others use Docking Mode?

[rodion]

The core knowledge I needed to understand docking maneuvers almost certainly came early on in the form of the soothing, honeyed voice of Scott Manley, after that it was just several hours of slowly and painfully getting better at fine craft maneuvers. I'm pretty decent at docking, nowadays.

[Comrade Jenkens]

rendezvous was the thing I've found most difficult in KSP. It took me weeks to finally achieve it as I read and watched so many tutorials.

Docking I find easy as pie though.

I can do both quite easily now though.

[loiske]

I eyeballed the close approach until I realised the targeting nodes and watching scott manleys videos helped me fine my tactics with the help of mechjebs closest approach and time to closest approach

[Hocki]

I watched every dev stream up to .18s release, so I knew how to do both docking and rendezvousing. To be honest, rendezvousing wasn't really difficult with the maneuver nodes. When it was released I quickly attempted to dock. It went much better than expected, and I did it on my first try.