Cant slow down

[Wanderfound]

Again, BTW, I'd recommend you use my trainer (or someone else's equivalent) while you're getting the hang of landing. It's tricky enough already without having to deal with potentially questionable aerodynamics at the same time.

The trainer has slightly narrow-track landing gear, but that's a deliberate thing: it'll train you to level the wings before touching down. It has bucketloads of roll authority and wonderful roll stability, so getting them level shouldn't be a problem.

See http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1411614&viewfull=1#post1411614 for the download, along with screenshots of the FAR analysis screens for it.

[DaMichel]

Forth. Just out of curiosity. From the description, the spoiler that I am trying to do is called flaring in real life terms, correct?

Yes. Edit to not look like an idiot: i meant the nosing up to reduce speed.

First priority should be to fix your FAR install.

Then, try to find out how slow your plane can fly without stalling. Like 10 m/s or so faster than that is a good landing speed. Ofc you can land faster but than you must be very careful with your vertical speed to not bounce back into the air. You also have to take into account at which speed your plane can still turn well enough. Typically, near stall speed you will be flying at high angle of attack and the plane will turn very sluggishly. This is important for the following.

Without airbrakes and flaps, you best option to slow down is flying sharp turns. Instead of going for a long straight final approach i suggest you try a military overhead pattern. It is quicker, fun, and gives you the opportunity to "burn energy" in the turns.

Well, actually this pic is for unpowered landing. It's how i prefer to land spaceplanes. But a normal patterns looks similar, just not as steep.

Basially you circle around the runway, loosing altitude and managing your speed with by playing with altitude and turns. Then when your feel comfortable, for instance 500m altitude @ 100m/s you make the final turn to line up with the runway.

(disclaimer: me = not a pilot )

Edit: AFAIK a drogue chute is supposed to slow you down from supersonic speeds. IDK if the KSP version is different from the normal parachutes. I bet it is not. If you want realistic chutes you should have a look at the Real Chute mod.

Edited September 12, 2014 by DaMichel

[KerikBalm]

I'm not a real life pilot, so I could be wrong on a few of these

IRL, I fly hanggliders, and I've been at the controls of sailplanes, and an Extra-300, but the only thing I'm fully competent at from launch to landing is hanggliding. The principles are the same nonetheless

A good glide slope (the angle at which you descend from altitude to touchdown) is a mere 3 degrees. I'm sure you can descend at 20 degrees in KSP, but that would be insane IRL.

This is where unpowered vs powered vehicles tend to diverge.

A 20 degree descent is a ~3:1 glide

a 3 degree descent is a 20:1 glide

Most gliders will not come in at a 20:1 glide. Some sink on final approach can royally screw you.

The space shuttle orbiter couldn't manage better than a 4.5:1 glide -> it does not come in a 3 degrees.

a 3:1 glide is quite steep though....

I'm not sure what you want to call this approach angle for comparison:

Secondly, I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but pitch your nose up about 3 degrees and control your airspeed with pitch angle. Control your rate of descent with the throttle. It really depends on the aircraft design

Indeed it does - Obviously if you don't have a throttle, you do things differently. And in KSP, the throttle response is so slow, I generally do unpowered landings (though I sometimes use rockets for quick thrust).

In a normal "full-size" glider, you control your glide slope with variable use of spoilers.

In a hangglider, you don't even have spoilers. However, any glider has a "best glide speed", and in a hangglider, you fly closer to this speed if you are coming up short, and further from it if you are going long. As it is particularly unsafe to come in slow in an unpowered glider, this means you fly faster than best glide if going long... ie, you dive if you are too high. Sure, you pick up speed, but that speed bleeds off in less distance than if you stayed gliding at best glide speed. It gets a bit more complicated with ground effect, so you may want to bleed off the speed from the dive a bit above the ground before settling in for a flare.

Airspeed too fast? Nose up. This will make you gain altitude and slow down. To counter the gain in altitude, drop your throttle. Eventually, your airspeed will slow and your altitude gain will turn into altitude loss.

Counter-intuitively, if you are going to fast, you can also dive and go faster, before levelling out. Its not a good idea IRL to be wallowing in at a high AoA just above stall. But as KSP, even with FAR, doesn't have weather phenomenom or wind gradients... fine...

You'll actually slow down in less space if you dump all your altitude in one dive, and then spend longer time in level flight where you gradually increase AoA to maintain altitude as your airspeed decreases.

Of course, you can also increase your drag, through the use of spoilers and such, in a hang glider, there are some "novelty" devices that do this (also less novelty, drogue chutes), but there is also the rather crude (but not completely ineffective) method of varying body position - prone = low drag, upright = higher drag, legs back/legs dangling, using your legs to hold the "boot" of the harness down like an airbrake... etc...

Sailplanes just use a spoiler lever

Second. Although I've landed and returned on 75% of the planetary bodies in the system (rockets were never my problem). I do have to say I've never understood what "drogue chute" has meant . Is that a non fully deployed chute? So basically set the chute to fully deploy at 0 altitude? Get the drag without ripping me apart?

