How to put wings on top or bottom of fuselage parallel to floor?

[CjStaal]

Whenever i try to put them on the top or bottom, they are angled or perpendicular to the floor. How do I make them horizontal like I see everyone is doing? The only time they are horizontal is when they are on the midpoint of the fuselage.

[DeMatt]

In the VAB/SPH, you can rotate a part you're trying to place. QE, WS, and AD all rotate in various directions; pressing them alone gives you 90-degree increments, while Shift+key gives you 5-degree increments.

Decide where you plan on attaching the part, hover the mouse pointer over the spot, rotate as necessary, click to finalize.

Note that the Space Bar resets the part's rotation to default - useful if you can't figure out which way a given key will rotate it.

Edited August 6, 2014 by DeMatt

[Wanderfound]

Whenever i try to put them on the top or bottom, they are angled or perpendicular to the floor. How do I make them horizontal like I see everyone is doing? The only time they are horizontal is when they are on the midpoint of the fuselage.

Place your wings vertically on top or bottom then use ASDQWE to rotate them (in 90° increments; if you hold Alt, they'll move in 5° steps instead). Disabling angle snap may also be useful for fine-tuning position.

See http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/89092-Kerbodyne-Scattershot-a-simple-and-easy-to-fly-beginner-s-SSTO-spaceplane for an example.

[Wanderfound]

PS: be careful with low wing designs. CoL lower than CoM = unstable. Use a raised tailplane to compensate.

[Claw]

PS: be careful with low wing designs. CoL lower than CoM = unstable. Use a raised tailplane to compensate.

Or angle the wing tips slightly up.

The real key is to look at the Center of Lift (CoL) marker and it's relationship to the Center of Mass (CoM) marker. Generally speaking, you want the CoL slightly above and a bit aft of the CoM for stability.

[Tortoise]

Put them at the top

Hold shift

Fine-Tune using the Q & E buttons while holding shift.

[GoSlash27]

Also be aware that placing wings on top and/ or bottom without any separation between the wings means that they will no longer self-stabilize with dihedral.

Best,

-Slashy

[KerbMav]

Also be aware that placing wings on top and/ or bottom without any separation between the wings means that they will no longer self-stabilize with dihedral.

Best,

-Slashy

Care to elaborate, please?

[Wanderfound]

Dihedral means that the wings are angled up; the tip is higher than the root. Anhedral means that the wings are angled down; the tip is lower than the root.

Either of these will affect the banking/rolling (rotation around the longitudinal axis) behaviour of the plane. Dihedral promotes stability; the plane will naturally tend to return to level flight after banking. Anhedral promotes agility; the plane will bank rapidly, and tend to keep rolling once it gets going.

Setting anhedral or dihedral on wings will also affect the height of the CoL. Dihedral raises it, anhedral lowers it.

If you look at the plane I linked to upthread, there is a substantial amount of anhedral on the canards (the little wings on the nose). This was done partly for aesthetics, but also to compensate for the raised CoL caused by the high-wing design. The tail also functions slightly as a dihedral wing, due to the fact that the rudders aren't perfectly vertical.

[KerbMav]

.

If this is an answer to my post, thank you very much.

But actually I was curious about what GoSlash27 meant with "without any separation between the wings means that they will no longer self-stabilize with dihedral" - is there another bug with clipping parts?

[Wanderfound]

If this is an answer to my post, thank you very much.

But actually I was curious about what GoSlash27 meant with "without any separation between the wings means that they will no longer self-stabilize with dihedral" - is there another bug with clipping parts?

I'm not sure what Slashy was getting at, actually. But I generally don't tilt my main wing section, so if there is an issue it wouldn't have come up for me.

[Claw]

Unless Slashy is referring to if you place wings symmetrically above and below, or angle them so the tips touch. Basically any dihedral you put on one set of wings is canceled by the anhedral of the other wings.

I haven't heard of any bugs with stacking wings unless there is some problem stacking wings on wings.Wings stacked, but attached to the fuselage are fine.

Cheers,

-Claw

[Program Kerbal Space]

Look in the top left area you'll see tools click the icon next to the selected icon to enable the move tool, then click the object you want to move then drag the arrows to move it.

[foamyesque]

Hit "F" when you've got the rotation gizmo open to enter absolute mode, then adjust there. Flipping back and forth between absolute and local will tell you if your wings are perfectly straight or not; if they are, all that will happen is the gizmo's circles will change colours. If they aren't, the rings will change their angles as well.

 

Makes getting straight engines, wings, gear, etc a breeze.

[Val]

The questions were asked more than 2 years ago. They've either figured it out or given up long time ago.