Either put more engines or reduce the amount of rocket fuel. - KSP - YouTube 0:00 / 31:25 Flying a Space Station through a GAS GIANT! As the title says, my plane dips and turns to the side, clips its wing on the runway and loses it, does the same on the other side, then crashes and explodes, without even getting airborne. Depending on which surface you place them on, they might not be parallel to the axis in which case. And at the extreme, producing down force, which I'm sure would cause more gear issues. So the answer is: in the SPH, click on your front gear, set the spring to .5 and set the damper to .5 -- then save it and give it another shot at launching. They could go up to 120 m/s on the runway and still not lift up. My plane tends to wobble on the runway with the stock game so i decided to download FAR, but the problem still persists. It is also said that a good landing is one you can walk away from. Your previous content has been restored. FAR says it would take an Angle of Attack of 24.3 degrees at 119 m/s to generate enough lift to get it to take off. It's said that takeoffs are optional but landings are mandatory. 2022 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/99660-0-25-Adjustable-Landing-Gear-v1-0-4%28doors-fixed%29-Nov-14. An altitude set to 18,000 meters tops off at 19,000 meters and drops to 15,700 meters . Basic structure Firstly you're going to want to make a short fuselage. But be careful and don't crash it! Aircraft in this game is almost unfeasible, especially in career mode, you will lose all your money before you finally design an aircraft that can even takeoff. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. I am accelerating it to over 200m/s on the runway just to test the stability of those wheels since the faster you go, the more likely the plane will wobble and flip on the runway. Increasing the number of intakes will not allow you to continue using your jet engines at higher altitudes. Ailerons to roll your aircraft should be placed as far off to the edges of your wings as possible. If you're tired of big rockets that use tons of fuel and disintegrate in the atmosphere when coming back to Kerbin, this tutorial is perfect for you! Geometric shape of the body you attach the landing gear to. Bit late i know, but i had the same problem. Maybe ;making the tailwheel less stiff would help, too. Now for the engines. All rights reserved. Angled landing gear create rotational force for whatever reason. 1. make sure your main gear is not wobbling (ie. I have done everything imaginable to try to remedy this problem. Not sure why you would want that stability for speeds in excess of 200 m/s though, as most planes will take off and land at far slower speeds. Spaceplanes generally ascend best on a 10-30 degree incline, often leveling out towards higher altitudes to pick up the maximum horizontal velocity before switching to rocket motors. For this to happen, I'm assuming you're using rocket fuel tanks. Do agree that the rear wheels either need to be brought closer or or the Nenter of mass needs to be move closer to the rear wheels. An active front brake can cause your aircraft to rapidly and uncontrollably pivot left or right during landing, and high friction from the front wheel can potentially cause your plane to swerve violently both in landing and takeoff. You can deploy your chutes just prior to touchdown for rapid deceleration. Even if you can takeoff, landing will usually destroy tat aircraft so survival rate on an aircraft for a typical kerbal is nearly zero. 2022 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/13851-The-woes-of-building-a-space-plane?highlight=woes+spaceplane. First thing you're going to want to do in the SPH is turn on your centre of mass indicator (this is the point that the plane will rotate around when rolling, pitching, or yawing) and your centre of lift indicator (the Aerodynamic Overlay). That, combined with a Unity joint bug, makes your plane bounce. I have built lots of spaceplanes. Close to empty tanks will allow you to fly slower, decelerate faster, and reduce touchdown strain. LV-N exceeds 75% of its full power at just 7700m altitude on Kerbin. This can easily cause you to crash on landing. Let it get good and clear of the ground before applying any control to it. I dont really need 200m/s for take off. To maximize lift, your aircraft should rest on the ground with the fuselage tilted upward at anywhere up to a 25-27 angle so that the wings will end up tilted back at up to 30. The FedEx plane pulled back up in time to avoid a collision. This page was last edited on 17 December 2021, at 13:14. Thanks for the help guys. Note: This is ONLY to be used to report spam, advertising, and problematic (harassment, fighting, or rude) posts. Privacy Policy. A Mk1 Cockpit, two Mk 1 Liquid Fuel Tanks, and then cap the back with a round nose cone (use the A/D keys to rotate it as necessary). Tips aplenty in this thread: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/13851-The-woes-of-building-a-space-plane?highlight=woes+spaceplane It taught me everything I know, except for the stuff I learned elsewhere. Even with a stable landing, you may find that you don't have enough room on your desired landing area to come to a stop before you reach the end. Center of Mass and Center of Lift are the usual causes of instability. This makes design easier, eliminating all concern for balancing jet fuel