Well... it can be a bit unclear, especially in KSP. The only real clear part is that they are a parachute that is not intended to slow you down to a safe landing speed.

In skydiving, a small drogue chute simply provides the force to pull the main chute out.

The semi-deployed chute state in KSP should qualify as a drogue chute. However, KSP also has the mk25 parachute, which is explicetely named a drogue chute.

This one is generally meant to slow a craft down before the main chutes deploy, also its semi-deployed state has 4x the drag of normal chutes.

However, its fully deployed drag is still way too high for a landing parachute (I've tried using them like such... I wouldn't recommend it), and I don't think you can set their deployment altitude lower than 50m.

Forth. Just out of curiosity. From the description, the spoiler that I am trying to do is called flaring in real life terms, correct?

What you describe in your first post, rasing your nose to try to slow down, is called flaring, IRL, if you flare too early or too slowly, you do go up like what you described. (Flaring a hang-glider is the same principle as flaring any other craft, but in terms of AoA change, much more extreme, and a rapid AoA change can save you when you flare at what would otherwise be too fast, where a slower AoA change would make you climb significantly.)

What you're trying to do with the spoiler tweakable in FAR is not the same as flaring.

Edited September 12, 2014 by KerikBalm

[DaMichel]

Aren't stock parachutes auto-cut when you touch the ground?! Better use separatrons

[ratchet freak]

Aren't stock parachutes auto-cut when you touch the ground?! Better use separatrons

that's why everyone is suggesting adding realshutes parashutes

[Alshain]

Aren't stock parachutes auto-cut when you touch the ground?! Better use separatrons

Real Chutes can not only keep the parachute around after landing, but it can be configured to autodeploy on touchdown and can be configured to actually be a drag chute instead of a main chute, so it pulls behind the craft instead of above it.

[KerikBalm]

Aren't stock parachutes auto-cut when you touch the ground?! Better use separatrons

I prefer the 24-77s.

I really should look into the real-chute mod, since I've already given up on staying with pure stock (currently just NEAR, visual enhancements[clouds and stuff] and SP+, although I added SP+ because I saw it would become stock in 0.25)

[Wanderfound]

I prefer the 24-77s.

I really should look into the real-chute mod, since I've already given up on staying with pure stock (currently just NEAR, visual enhancements[clouds and stuff] and SP+, although I added SP+ because I saw it would become stock in 0.25)

Vernors are worth looking into as well; just a few of them pointing forwards will significantly enhance your braking abilities. Just make sure to keep 'em toggled off when you don't need them, or they'll waste fuel and make docking much more entertaining.

[KBMODIGITY]

Just checked my module manager and I actually had 3 of them in my game data folder. The oldest one was actually 1.5.6. I deleted all those and downloaded the newest one. Thanks for the link. Gonna go give it a whirl now.

[KBMODIGITY]

Wow. The module manager was absolutely the cause. Everything is working fine now. Almost too fine. I think some of the aspects of FAR weren't fully implemented as it is like learning to fly all over again. I am using the same plane and before at max thrust I would get up to 400-500 m/s and it would disintegrate due to stress. Now with max thrust I cant get above 250 m/s at low altitude. I just hope this doesn't change how some of my rockets fly. Some, like my interplanetary engine assembly are HUGE and barely made it to orbit. I hope I don't have to redesign stuff like that.

Also, I made it to the island runway and "almost" landed. Bounced once and then came down too hard. This is because I need to get used to the aerodynamics again. Was a heck of an improvement from before.

I am wondering too now that if those old module managers were messing up some of my other mods I have tried in the past. I have always wanted to use the EVE mod but every time I have tried it crashed my game. Even went and built a high end comp to try to fix these issues but with no luck.

Anyways. Thanks everyone for all your help. I'm going to change this to answered.

[Alshain]

Wow. The module manager was absolutely the cause. Everything is working fine now. Almost too fine. I think some of the aspects of FAR weren't fully implemented as it is like learning to fly all over again. I am using the same plane and before at max thrust I would get up to 400-500 m/s and it would disintegrate due to stress. Now with max thrust I cant get above 250 m/s at low altitude. I just hope this doesn't change how some of my rockets fly. Some, like my interplanetary engine assembly are HUGE and barely made it to orbit. I hope I don't have to redesign stuff like that.

Also, I made it to the island runway and "almost" landed. Bounced once and then came down too hard. This is because I need to get used to the aerodynamics again. Was a heck of an improvement from before.

I am wondering too now that if those old module managers were messing up some of my other mods I have tried in the past. I have always wanted to use the EVE mod but every time I have tried it crashed my game. Even went and built a high end comp to try to fix these issues but with no luck.

Anyways. Thanks everyone for all your help. I'm going to change this to answered.

Sounds like FAR thrust patch didn't get applied correctly. It's only for the Jet engines. Glad you got it working.