Need help landing planes

[Musil]

So with .90 I decided to finally get serious with planes (the gizmos make it much easier to build one, and I am gonna want me some shuttles). For the first time, I made a jet that could take off reliably without having to cross my fingers... But still haven’t been able to land.

I am using FAR, btw.

I always seem to approach the ground way too fast. If I try to decelerate by pointing up, for example, I find myself stalling and crashing, but If I do nothing I swear Jeb closes his eyes in terror before the explotion.

Have been looking for tutorials, but it seems that everyone else finds it so easy that it’s not worth making a tutorial for it.

I would really appreciate it if someone gave me some advice on landing planes. Thanks, guys.

Edited December 22, 2014 by Musil

[Anquietas314]

It sounds like your plane needs more lift. You could also do a powered landing (come in with the engines on at a low thrust), and then use a larger part of the runway to stop - that would give you a gentler "glide" slope.

[zekes]

remember that real-life planes need power-on to land a lot of the time, so try making a high-nose apporach, using throttle to keep your drop speed in control.

Also, welcome!

[WanderingKid]

In general, I've found that if I'm approaching the ground too fast, I've dove to altitude too quickly. Landing is not a quick event, particularly for beginners.

You need to start WAY out. Like "Oooh, those are nice mountains for a picnic" way out. Then bring yourself around. You want to be cutting your engines while out over the grassland to your landing throttle. This throttle should be just enough to keep you on a glide path, but slowly losing altitude. You want to try to do your final adjustments to your landing path (other than very minor ones) before you hit the bright green.

Your speed when you hit the green area should be no higher than 150 m/s. If you can arrange it you want to be right around your takeoff speed. Once you're lined up (and don't be afraid to let some runway go by underneath you to make sure), cut the engines. You should only be a few meters above the runway and you'll drop down. This is when you do your wheel tilt controls. Then slam on the brakes.

I don't personally use FAR, but I can't see it being much different.

EDIT: Also, Pic or Craft file of your plane may help us see if there's any glaring issues.

[Duribun]

When it comes to landing a plane, if you're sticking with stock parts completely, don't be afraid to circle the runway until you drop enough speed and altitude to land. If you have B9 you can place air brakes on your plane, they will be under the control tab the first one unlocks under the "Flight Control" node of the default tech tree.

If I had to say one thing about a good altitude to be at, try and be around 1000m and around 150m/s by the time the ground goes from the grasslands green to the light green around KSC if you're approaching from the mountains, an just try and maintain a constant 10-15m/s decent to the runway, it's generally what I find easiest to do before I make my flare just as I'm about to land, also the ground around KSC is as flat as what it is at the poles, so you can just as easily land on the grass and taxi to KSC to get full recovery.

An there are tutorials on youtube for runway landings, Scott Manly has acouple on his channel, an once I get a better mic I plan to make afew tutorials for KSP myself.

[thereaverofdarkness]

You just want to control your plane's attitude (vee marker)--should have the nose pointed slightly above where you see your heading/prograde marker (yellow-green circle). If the prograde marker is too far below your attitude marker, then you're getting a high angle of attack and you need more wing surface area. If you are having difficulty pointing the nose up, you need more control surfaces (such as AV-R8 or Elevon).

Once you have a plane with enough wing surface and control surface, you can come in for an easy landing. Don't start too high, just get yourself under 1km from the ground on a somewhat steep trajectory, and pull up as you get close to the ground. The extra speed actually makes it easier to pull up. Now try to level out. Watch your prograde marker. You are level when your prograde marker sits on the horizon on the navball. To land, just nose down a bit and let the prograde marker dip a little under the horizon. You'll see your altitude begin to drop, and the ground begin to get closer.

If your plane is controllable enough, you can turn off your engines completely during landing. This is a good way to make the landing at as low velocity as possible. You want to land ideally under 100m/s and preferably as low as 50m/s if you can manage that. Turn off your engines and allow your plane to slow down, then verify that you can still bring your prograde marker significantly above the horizon if you wanted to. As you slow down, you lose control gradually. If you need to, turn on your engines a bit. Eventually, as the ground gets really close, you want to be hovering over it, very slowly losing altitude. You should see the shadow of the plane glide smoothly under you, and in a perfect landing the shadow will shimmy up and gently kiss the underside of your plane. Immediately throttle all the way down (if you haven't already) and start braking intermittently (hotkey: . Don't hold the brake down unless you are certain it won't cause your plane to spin out of control. Once you get under 40m/s you should be safe to hold the brake down, but watch your plane and you can judge that for yourself.

After reaching a complete stop, you can click the brake icon at the top of the screen HUD (the one that lights up when you press and make the brakes stay on, like an E-brake.

