The writing is a bit disjointed, because it's been edited and restructured a few times andI'm not a native english speaker. 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!). Pasted as rich text. The hoverjets are housed in the big wing-mounted pods. I've been playing around with aircraft over the past couple days, only to find that no matter how low I set the pitch authority, they tumble and crash at the slightest hold of the "S" key. i dont know what kind of range youre looking for but i would make a significantly smaller plane. A Screenshot of Kerbal Space Program. We look at the principles behind designing a basic jet. First, @TheEnvironmentalist There is one more method I'm sure would work in your case, although I didn't write about it because I think it's, Hahaha absolutely right, but distinctly less satisfying. The CoG shouldn't be TOO far in front of the CoL, though. With a decent lever arm to work with you can be both perfectly stable in level flight and very agile in pitch and yaw controls. You can pick the main cockpit and rotate the whole craft with it in SPH to see where your CoL will drift. I used the angle snapping feature (to the right of the symmetry selector in the bottom left hand corner of the screen in the space plane hangar view) to mount the steerable wheel perpendicular to the ground, and the two fixed wheels symmetrically such that zoomed in, the wheels themselves are perpendicular, though the fixed wheel part itself comes with something like a 45 degree angle between the wheel and the shaft that attaches it to the craft, so the shafts naturally sit at something like a 45 degree angle out to either side so the wheels can sit perpendicular. Intakes are your friend when you use liquid fuel. +1 for "If that all fails, you may try building your plane lighter and with mightier (or just more) engines, so it just doesn't have the time to start misbehaving on the runway before you bring it up in the air." Building planes is one of the more fun things to do in Kerbal Space Program, and also leads to more science on kerbin and eventually SSTO spaceplanes. Really nice overview and some incredible looking craft! 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. Can you check what happens if you increase the tail size to pull the center of drag back? You arent doing anything wrong. In addition to the tips others have suggested, try locking steering on all your wheels. Good, strong control authority - instead of reducing the pitch control authority, make the plane aerodynamically stable, so that even if you do flip it, it will right itself. 2023 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. You can either go with four "LY-O1 Fixed" or a tricycle of two LY-01 near the back and one "LY-05 Steerable" at the front; either is fine for now. Things that work at low altitude don't work so well up high and the plane ends up going up and down while slowly losing speed until it can't maintain altitude anymore. You should talk about the rocket engine's dV (approx., since not all users use Mechjeb or any other mod capable of showing dV for a given engine and tank). It can be as crazy or as normal as you want, just remember these basic tips, 1. You can post now and register later. You can "smooth" controls by toggling capslock on your keyboard, the control indicators in the bottom left will turn blue from orange and they are instance dependant (if you revert your flight you'll have to toggle capslock again). You want those tires facing straight to the ground! Now for wings, the "Wing Connector Type B" is the largest you have so far; connect a set of those where the centre of mass is. For what it's worth - watching 1.2 pre-release streams, the upcoming changes to SAS are profound. For more information, please see our @gocket the reason why your solution works is because you are counteracting the imbalance of friction in the wheels as they wobble. On the other hand, atmospheric craft are superb for exploring it for the very same reason you can scout for the perfect spot for your base, then land precisely there. And you would need to stay hours spectating the ship, because the game doesn't simulate atmospheric drag otherwise. Which was the first Sci-Fi story to predict obnoxious "robo calls"? Intriguingly, there is one thing I've found that does prevent the wobble from starting, and that is to use a single engine mounted directly on the back of the fuselage, which prevents using a tail and is ultimately a fairly significant restriction to build around. And start small. Any plane needs speed - so you need thrust (usually). The CoL should be in the center or just behind the CoM. Now right click each elevon and the tail fin and set what movement each controls; the ones on the large wings control roll only, the ones on the back wings control pitch only, and the tail fin controls yaw only. I have a simple Vtol SSTO that can take off with junos, hit LKO