against rocket fuel. Try getting the wings to deflect the air down, either by lifting the front end up using canards or by mounting them at an angle using shift + wasdqe. To minimize drag, vertical tail fins can be kept minimal, since aircraft can be maneuvered adequately by roll and pitch alone. Thank you and happy landings. You need to make sure that the Orange axis on the rotate sphere is parallel to your, nose-tail axis. Also, try this mod: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/99660-0-25-Adjustable-Landing-Gear-v1-0-4%28doors-fixed%29-Nov-14 (still works in 0.90 if you get updated firespitter.dll). This allows you to avoid the extra weight and mass of additional fuselage parts, so you only have to deal with the extra weight of the fuel itself. Do you have new pics after you moved the rear wheels forward? Alternatively, you can try landing at higher speeds with your nose pointed further down, but this increases challenges with stability and deceleration while on the runway. Install S5 moon rocket By lightbreaker_64. Powered by Invision Community. I was wrong. If the front landing gear touches down first and has its brakes on, it's going to make the rest of your aircraft pivot around it as it's pressed into the ground. I have built lots of spaceplanes. I dunno why but this picture makes the one side look like it is tipped in but I know they are straight, I believe it just the angle that the picture was taken that is causing it to look like this. Be warned that if you do not provide sufficient air intakes for the engines you've placed, you may find that some of your engines shut down before others. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account. I don't have any mods but sometimes a problem may be a simple bug. Note: The large delta wing will ensure you won't backflip. Having said all that, these are the issues you must contend with. You cannot paste images directly. Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible. And above all: have fun! If your rear wheels are too far back the aircraft will not be able to pivot on the wheels and lift its nose up. I just built a plane but when i launch it just slides and spins slowly to the right, any ideas on why this is happening? if its too far behind plane cannot lift. My first test of the plane parts in KSP2.Like and Subscribe for more Kerbal stuffs!#kerbalspaceprogram #ksp2 #kerbalspaceprogram2 #shorts #spaceplane #nasa Why is it doing this? This thread is archived . Heavy transport seaplane inspired to the Soviet Beriev A-40 Albatros which also appears in Evangelion 2.0! Everything looks perfectly symmetrical as far as I can tell. 5.whether the body you anchor the landing gears to are firm. For more information, please see our Landing speed (minimum speed for level flight) can be reduced by adding components to increase maneuverability, by using larger wings, by increasing wing angle of attack on the fuselage (3-5 degrees is the recommended range for a spaceplane to achieve the best lift-to-drag ratio [source]), and by decreasing the weight of the aircraft. I have created a score of other aircrafts with different designs but deleted them because they didnt work even on the runway. I checked my planes and I found the problem. To survive re-entry, it's recommended to start your approach back into the atmosphere at a shallow angle, ideally with a periapsis of around 30-35 km. My plane usually take off at a little over 120m/s. Second try, speed over land reached over 210 m/s and it didn't flip. Pasted as rich text. It is due to the spinning up of the engines. 200 m/s runway stability just doesn't seem to have a worthwhile purpose to me, and is inducing counter productive engineering challenges. If you can't slow down in time, you can simply flick your engines back on to take off and turn around for another try as you pass over the coast. . By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. Or maybe launching it in a vertical, Space Shuttle-style config. wings, unless they're very well braced). Real planes do this as well. This can turn into a fatal scenario if the center of mass gets behind the center of lift and you enter a flat spin. KSP v.22 Takeoff Troubleshooting Guide/Tutorial Lots of info to help get your plane off the runway! A control surface with 100% control surface portion will weigh twice as much as a wing with the same lift would weigh. You're going to have a bad time. This tutorial was created primarily based on a Reddit post by the incredibly helpful u/AnArgonianSpellsword. Next you need landing gear. Plane wobble during takeoff - KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials - Kerbal Space Program Forums Is there a way to place landing gear so that i can guarantee my plane can remain stable on the runway even at high speed in excess of 200m/s? Your link has been automatically embedded. This aircraft handles smoothly, no matter how you turn, roll and flip this aircraft, it will never lose control. Note that dropping off cargo from the back with a Mk3 Cargo Ramp is bad for more than one reason. Plane spins/lurches to the side during takeoff? The SSTO I took to Laythe recently has only one minor flaw using this design, I have to raise the landing gear and pull back slightly to take off. Your wings provide the lift, and they cant provide lift if your wheels are too far back because then your base is to stable and the craft wont pivot upwards. You