Fuel Station Problem

[Billyk88]

Ok so i have put a refuel station into a 200km apropsis orbit above Kerbin and i cannot for the life of me get in close enough to dock my fuel tanks to it. I appreciate anyones advice.

Thank You

[Kerba Fett]

Is this another "I can't dock" thread? Cause there was one started a couple of days ago with plenty of advice. And another one started a few days before that.

In fact there's probably been 1 or 2 of those threads per week since they added docking ports.

[Kasuha]

Probably the best approach is to head over to the Tutorials subforum, there's plenty of descriptions how rendezvous and docking is done. Or you can use the first sticky in it (The Drawing Board) to find some of better ones. If you have some particular problem, please post description how far did you get in the approach and what exactly do you have problems with.

Edited March 7, 2014 by Kasuha

[Billyk88]

ok sounds good. no I was asking how to get to encounter my fuel station close enough to dock.

[Streetwind]

Yeah, the term you're looking for is "rendezvous". There should be plenty guides on the subject.

[Nathair]

The wiki has a Basic maneuvers page with a section on docking/rendezvous and a Basic Docking page. They should get you pointed in the right direction.

[Kryxal]

Quick and dirty method: match inclination, set up an eccentric orbit that just crosses the station's, orbit till your "closest approach" marker before the AP/PE switches between "ahead" and "behind", fine-tune the orbital period with a burn at AP/PE using a maneuver node (and finishing touches by removing the node and using RCS if you have it helps). There are faster ways, there may be more efficient ways, but this works ... oh, and try not to have the orbits have too much to kill in the way of velocity difference!