[Hodo]

So with .90 I decided to finally get serious with planes (the gizmos make it much easier to build one, and I am gonna want me some shuttles). For the first time, I made a jet that could take off reliably without having to cross my fingers... But still haven’t been able to land.

I am using FAR, btw.

I always seem to approach the ground way too fast. If I try to decelerate by pointing up, for example, I find myself stalling and crashing, but If I do nothing I swear Jeb closes his eyes in terror before the explotion.

Have been looking for tutorials, but it seems that everyone else finds it so easy that it’s not worth making a tutorial for it.

I would really appreciate it if someone gave me some advice on landing planes. Thanks, guys.

Do you have any pictures of the craft?

But without pictures it sounds like a lift issue. What speed does your craft take off at? How heavy is your craft, what is your wing calculated surface area?

Here is a picture of one of my craft landing, granted I use drogue chutes on landing to shorten the landing distance so ignore that.

Here is one of one of my other craft taking off, note its speed is about 95m/s at this point and this was taken a couple of seconds after it went wheels up.

The biggest thing is on landing you want a craft that has decent lift at low speeds. If you are using a delta wing design with your wings towards the back of the aircraft then you really don't want to use flaps as they will pitch your nose down on landing and wont provide a lot of additional lift while going slow. But if you are using a traditional wing design you should use flaps to provide the additional lift for landing.

Like this aircraft here, it has flaps for take off and landing. But they are pretty much near the CoM on the craft.

[Anquietas314]

Here is one of one of my other craft taking off, note its speed is about 95m/s at this point and this was taken a couple of seconds after it went wheels up.

http://i.imgur.com/XZOO4WR.jpg

Uh... the navball says 192m/s.... almost 100 m/s difference. I don't think your TWR accounts for that

EDIT: never mind, I'm stupid. (I wasn't aware FAR changed the units to knots)

[Empiro]

It takes a lot of practice to properly land. You'll want to save before your approach and keep practicing. I've found it useful to enable the FAR flight assists for level and yaw, and also to use trim settings for most of my pitch control Also, make sure to turn on Fine Control Mode using Caps Lock if you haven't already -- it makes the control bars turn blue in the lower left.

What is your glide slope like? Toward my final approach, I'm usually descending about 500-1000m per 10km at 100-150m/s (unpowered). If you're having trouble maintaining that sort of slope, then either your drag is too high, or you don't have enough wings. Flare up at the very last second to reduce your vertical velocity as you touch down. Coming in at a shallow angle means that you don't have to flare too much.

You might find it easier if you get B9 and use the air breaks in there. It give you a lot more leeway and control over your airspeed.

[Hodo]

Uh... the navball says 192m/s.... almost 100 m/s difference. I don't think your TWR accounts for that

EDIT: never mind, I'm stupid. (I wasn't aware FAR changed the units to knots)

If you look closely you will see my nav ball is set to knots not m/s. So that is 192kts. Which is 94m/s.

[Anquietas314]

If you look closely you will see my nav ball is set to knots not m/s. So that is 192kts. Which is 94m/s.

>_> did you not read the edit?

[Hodo]

>_> did you not read the edit?

Actually I didn't see it till after I posted lol.

[Anquietas314]

Actually I didn't see it till after I posted lol.

lol no problem

[Musil]

Thanks, guys, really good tips.

[Wanderfound]

So with .90 I decided to finally get serious with planes (the gizmos make it much easier to build one, and I am gonna want me some shuttles). For the first time, I made a jet that could take off reliably without having to cross my fingers... But still haven’t been able to land.

I am using FAR, btw.

I always seem to approach the ground way too fast. If I try to decelerate by pointing up, for example, I find myself stalling and crashing, but If I do nothing I swear Jeb closes his eyes in terror before the explotion.

Have been looking for tutorials, but it seems that everyone else finds it so easy that it’s not worth making a tutorial for it.

I would really appreciate it if someone gave me some advice on landing planes. Thanks, guys.

Have a look at post #2 in the Kerbodyne thread linked below, and/or have a listen to the landing tutorial I did for episode #27 of the Kerbal Podcast: http://kerbalpodcast.libsyn.com/webpage/2014/11/19

You can also see a landing demonstration (along with other things) in this illustrated tutorial: http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/craigmotbey/Kerbal/Tutorials/Hangar%20to%20Landing/story

The basic trick is to get low and slow as early as you can, and come in as shallow as possible.

[Srpadget]

Along with the earlier advice to:

1) start your landing run way the heck far west (over the mountains; totally serious),

and

2) do a quicksave there and practice, practice, practice,

I'd like to add: build an Instrument Landing System at KSC. (Okay, maybe not a full-fledged ILS...but it's the best one can do in stock.)

