does your plane go like bounce - bounce - bounce - bounce - land...finally?

[lammatt]

my plane often does that, what is it actually making the plane bounce? (and the funny part is... the wheels dont break after a handful of bounces)

is my vertical component of my speed too high or what?

[OtherDalfite]

I think you may be trying to land too fast OP. Try going for a very very shallow stall until you are down to about 30 m/s but still in the air. If you find yourself unable to do that, continue with your fast landings, but equip a set of retrofire thrusters to slow yourself on the ground.

[tom1499]

Rc planes do this, and RC planes land fast. You are probably going a touch too fast.

[lammatt]

so is it the horizontal component of my speed being too fast? or just it's generally too fast...

but i removed my B9... (because there're too many useless junks in it anyways; and i didnt bother to find which part is which and remove accordingly)

and the stock doesnt have an air brake part

[Johnno]

Moved this to Gameplay Questions.

[Michael232]

My plane usually goes like bounce - bounce - roll - structural failure - explosion. I'm getting suspicions that it might be not proper landing.

Do you land on the runway, or what is the surface like? You can use Kerbal Engineer Redux to check your vertical and horizontal speed and try to land with different speed to see if the bounce stops.

[RocketYeah]

I have lost more Kerbals to planes than to rockets haha, my landings tend to go kaboom!

[lammatt]

usually i try to land on runway, but if it bounces, i most likely will be landing next to it instead of landing on it.

[hebdomad]

So you want to land smoothly?

What you want to do is line up the runway and come in nice and slow.

Throttle down to near zero pull up a little to keep the nose in the air. Remember to lower landing gear.

You should be flying so your nose is pointing slightly above the horizon yet you are still losing altitude.

Keep your rate of descent nice and slow until your wheels touch the tarmac. If you are dropping to fast, either throttle up or pull back on the stick slightly (raise the nose).

Once you hit the ground. Zero out throttle, activate any drag-chutes and or reverse thrust and tap the breaks until you come to a complete stop.

Kill all engines.

Disembark.

Party.

Edited September 11, 2013 by hebdomad

[Van Disaster]

Ideally you want to stall as your wheels touch the runway, to give some idea of landing speed.

[Motokid600]

I always come up short and hit the damn burm on the runway. Makes for a nice crash.

[thescientist]

Remember that with an higher lift you can go slower, so if you need toredoce your landing speed you also need more wings.

If you're using FAR, things are a little harder, because you need VERY big wing surfaces

[thescientist]

I always come up short and hit the damn burm on the runway. Makes for a nice crash.

I usually just miss the runway

[BubbaWilkins]

If you're bouncing off the runway, your craft is travelling too fast and coming down at too steep of an angle. You want to be almost at stall speed so that when your wheels make contact that your craft is unable to lift back up without additional power or speed.

In this vid, I was going too fast and couldn't land well. Not much practice flying this one.

In this vid, I had much more experience and was able to land very easily.

[Tw1]

I sometimes make it so my front landing gear are slightly lower than the back, this reduces landing bounce.

[RTK]

I usually find it is around 135 - 160 m/s and a 5 - 10 degree pitch for touch down.

Just keep in mind each plane has their own quirks. Also don't get worried about not having much thrust on as remember you want to land not fly so I usually glide my approach in (using FAR Mod allows a certain amount of glide) and only give a tiny amount of thrust for various reasons, mainly to increase the length of glide and/or not to just fall out of the sky on to the runway.

Generally a well designed plane will have the landing gear lower at the back than the front as this gives free lift for take off and you will always want the back to touch down first when landing not the front.

Once on the runway kill engines and tap 'B' for brakes until speed reduces safely and then either hold 'B' or click for brakes to be on.

First SSTO I did with return to Kerbin was an easy landing as almost just like various flight sims I use to play.

[MrPopcup]

Your angle and speed isn't just right, try this:

1. Locate where you want to land.

2. Come in from a distance, start throttling down to 40%.

3. Once your close to the ground, kill the engines, but poll the nose up a little ( 10-20 degree.)

4. If you see your speed is 50m/s +, pitch up more, until you reach anything from 45m/s and below.

5. your under 45m/s and close to the ground, pitch to 5 degree and wait until your 3 or 6 meters above the ground, left your nose up a little and turn on brakes.

6. Touchdown!

7. Kerbal is sad cuz' he didn't get killed ;D