can post now and register later. Note that when your jet engines shut down simultaneously while climbing in otherwise normal flight, it is generally due to a lack of pressure from the altitude you're flying at. . Those and the fixed main gear are NOTORIOUSLY bouncy. Obviously jet engines are air-breathing, so you need to include air intakes in your spaceplane. if mounted on not struted part) 2. put your main gear slightly behind center of mass. here are some images and a gif. Try not to place your gears to wings, especially wingtips - if they wobble even slightly, your plane lose the balance. They are able to operate at higher altitudes and can even continue operating in a vacuum by switching to a rocket mode. If the problem has to do with lift then travelling very slowly, possibly even slower than that, should counteract the effects of lift and you won't drift nearly as much. Now I'll walk you through a basic aircraft; fancy stuff like science equipment can be added later. That said, parachutes are an exceedingly effective means of reducing your stopping distance. With initial passes, you start off with a periapsis at 50-60 km and gradually lower your apoapsis until you're in an almost circularized low orbit and then transition to your usual re-entry approach. I see absolutely no need to be traveling that fast down the runway. Ideally, the wings should be tilted upward at an angle about 3-5 from the fuselage for optimal lift-to-drag ratio.[1]. The reverse also happens. 3. angle of the wheels. This page was last edited on 14 April 2021, at 01:04. This is good for spaceplanes operating in low-oxygen atmospheres where jet engines can't be used. As such, you will need various control surfaces. Hit the launch button and watch your magnificent bird fly! If you can maintain level flight at about 30-40 m/s, you should be able to perform an ocean landing if needed. Your plane is almost finished. The design I used is similar to what I normally used for planes but I had to swap out parts and make it smaller to compensate for Career mode changes. The Kerbal Space Program subreddit. You may also want to deploy your landing gears to increase your drag, as well as airbrakes if you have them. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. Also note that for maximum efficiency, you should make sure that your horizontal control surfaces are rotated to exactly the same pitch that you've rotated your wings. If rear landing gear are strutted together, or braced to a center point, they are less likely to torque in different directions. After externsive testing and bloodpressure rise, results: it doesnt matter where you place the wheels, as long as they are not angled on the X (nose-tail) axis. In an aircraft with two or more engines, this can potentially cause you to enter a flat spin which can be unrecoverable if your center of mass is behind your center of lift. Sometimes taking things off and re-attaching them does it, or you may have to go so far as to scrap the design and rebuild. Even a small deviation can cause serious instability, making your aircraft bounce and jolt left and right even during takeoff. Suggest a Correction Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. Otherwise, you can either shift your wings till it's right (though this may crowd them near the back), or you can very slightly rotate the big wings so they're slightly higher near the front of the plane. Firstly, inadequate air intakes for the number and type of engines you're using (causing some engines to shut down before others). One FL-T100 tank can't power any rocket into space, yet a Shock Cone Intake, a Mk1 Inline Cockpit, a half-filled FL-T100 and a J-X4 "Whiplash" Turbo Ramjet Engine aimed in the general direction of "up" will let you laugh your way past the 70km mark at nearly 1200m/s. In contrast, if you attempt a landing at the KSC runway on a 270 degree bearing, you run the risk of colliding with the upward slope shortly beyond the runway if you can't slow down initially and then can't speed up fast enough. my center of lift is always slightly infront of my mass. If your aircraft is burning up during this stage, you may need larger wings to slow you down faster, radiator panels to carry away the heat more effectively, parts with a higher temperature tolerance (like the Mk2 liquid fuel fuselage instead of the Mk1 liquid fuel fuselage), or parts to increase your maneuverability, like RCS thrusters, reaction wheels, or canards and elevons. Ideally, you ought to test landing the spaceplane with full fuel tanks and with nearly empty fuel tanks prior to taking your spaceplane to orbit. Here is your convenient solution to this problem! To survive re-entry, it's recommended to start your approach back into the atmosphere at a shallow angle, ideally with a periapsis of around 30-35 km. When flying straight the plane is pretty stable but pitching up causes a sharp roll and I cant figure out why. #2 DaSkippa Mar 14, 2014 @ 2:56am as Shkeec said check gear check gear check gear. Note: This tutorial was last updated for version 1.7.2. But I am still not sure if there are more reasons or perhaps it is just a physics bug which I am wasting my time on. Plane bouncing on takeoff - Gameplay Questions and Tutorials - Kerbal Space Program Forums Hello, I am having a small problem with a plane I have built. It is advised to place your control surfaces as far from your center of mass as possible. Before