"Launch" a "plane" on the runway that consists of nothing but a Mk 1 pod. Send the kerbal occupant out on EVA, and have him trot west directly along the runway centerline. Keep going into the grass past the end of the runway, being careful to stay lined up with the center of the runway. Stop to take an EVA report every now and again, and if it says "Runway", keep going. Once the EVA report says "at KSC" rather than "on runway", stop and plant a flag. Name it "East End Runway". Recover the kerbal and the pod. (It's necessary to put the flag on "KSC" ground rather than "runway" ground because anything on the runway-proper will be deleted when you launch your next airplane...and you don't want to have to place a new flag at the beginning of every flight.)

You can now target that flag. The runway runs directly east-west, so your goal for a successful landing is to get the flag target marker, your direction marker, and your prograde marker ALL aligned directly on the 90 deg "East" line on your navball. The target marker will be lowest, the prograde velocity marker should be above it but below the horizon, and the nose of your plane will be higher than the velocity marker (it may be above or below the horizon, depending on your speed and the characteristics of your airplane).

I use the stock soupmosphere, not FAR, so everything from here on out should be taken with a large grain of salt, but I have found success with a glide slope of 10-to-1. Which means 1 meter drop for every 10 meters forward--which you can arrange by trying to keep your altitude at 1/10 the distance to the flag marker. So when the flag is 25km away, you should be at 2500m altitude. Those numbers may have to change with FAR (and again, depending on the characteristics of your plane), but the basic technique stays the same: come in on a set glide slope from way the heck out at the mountains (if you aren't dodging the Matterhorn while lining up, you aren't far enough out for a good practice run!), and keep that glide slope by targeting altitude to equal some set fraction of the range (I like 10-to-1 because it works for me, and because there's no math involved: if the range reads 16.7, I want to be around altitude 167(something), and so forth.

Make course corrections often, early, and TINY. Make your corrections on the basis of "the 90-degree line intersects the dot in the middle of the target marker slightly to the left of center", not "the 90 degree line is off to the left of the dot". Last-minute adjustments to heading, especially, are a Bad Idea.

If you do all this right, you'll need to nose up *a little bit* just before reaching the flag, and you should overshoot the flag (especially important in the Level 3 fully-improved runway, which is elevated above the surrounding terrain) and settle down onto the runway with nose slightly up so the main gear touches down first.

As already stated, the ground in front of or on either side of the runway is just as flat as the runway itself--and because it's so expansive, it's actually easier to land on. There's no shame in that. (Several folks in other threads have noted that the grassy grounds of KSC are actually FLATTER than the crappy rutted-and-potholed starter runway in the beginning of 0.90 Career; I'll note that if you have a fully-improved Level 3 runway, landing on the SLOPE at the runway edge is doable but hazardous, and it can be tricky climbing up onto it for recovery on the runway after landing in the grass.)

But mostly, it's all about the practice. Keep at it, and before you know it you'll be landing in box canyons in the mountains to do ground survey contracts!

[Anquietas314]

"Launch" a "plane" on the runway that consists of nothing but a Mk 1 pod. Send the kerbal occupant out on EVA, and have him trot west directly along the runway centerline.

It would be considerably faster to actually use a plane facing west and use a low throttle to drive around Crew reports can be used to tell you when you're in the right place.

[Srpadget]

Well, yes, that'd work too. :-) Historically, I've planted that flag on my first "mission" in every new save, before unlocking ANY tech, so planes haven't really been an option. (With 0.90 obviously it had to wait some, but force of habit took over and I just hiked. It's not all that long with physics warp, and a Kerbal running at 4x speed is quite entertaining!)

[bandi94]

remember that real-life planes need power-on to land a lot of the time, so try making a high-nose apporach, using throttle to keep your drop speed in control.

Also, welcome!

Real-life planes , use the power for something else and not for landing itself. They use the power in case that something gone wrong and they can't land then they have enough power to pull up and circle back. If you check especially how a fighter jet lands on a carrier : 50% throttle while landing , when the pilot feels that he touched the ship they throttle up to 100% in case they missed the cables they can pull-up without any problem. Also real plane engines have a function called " thrust reverse" basically the engine exhaust is reversed to the front so the engine will push the plane backwards helping to break down and take the huge amount of breaking stress away from the gears. This maneuver also request that the engines to be throttled up.

In KSP most possible the wings are too small to generate enough lift , or the center of lift is not centered to the mass. I put every time the center of lift "inside" the center of the mass and i had no problem with landings.

Edited December 25, 2014 by bandi94