FAR & Spaceplanes... Or any planes...

[Yawdar]

Ill keep this short & sweet.

Ive recently installed many mods to enhance my aging KSP experience, these mods are, B9 Aerospace, FAR, Kerbal Engineer, Joint Reinforcement, and KW Rocketry.

These mods have made my space program extensively more fun, but, unfortunately, i cannot get any amount of grip on the Space-Planes when using Ferram. I've designed and designed and designed, this generally results in failure failure failure, NaN, And Kraken Explosions. Nevermind the Kraken and NaN issues, please for the love of science, just tell me some basics about making effective planes with FAR installed. I'm currently at the 500 research mark (IE one more teir till max.) And i cannot make an effective plane. HALP!

[KerBlam]

Keep CoM and CoL close together, and make sure CoT is directly in line with both, and be super gentle on your controls. Don't ever hold a key down... tappa tappa tappa.

[Hodo]

Most people have issues when transitioning from stock souposphere KSP to a bit more realistic aerodynamic atmosphere FAR. The key is setting up you CoL and your CoM. This would include your Dry CoM. For your DCoM I would suggest getting RCS build aide, it help a GREAT deal with spaceplanes and FAR.

Most of my spaceplanes, which is a GREAT many over the past 3 years, is to have my CoM just ahead of my CoL.

About like this... granted this one was a bit closer than I would like but it handles well at supersonic speeds.

This one isnt that bad.

The other thing is to try and avoid having a great deal of drag on the aircraft. The less cD the more range it will have, and the faster it can go, within limits of its engines.

The ideal SSTO setup is a SABRE or RAPIER engine, on a simple airframe for your first SSTO.

This is a very simple design it can achieve a low orbit when flown right and it is easy to fly.

Also you will want to set some control surfaces to act as spoilers or use the B9 airbrakes on the design to slow down. Because bringing in a slick SSTO with a low cD is going to be a pain to land at half the speed of sound because you cant get it slowed down.

Like this one, it has a bunch of airbrakes

[InterCity]

Well, I found out that FAR actually likes the CoL a bit further behind the CoM than stock sloppydynamics, but might just be my wing design fault.

Anyway, all you need is to keep your CoL behind CoM (About one meter) and some push to get it to spa(aa)ce

Also, http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/52080-Basic-Aircraft-Design-Explained-Simply-With-Pictures. They have all you need to know.

[WhiteKnuckle]

Check out Wanderfound's SSTO thread:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread

He's got designs you can download, and his thread is full of helpfull tips and tricks for getting things to fly the way they should.

[Hodo]

Well, I found out that FAR actually likes the CoL a bit further behind the CoM than stock sloppydynamics, but might just be my wing design fault.

Anyway, all you need is to keep your CoL behind CoM (About one meter) and some push to get it to spa(aa)ce

Also, http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/52080-Basic-Aircraft-Design-Explained-Simply-With-Pictures. They have all you need to know.

In normal atmospheric subsonic flight yeah you will want your CoL a bit further back from your CoM. But if the craft is going to be an SSTO and thus a hypersonic aircraft, you will want your CoL closer to your CoM, this is because FAR models the shift in the CoL on the wings as you go transonic. The CoL moves back on the wings as you hit supersonic speeds, moving your CoL back on the craft.

[Zuqq]

FAR definitely takes a bit of getting used to but once you do it is well worth it.

The main thing that helped me learn to play with FAR was the stability derivative page. I've spent hours and hours on a single plane moving things inch by inch to see how it effects the stability of the plane at all different speeds. (I go from mach .25 - 5, and altitude 0 - 20,000). Ill move or rotate something and recalculate the stability. See where it changed.

Eventuallly you'll get the hang of knowing when Zw (or any derivative) is red, what to do.

Here is Ferrams wiki explaining the derivatives.

And of course what others have said is good advice. RCS Build Aid is really helpful for DCoM. Always have CoL behind DCoM and CoM, etc

Edit: A quick tip that I just remembered that really helped me... When designing with FAR, a great place to start your design is something that at least looks like it could fly in real life.

Learning to read the graphs will help out as well. You can change the mach values to see if your plane stays stable at supersonic speeds (as well as your lift/drag and L/D ratio)

Edited February 1, 2015 by Zuqq

[Van Disaster]

Well, I found out that FAR actually likes the CoL a bit further behind the CoM than stock sloppydynamics, but might just be my wing design fault.

Anyway, all you need is to keep your CoL behind CoM (About one meter) and some push to get it to spa(aa)ce

I tend to put my CoL *on* CoM or even slightly ahead in the SPH - once you go supersonic it'll move back, and there's various tools to manage low speed instability if CoL has crept in front a bit. CoL a meter behind would end up with a nice sine wave altitude graph post supersonic... however CoL before CoM is a little advanced.

OP: this is an ultra basic spaceplane made with stock parts, try duplicating something like that first.

[Wanderfound]

Have a look at posts 2 & 3 in the Kerbodyne thread linked below. You may also get some use from the video tutorials at https://www.youtube.com/user/TheWanderfound/videos