with rapiers, maybe with 100 m/s left on the rocket side, then return to spaceport and have sufficient liquid fuel for vertical landing. You can park a ship into an elliptical . The best answers are voted up and rise to the top, Not the answer you're looking for? I have made a couple VTOLs in the pastand had a lot of fun with both the engineering and flight challenges. About the landing gear, the best way to stop the weird self steering issue is to increase the spring and damper strength. Whether VTOL craft arepracticalor efficientcompared to other solutions is a different matter -- and to be perfectly honest, I'm inclined to think not really. This should reduce ground control authority and make oscillations less powerful. You need enough intakes to keep them fed. You would need to get down into the 37k-45k zone to aerobrake enough to come down in one orbit. The craft will lift off once generated lift + hoverjet thrust overcome its mass. Why did DOS-based Windows require HIMEM.SYS to boot? I've covered all my bases, as far as I can tell: It seems if I turn off SAS, I can prevent the oscillation from starting as it's initiated by some control input, whether from me or SAS, but then the plane veers off the runway until it hits something. KSP should be handing out engineering degrees :). 2023 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. Are there any canonical examples of the Prime Directive being broken that aren't shown on screen? Love it!! 3. principle. by fixing the suspension issues the need to sacrifice traction, and in turn, braking power, is not needed. This page was last edited on 17 December 2021, at 13:14. It is certainly possible to make VTOLs that can circumnavigate the planet. Clear editor. In principle it's simple just place your fuel symmetrically around the dry CoM, and centre your vertical thrust vector on it but how? You should have something called an "Elevon 1"; this will be the moving part for your wings. You may need to change control authority to a negative value if they bend "the wrong way". When braking most of the power should be on the rear, or you may see Kerbin up close. Remember the, fuel flows from the front in KSP, so you might want to start off with the CoM in front of the CoL. Hovering is expensive but you don't really need all that many seconds of hover either for take-off or for landing. Larger ones have additional wing-mounted pods. 2023 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. zombie2u, E.g. One of the most finicky problems with VTOL craft is managing centre of mass. (KSP 1.9.1) Subscribe - http://www.youtube.com/c/MikeAben?sub-confirmation=1 Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/MikeAbenPatreon supporters receive early, ad-free, access to videos, kOS and craft files, and more. Absolute Beginner's Playlist - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB3Ia8aQsDKgGHrNZnz2ca8NVuyj7eHXc Craft File - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cfFBMm4EBhDh8mQ2UuOn9f5DL6jBgM05/view?usp=drivesdk0:00 - Introduction1:42 - Planning our Science Collection3:36 - Starting our Build4:49 - Changing Symmetry Mode6:40 - Adding Fuel8:07 - Adding Jet Engines \u0026 Air Intakes9:10 - Adding Wings \u0026 Elevons10:55 - Adding a Tail12:03 - Understanding Center of Lift16:24 - Understanding Control Surfaces18:31 - Adding Landing Gear22:25 - Summary 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. Display as a link instead, LTTP but anyway: the question is, practical for what? If you're going for full VTOL you need to have a TWR > 1.0 at take-off weight; adding more vertical engines will make vertical landings easier and (if they're air-breathers) will make it possible to operate at higher elevations. Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. If you have a delta wing with a slight AoA and pitch-control elevons at the back, I also find it works well to rotate the elevons back to the pure horizontal. Your link has been automatically embedded. Set the thrust limiter on your main engines to zero. Note: This is ONLY to be used to report spam, advertising, and problematic (harassment, fighting, or rude) posts. Do you by chance know how much the thrust varies with these small velocity perturbations? Here's how you go about building a VTOL under these constraints. Any plane needs speed - so you need thrust (usually). Cookie Notice You know you don't have enough if you're getting engine flame-outs on take-off or, worse, landing. These should be in the bottom left next to the display of the cost of the aircraft. Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible. Part of the reason I like the standard canards so much, though, is because they're an all-moving surface, which means you get the maximum possible profile changes with your commands. All trademarks are property of their respective owners in the US and other countries. Drive gently off the runway and use the huge grassy field to take off, without care in the world about the plane veering to a side. The ones that are at an angle must be placed at that exact angle, you can't angle them to make them wider. The most helpful thing to do would probably be to make a craft and share it so things you're doing wrong can easily be pointed out for you to fix. All other versions are slower and lower and unstable in turns. https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?title=Tutorial:_Your_First_Plane&oldid=103052. Ok, the panther engine is still not good enough. The Center of Gravity is ALWAYS above Center of Lift. Some general pointers to make more stable aircraft, one is to set your COL just behind your COM, another is that your centre of drag should be as far back as possible - there's no way to visually show this as far as I know but a light but aerodynamically bulky rear to an aircraft generally makes it more stable. So if you're getting those flame-outs, add more intakes until you don't get them anymore. Powered by Invision Community. Sorry if this is just too basic, it is kind of for beginners, edit: [snipped the stupid thought] i need to stop trying to post when dead tired, I like rules of thumb like these All the info you need without getting bogged down with specifics, Just a quick FYI, you say that CoL is center of thrust and CoT is center of lift; these are the wrong way around. She has a horrible turn rate and oscillates a couple of thousand meters at cruise, but it's flyable. Control surfaces are your friend. Any insights? Just like with rockets, get some courageous Kerbal in the cockpit and let's get started! Now, imagine it forward, it will stall like a REAL plane and will go forward, Front is on the left, and back is on the right. as a rule of thumb they all lose thrust at higher altitudes and at high velocities. How to force Unity Editor/TestRunner to run at full speed when in background? Congratulations! 3. The BAK Zephyr, a rocket-powered VTOL craft designed for conducting science missions on Duna. Now I have a plane that will fly around the world at an altitude of the low-20s. ps. It's said that takeoffs are optional but landings are mandatory. There are a few missions for which a VTOL aircraft is ideal. There's no tutorial in KSP that explains plane design to you and this guide could have taken the lead on that. @gokcet @DANKTER I usually run my front wheel override friction on 0.3 when the front gear has steering disabled, it needs lower friction. These tend to handle best. the vertical stabilizer only handles yaw? Turns out it was wheel positioning! Because of that if you for example place control surfaces at the front you can make a plane that has CoL behind CoM (like in the picture) unstable because CoL will drift forward past CoM as AoA increases (contrary to your 4th point). The CoL should be behind the CoM on a horizontal angle, unless you're building a shuttle. You need about 150 m/s for the landing, less than that for take-off. You want to start by attaching a Mk 0 Liquid Fuel Tank under the wings, making sure you're mirrored so it goes under both wings. Ill link it if interested. Cookie Notice Arqade is a question and answer site for passionate videogamers on all platforms. To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. Also as others have pointed out, keeping the COM/COL/COT alignments proper is essential for aircraft. Otherwise tune the suspension to keep takeoff and landing stable. The Kerbal Space Program subreddit. Wheels need to be touching the ground exactly as they were intended to, you cannot angle them in any direction other then their intended direction when placing them. So thanks for the pointers - I'll take a look (and try to cure my prejudice re canards). Another possibility to add to the existing answers (it's a bit hard to diagnose without seeing the plane) is that your landing gear might be insufficient for your plane's mass. 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. The BAK Drakula. 5. We still don't know what his craft even looks like yet For all we know it could be a single SRB with canards at the front. Better still, three screenshots showing side, top, and rear views. You can post now and register later. This item will only be visible to you, admins, and anyone marked as a creator. Your very own tutorial.). No, the intakes don't have to be vertical. Finally, it is really difficult to land a HTOL atmospheric craft on Duna because of the thin air: you'll be going really fast and terrain is really bumpy, so there's a huge risk of ending up as a big ball of fire, whereas it's very hard to land a conventional rocket lander precisely,like when you're aiming for your surface base. Thrust is determined partly by velocity. What version is the Kerbal Space Program demo? Does the order of validations and MAC with clear text matter? Set up your control scheme: one action group for toggling the hover jets, another action