New To KSP - First Jet Plane, So proud...

[bigred]

Hi,

I'm relatively new to KSP but have quickly grown to love this game so much. Despite finally getting the ha g of landing on the Mun and gathering as much science as I can one activity that eluded (or I jsut avoided) was plane building.

So here is my first Jet plane that actually worked and flew pretty well.

There you go!

Fun to fly and see the sites around KSC.

[Specialist290]

Welcome to the forums!

I'll let you in on a little secret -- I've been playing this game for over a year, and I still haven't quite gotten the hang of building planes myself (though I'm not too bad at flying some of the prebuilt ones). That's a nice little design you have there; nice and simple, and it certainly looks like it handles well.

Glad to hear you've been enjoying yourself. Feel free to make yourself at home here among us.

[Endersmens]

Although that plane does look nice, and probably handles alright, I notice you have no elevators, ailerons, or a rudder. I see the control winglet on the front, which i'm guessing acts as both elevators and ailerons. Read up on the basics of airplane control surfaces. It'll make building maneuverable planes easier. Also, welcome! And this is not shooting down your plane at all, just some friendly tips.

[Wanderfound]

Glad to hear that you're having fun.

If you want to polish that plane further, get some control surfaces on the back of the wings and rudders. At the moment, the only control inputs you have apart from engine gimballing are all going through the canard winglets. However, adding wing control surfaces will shift your CoL backwards; you'll want to shift the canards forwards a bit to compensate.

If you're getting into planes, I highly recommend that you give FAR/NEAR a try if you haven't already. You'll probably crash horribly a few times while adapting, but it isn't too hard to get the hang of it.

Stock aero can be fun, but more realistic aero is a lot better for spaceplanes. Slogging through the soupmosphere takes forever; a good plane in FAR can easily reach orbit in under five minutes.

Edit: Ninj!

[Endersmens]

I guess the Reaction wheel would technically yaw the plane. But. Yeah, what Wanderfound said. He went more in depth than me.

[bigred]

I guess the Reaction wheel would technically yaw the plane. But. Yeah, what Wanderfound said. He went more in depth than me.

That's right, I added the reaction wheel as "insurance" to make sure the plane wasn't too unwieldly. In addition it did have the effect of compensating for the lack of control surfaces, which is an important thing not to leave out.

Back to the drawing board!

[Northstar1989]

I notice you have no elevators, ailerons, or a rudder. I see the control winglet on the front, which i'm guessing acts as both elevators and ailerons. Read up on the basics of airplane control surfaces. It'll make building maneuverable planes easier.

Believe it or not, planes don't actually NEED rudders- real planes tend to yaw by first rolling and then making use of pitching moment.

As for having combined elevators/ailerons, they're called elevons, and they're actually more mass-efficient than dedicated elevators and ailerons:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevon

Never mind the tone of the Wikipedia article, it lacks neutrality- they actually see rather common usage in a number of high-tech airplane designs...

Since pitch authority is usually much more important than roll authority (you don't need to roll all that often outside of combat situations), the only real difference between an elevon and an elevator is whether it is also capable of moving in an asymmetrical pattern to generate roll...

See also articles on Stabilators (all-moving tailplanes)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabilator

Regards,

Northstar

[Wanderfound]

Reinforcing Northstar: the design priorities for a combat dogfighter are radically different to that of a spaceplane.

Dogfighters are all about manoeuvrability, usually created by deliberate aerodynamic instability. Speed as well is a bonus. Spaceplanes are all about straight-line speed; so long as you have enough manoeuvrability to keep the nose up at 30,000m, you're all good. Instability is lethal. It's sportscar vs dragster; they're radically different things.

You can do a dogfighting spaceplane if you want, but that's an advanced design trick. Get the speed sorted first.