you can make a successful plane, you must understand what makes a plane go in places other than the ground - the wings. They all had to use the runway drop to take off. Alright, it's late where I live so I'm gonna hit the hay and come back to it tommorrow, I read on the guide someone sent me and I think it is taht it doesn't have any way of pointing the up, so I'll tinker with some of the wings and see what I can do. . If you have trouble pitching up enough to land at a reasonable speed, you can increase your maneuverability by toggling your flaps, canards and ailerons to greater than 100% control authority. Now put on center of mass and center of lift view, and move the delta wings until the center of lift is slightly behind of the center of mass - not in front, otherwise your aircraft will be able to easily flip out of control. To minimize the risk of such a situation, try to land on a large patch of flat open ground approaching a downhill slope. As long as you're in space, your spaceplane won't differ from any spacecraft: you will probably want to add batteries and generators to prevent the command pod from running out of power. So if I start encountering wobble it's time to pull back on the stick and get in the air. You want to get up to get the gear tucked away and reduce drag. A relatively low-drag alternative is to use an inverted cargo bay and some hydraulic cylinders with structural panels as a cargo elevator. If you keep all of the fuel in the front, you may find that your center of mass drifts backwards as your fuel drains. Keep in mind that as your altitude increases, your control surfaces and winglets will become increasingly ineffective and will no longer work at all once you leave the atmosphere, so you may need to add alternative control systems like reaction wheels or RCS thrusters. Place your rear wheels/gear in front of the flaps on your wings. (Idea is moot, if you haven't unlocked them yet.) Brakes in the back keep you stable. Unstable Aircraft: "FAR Firehound" (Stock). Just after having taken off, the plane will immediately start rolling to the right, and completely uncontrollably. DO NOT ANGLE THEM! Or adding a RATO boosters. Here, the. I also used Intake build aid to balance the intakes. If you pull up and cause the tailwheel etiher to hit the ground if it was already up or push it into the ground if it was still in contact, you will create bounciness. Safety note: Disable the brakes on the front landing gear. - KSP Matt Lowne 527K subscribers 1.3M views 2 years ago I've wanted. I just thought my planes were too heavy or not enough control surfaces. I scoured the entire web for a solution, but found no working solution or at least dont work every time. Keep at around 15 degrees to allow the plane to accelerate past 1000m/s. For myself, it always was the position of landing gear in terms of pitch. That's over 2x the normal recommended max. I just thought my planes were too heavy or not enough control surfaces. KSC's runway is slightly north of Kerbin's equator and perfectly flat. The rudder is mostly used when landing and when attempting to line up a shot (in a fighter plane). LV-N has less than 25% of its full power at Kerbin sea level. Doesnt make sense so just do this: Nope that didn't solve anything, even when the plane is past the runway and gliding on the little bit of space before the ocean it will slowly lower to the ocean, what am I doing wrong? You can even try refueling it before recovering your spaceplane further increasing your recovering value. While I am not a great plane builder there is a part in the structural (I think it is a pylon?) Some testing is usually required with new designs to determine the best ascent profile. Be aware that while this angle will provide the lowest possible landing speed for your spaceplane, it will create problems if your center of gravity is too far ahead of your rear landing gears (causing a high-speed nose collision on touchdown) or if your rear landing gears are too far ahead of your engines, causing them to strike the runway first. This is for the same reason that you keep your fuel balanced. This makes them a very effective choice for SSTOs since they do a good job of getting maximum velocity out of air-breathing mode, and then allow you to use oxidizer without needing the added weight and drag of a separate rocket engine. All of these problems can be exacerbated or reduced by adjusting the amount of fuel in your tanks during landing. However it's huge size can make it tricky to take off from the runway without destroying the engine. For heavy rockets, it might be required to use structure to space the gears away from the body to allow more pitch. I believe the issue is there is not enough control surfaces to offset this issue, but it comes up very easy so it is not a very big deal. All rights reserved. Besides the good advice others have given, I would also be very careful with that little tailwheel. However, it's not a matter of "atmosphere or not", just a matter of air pressure which decreases rapidly with altitude. There are multiple ways to place them: Ailerons control the roll of the aircraft, and are (almost) always placed on the wings, as far out as possible and as centered (compared to the center of mass) as could be. To avoid wobble, wheels need to be absolutely vertical, and they shouldn't be attached to something that is likely to flex as speed builds up, as this