group for toggling the main jets, plus yet another one to toggle the hover jet bays, if you're using them (as you should). A twin-pod design is similar to a twin-boom, except that it has a conventional tail extending from the fuselage. Of course the cargo capacity is less than with a HTOL since you're using some of it to haul those vertical thrusters. But it flies horribly, it's all over the place even with SAS on it doesn't fly even remotely stable. As with everything in KSP, experiment, experiment, experiment. Getting all of this into one craft is a pretty intricate business, however. For the vertical engines, do you also need to have some verticalintakes? The parts regarding landing gear placement is especially relevant in 1.1.x. 100% is fine for doing a pure Pilot Assisted flight but for keyboard piloting it's too much. But mostly, the answer is still "because they're fun and educational and you can.". What is Wario dropping at the end of Super Mario Land 2 and why? if that does not work, lower the spring strength until it works properly. They're obviously bigger and less efficient than conventional landers again because of the extra engines you're hauling; the advantage is being able to land them exactly where you want, while having the capability to explore the planet with atmospheric flight. We're also not discussing helicopters here, because stock kerbals have not invented the propeller, and stock propellers are a whole big topic of their own. That is really weird. From your description of your plane I would check the following: You seem to have done a lot of things right. But it should most definitely be in front of it, and preferably NEVER move behind it, even with empty fuel tanks. 2. Absolutely! Simply changing the intakes made it fly completely out of control and impossible to land. Similar to the fuel pump mods out there now. Body deformation can be caused by heavy parts, many parts connected together, or forces on the plane. I also had problems with a high altitude plane until I decided to follow the K.I.S.S. i recently used a single whiplash plane and was able to maintain a stable 21-22k meter altitude. Hit the launch button and watch your magnificent bird fly! jet engine efficiency in this game is based on built in thrust curves. This makes one engine generate more thrust than the other, exacerbating the turn. Rockets are much less efficient than air-breathers, so it needs to be much bigger than a Kerbin-bound craft performing the same mission! If you have a perturbation that gives your left engine a tiny bit more thrust, you will turn slightly right. "Type E" is the smallest you should have, and you want a set of those connected at the back of the fuselage. However, don't put any fuel tanks on it yet, and empty any fuel-containing parts that you are using. A basic tutorial on building a single prop plane. Valve Corporation. @italian man Great guide, and for people who would like to know the basics of plane building i will be pointing them here. Go ahead and make a new save file or use an old one, it doesn't matter! This guide also applies to STOL (Short Take-Off and Landing) aircraft which do their thing using downward-pointing jets or rockets, because they're pretty much the same thing. The cargo is near the centre of mass, but because it can shift, it's important to adjust the exact balance by tuning the power on the nose hoverjet At its core, a VTOL aircraft is a plain old aircraft, with downward-pointing jets that produce a TWR of > 1.0 with the vector centred on the craft's centre of mass, and some way of controlling its attitude when it is hovering, because control surfaces do nothing at an airspeed of zero. At low speeds, this difference can be significant. Kerbin has some biomes that are difficult to reach any other way. It uses six Mk 1 utility bay-mounted Junos for hovering. I was hoping that the new intakes would give it the added altitude. and our When off the ground at a sufficient altitude to clear obstacles, main jets ON, When at sufficient speed for aerodynamic flight, hoverjets OFF, pods CLOSED, gear UP. Wings on the front of the craft can cause pitching and rolling, causing you to hold W constantly. So yes, it most definitely is possible. You do need rather a lot of them. Also: high proportion of lifting surfaces to non-lifting surfaces. I might try to write a more advanced guide for spaceplane construction. Now I'll walk you through a basic aircraft; fancy stuff like science equipment can be added later. Pasted as rich text. Privacy Policy. This is always my strategy for building planes (although sometimes things go horribly wrong for a different reason.) By Making a fuselage. Control surfaces near center of mass sometimes get "confused" as to their role and do stupid things. The longest flight got them down to a little more than half full. The further along in plane-building experience and flying you go, the more designing them becomes more natural(and the more this guide becomes irrelevant :( ). Additionally if you have any off-center fuel tanks, double check the fuel is drawn from both at the same rate (same priority). It's unlikely you're doing this but just in case: while on the ground use only yaw controls to change direction, don't touch the roll controls. do you put them vertically or are they at an angle to the ground? You want an elevon on each set of wings. So you want to make a plane but all your contraptions explode on the runway, crash into the runway a few seconds after taking off, crash into the side of the runway, crash into the ocean after doing a tight turn or otherwise fail to do what you intended? 