elevon tweeks

[lukeoftheaura]

Is there a guide on what control (Pitch, roll, yaw) to do with what control flap? ie. wing flaps, tailplane flaps etc.

[RainDreamer]

Can you, like, elaborate more about what you are asking, since I seem to not understand this. If you are talking about what happen when you press WASD for controlling pitch/roll/yaw, the control is auto translated to reflect your control depending on where you put the control surface.

[The_Rocketeer]

WS = Pitch

controlled by horizontal surfaces near the front/rear or the plane (Front are called Canards, Rear are called Elevators)

QE = Roll

controlled by horizontal surfaces on the wings (called Ailerons. Sometimes also by Canards or combined with Elevators to become Elevons - dual purpose)

AD = Yaw

controlled by vertical surfaces, best mounted solo/in parallel pairs towards the rear of the plane for stability (called Rudders).

There's plenty of room for mixing and matching, although some combinations have undesired effects, e.g. rudders that steer with roll can cause you to nose down.

FWIW, flaps are a specific kind of surface used to increase lift and prevent stalls at very low speeds. A plane would normally only use flaps for taking off or landing, not to be confused with air brakes which are designed to maximise drag and are necessarily much stronger than flaps. Air brakes are used by carrier-based aircraft and dive bombers, amongst others, where sudden reductions in airspeed are necessary for certain manoeuvres.

Stock KSP doesn't have any parts that perform these functions, but mods are available that do.

Edited November 29, 2014 by The_Rocketeer

[MockKnizzle]

If you don't mess with the tweakables at all, a control surface will try to respond to all control inputs as best it can according to its location. Sometimes you can get away with this, but most often this results in undesired rolling and yawing. For better results, you can map specific control surfaces to specific inputs.

Think of control surfaces as the ends of levers attached to your craft's center of mass: the longer the lever is, the more torque your control surfaces can apply. Thus, for maximum control you want your surfaces as far from the CoM as possible.

For the pitch axis, set the horizontal surfaces near the front and back of the aircraft to "pitch". These surfaces are usually called elevators and canards.

For the yaw axis, set the vertical surfaces on the tailplane to "yaw" only. This is your rudder.

For the roll axis, set the horizontal surfaces that are farthest out on the wings to "roll" only. These are your ailerons.

Once you understand the basics, you can mix and match as needed. Maybe rolling is a little sluggish, so you can enable "roll" on your elevators to turn them into elevons. Or you have a V-tail, so you enable both pitch and yaw to turn your surfaces into ruddervators.

[Kryxal]

To see how well each surface will do at each job, turn on your CoM in the SPH.

Pitch is turning the plane on a side-to-side line through the CoM, thus the front or back placement. Note that if your CoM ends up well back on the plane, this might imply front-mounted canards will work better.

Yaw is turning the plane on a vertical line through the CoM. Front or back SEEMS to make sense, BUT front-mounted rudders can suffer from some problems, where rear-mounted tend to fly straighter.

Roll is turning the plane on a front-to-back line through the CoM, so as far out to the sides as is reasonable.

Also note that you generally want the control surfaces to be parallel to the corresponding axis they're working on, and shut off for any axes they won't work well with. You could probably manage otherwise, but this is starter stuff. Oh, and you said "elevon" ... you're using delta wings, I'm guessing? Be aware that you MAY (or may not) have less pitch authority that you'd like.

[Hodo]

Is there a guide on what control (Pitch, roll, yaw) to do with what control flap? ie. wing flaps, tailplane flaps etc.

Unless you are running FAR or NEAR, you won't be able to set the controls for roll, pitch, and yaw. let alone flaps. But as Rocketeer said QE-Roll WS-Pitch AD-Yaw.

But if you are messing with planes and are serrious about aircraft you will probably end up with FAR. In that case you will be able to right click on the control surface and set it to which action you need it to perform.

[Kryxal]

I don't have FAR or NEAR, and I remember seeing that functionality...

[MockKnizzle]

Hodo, you can set pitch-roll-yaw with the stock tweakables. Just right-click on the control surface.

[Hodo]

Hodo, you can set pitch-roll-yaw with the stock tweakables. Just right-click on the control surface.

I haven't had stock souposphere since the first hour of the game. I launched a rocket it went to space I achieved orbit first try, went to the mod forums and found FAR, and never looked back. And that was over a year ago.