could also affect the vertical alignment. These occur at their worst when your center of gravity is far ahead of your rear landing gears and you have a heavy plane at high speeds and a high angle of attack on landing, resulting in your front landing gear rapidly striking the runway after your rear landing gears touchdown. The Whiplash's ridiculous fuel efficiency allows a spaceplane to climb high into the atmosphere and gain a lot of speed while barely using any fuel at all. All trademarks are property of their respective owners in the US and other countries. To avoid swerving on takeoff and landing, it is strongly recommended to turn off or reduce the strength of the front brake on your aircraft, as well as to reduce the friction control. (For test purposes, all aircraft are not pitched up and SAS is turned off. Hot ground causes air to rise, cooling as it moves away from the heat, which leads to increased density and a resulting fall back down. Flying a Space Station through a GAS GIANT! Your aircraft might just be too heavy - there might not be enough wing lift for it to take off the ground. The problem could be about the angle of wheels, though there could be more problems with the COM and wheels placement. It helps to have a center of gravity which is close to your engines so that the landing gears can be close to both. This is starting to get really frustrating. T-1 "Dart" engines are unique amongst conventionally-fuelled rocket engines: They have close to the highest efficiency in both vacuum and low atmosphere. https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?title=Tutorial:_Basic_Plane_Design&oldid=97453, In the front of the plane - In this position, the control surfaces are also known as , In the back of the plane, on the tail - The most usual position; usually, close to the rudder. Note: Some high-efficiency rocket engines lose most of their power and efficiency in low atmosphere. The centre of mass was between the 2 landing gears. 1. tilt of the plane. An alternative is making sure you have complete control of the craft. This plane will be able to take off, travel somewhere, perform a crew report, and then land. Cure: Draw a mental axis from the nose to the tail of the plane and use the rotate tool (summetry on), on one of the wheels. In vanilla KSP, wings have a predefined lift factor. I've had stability issues in planes where I'd have proper gear setup, balanced weight and lift. All trademarks are property of their respective owners in the US and other countries. While having the same stock parts as in the VAB, spaceplane design is obviously quite different from pure rocket design. It provides a wider, more stable wheel base while keeping the wheels straight up and down (no camber). You should have something called an "Elevon 1"; this will be the moving part for your wings. LV-N "Nerv" nuclear thermal rockets are commonly used on SSTOs for the rocket stage if Rapiers are not used. I made this aircraft based on real life commercial jet design. If you've been able to successfully re-enter on previous low orbit test runs, you should be able to use this method to achieve similar rates of success once you've slowed down sufficiently. So I have played the game for 200 hours and I love it. Hopefully this gets you your first aircraft that can take off and land, which is the biggest hurdle to being able to make KSP aircraft. (Source). I started investigating why this was happening. symmetry building makes them face slightly towards (or away from) each other, with wobbly results. So I started a new career file after not really playing for a long time and I'm now at the point where I just dropped 45 Science to unlocked Aviation to get some of the plane parts that I need. For some reason, when the plane is trying to take off and pulling up, the plane begins to bounce on it's front wheels (the back wheel kicks up), whichhinders the plane taking off. 67K subscribers in the KerbalAcademy community. To slow down faster, you can increase the braking strength of your rear wheels. Need to move them up. LV-N engines also have the advantage of using the same liquid for propellant that jet engines use for fuel. Note that no wings will tolerate more than 2400K, so the difference in temperature tolerance between Mk2 and Mk3 fuselages isn't terribly significant. Such flight involves lift-induced drag, but reduces the total thrust required to traverse a distance at a given speed. everytime i make a powered plane, it always flips over and points backwards after i take off. An aircraft without control surfaces is like a rocket without RCS or reaction wheels - it will hardly turn and will be equally hard to control (perhaps even impossible!). They all had to use the runway drop to take off. Your previous content has been restored. Also pay attention to your fuel balance, especially if you're using several tanks placed in parallel to each other. And also place them further apart. All lift-rating means is that the wing section will resist motion perpendicular to its plane. Display as a link instead, As you reach 100m/s, hold S to pull the stick back, and you should be in the air! Be aware that landing on water is an option if your spaceplane can fly level at less than ~40-50 m/s. Kerbal Space Program 2's simulation is a lot more in-depth than its predecessor, where it was feasible for any wannabe Goddard to punch through the atmosphere with overwhelming thrust.