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). Here is your convenient solution to this problem! My first VTOL craft was the Bumblebee, and it's still one of my favourites! The gear of the craft can also easily be overlooked, but can make the difference between flying masterpiece and soon-to-be-scraps. You need to sign in or create an account to do that. May 19, 2013 in KSP1 Tutorials. a craft that's designed to fly aerodynamically, using lift produced by lifting surfaces. The main challenge for hover control is to keep the craft horizontal. I really hope that this will help you, if you would like more tutorials, click these links: Hello, today I will be showing you how to make an absolutely perfect space plane! Yes! They sometimes coincide with elevators. that being said, one thing I noticed is that you said the whiplash is for SSTOs, this isn't true, it's used for high speed atmospheric flight, it doesn't have a closed cycle mode, so it can't be used to complete an orbital trajectory. In this tutorial we cover the basics of building and flying a jet in Kerbal Space Program. Subscribe - http://www.youtube.com/c/MikeAben?sub-confirmation=. Please help, This is an okay guide but it does not go into the nuts and bolts of the deal.like what exactly do all of these wing parts do? When your airspeed is near zero and you're above your landing spot, reduce throttle until you start descending. I haven't encountered oscillations like that in an airplane but I have encountered them aplenty in case of lightweight probes that have too strong control authority - too good RCS or reaction wheels, so I suspect the source here is the same. Imagine that first plane but with the bubble cockpit and the old style round intakes. Flight records. air) that high up. I didn't try for 20000m as it probably wouldn't do well. CoL (Blue ball) position relative to CoM (Yellow ball) is very important. One point I would mention is that the more wing area you have relative to your control surfaces, the less angle of attack you can generate. Sometimes though, planes need to do more complex jobs, like flying farther or making it to space, so I am planning on adding another guide to explain how to make and what to consider in an SSTO spaceplane. In a twin-boom design, you have one hoverjet at the nose, and one in each of the booms. In other words, your fuel tanks need to be placed symmetrically around the centre of mass so it doesn't shift as the tanks dry, and you need to get your vertical thrust vector exactly aligned with said centre of mass. Have fun with your S/VTOL craft and don't forget there are more ways to do them as well, including helicopter-like things that don't fly aerodynamically at all. Remember the, fuel flows from the front in KSP, so you might want to start off with the CoM in front of the CoL. A V/STOL atmospheric craft built for Duna can drop you on any dime, anywhere on the surface. I haven't found a sure-fire solution to this, but I think I know what causes it. (The spacing of COM and COL in your second picture is about right.) Also: high proportion of lifting surfaces to non-lifting surfaces. SAS sees this and turns the other way, which just causes the same problem in the other direction. Kerbal Space Program, how do you disable autosave? Enable mirror symmetry to save yourself some alignment effort. what do you mean by "wheels are mounted with angle snapping"? I've found a few body plans to be especially amenable to conversion to VTOL. I've never found them to be practical (at least on Kerbin) for anything except short flights around the KSC and flying to the island runway and back. After the drag was sorted out, it wasn't very hard to create a dockable SSTO version. Aircraft are surprisingly difficult beasts to build and control, building a stable, flyable aircraft is surprising complicated, so this is the first of a num. Level:Intermediate/Advanced:You need to be able to slap together a plane that flies reasonably well before attempting a VTOL.Background reading:Start with the fantastic Basic Aircraft Design tutorial in this very forum.Craft used to illustrate this tutorial: VTOL stands for "Vertical Take-Off and Landing."
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