Thrust is determined partly by velocity. It flames out at 25,000. You might still be able to turn very quickly, but if you don't have enough wing you won't drag your velocity vector with you, which means you force your wings into a stall and bleed energy in a hurry (and can also lose control, depending). It may be too far forward, especially if the tail is too small relative to the plane's wings. If it is, you'll never get the nose off the runway. Pasted as rich text. 2023 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. If the CoM is in the back, then it will ALWAYS not be able to get out of a stall, flatspin all the time, and will be an all around horrible plane. Espaol - Latinoamrica (Spanish - Latin America). Privacy Policy. Nah, the stabilizer will do it. More air is better. 100% is fine for doing a pure Pilot Assisted flight but for keyboard piloting it's too much. 2023 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. I've spent the past three hours committing a genocide of historical proportions against my Kerbals, and it's making me quite sad. What are the arguments for/against anonymous authorship of the Gospels. 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. I was hoping that the new intakes would give it the added altitude. 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. Could a subterranean river or aquifer generate enough continuous momentum to power a waterwheel for the purpose of producing electricity? One challenge I've run into for myself with more elegant VTOL SSTOs is low-speed-hover controllability; beyond using brute-force RCS or SAS. And one other, more remote possibility to check: Where is your plane's center of drag? Build yourself a plane. Rockets are much less efficient than air-breathers, so it needs to be much bigger than a Kerbin-bound craft performing the same mission! They sometimes coincide with elevators. one last thing to verify: look from the side, observe where your center of mass is, then how the control surfaces are located relative to it and if the way they react to your controls makes sense (just try to pull up, down, or roll, on the runway without even starting the engine or disengaging brakes and watch which way the control surfaces move). You need about 150 m/s for the landing, less than that for take-off. 4. Congratulations! Regular HTOL aircraft can afford to be a bit sloppy with this because aerodynamic forces will effectively obliterate moderate shifts in CoM -- if your plane gets a bit more tail-happy as the tanks drain it's no problem, as long as your CoM stays ahead of your CoL. Mostly anyway. Their hoverjets just have a TWR of less than 1.0. Powered by Invision Community. Now, get a pair of winglets, and place them at the front of the plane to get that approximate spacing of COM . 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. if you are making a plane that's going to be pulling stunts or making extreme maneuvers, a stabilizer is pretty important. 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). All three wheels (one steerable in front, two fixed in back) are mounted with angle snapping, symmetrically, Wheels are mounted to the fuselage, rather than to the wings (which flex under load), Center of lift is behind center of mass, and slightly raised, Rear wheels are in front of tail, but not enough to make tail strikes easy. Clear editor. Yes! What i do when i build a plane (except the tings others allready mentioned) is playing a lot with the Fuel sliders on fuel tanks in SPH and then moving the tanks and adding removing "balance mass" to the plane untill the COM doesnt move at all relatively to COL, no matter how much fuel i have with tanks. To do this, take a few barrels of your jet fuel, stick them on the back of your aircraft. When braking most of the power should be on the rear, or you may see Kerbin up close. Flying planes will be much simpler, with much reduced cross-control issues. Also: high proportion of lifting surfaces to non-lifting surfaces. Can I use the spell Immovable Object to create a castle which floats above the clouds? 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 :( ). Then you want to put something called a "Small Circular Intake" on the front of the tank, and a "J-20 Juno" engine on the back of the tank. So yes, it most definitely is possible. You may be correct and that 3 engine plane is a lemon. (KSP 1.9.1) Subscribe - http://www.youtube.com/c/MikeAben?sub-confirmation=1 Patreon - https://. I actually like canard layouts, but I'm going to endorse this post because it's a simple, easy way to do it. what do you mean by "wheels are mounted with angle snapping"? - SF. Your previous content has been restored. This makes one engine generate more thrust than the other, exacerbating the turn. You know you don't have enough if you're getting engine flame-outs on take-off or, worse, landing. They sometimes coincide with ailerons on some, more space-economical, aircraft. There are lots of ways to make this work, but here are some designs I've used successfully: For rocket-powered hover, use Spark,Aerospike, or Vector (if you really need a lotof hover power). +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." At this point you'll probably need to go back to the plane design you started with, because air intakes are dry mass and will shift the CoM as you add them. Hi @Brikoleur, nice work! Can't remember where I saw/read about it - Scott Manley maybe? instead i atach the fuel tanks as radial fuel tanks, or underwing droptanks, so i can slide them on the hull. You too!Like - Subscribe - Check out my other tutorials. Also, lift is usually placed in the middle-to-back of the wing, depending on the shape. 2023 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. In fact, nothing will happen at all, and that's probably bad, so put an air intake on your plane anyway. NEVER go forwards, causing the aircraft to crash itself. For more information, please see our Your previous content has been restored. The CoM (Center of Mass) is a yellow ball on your spacecraft when you enable it in the SPH. 2. and i usually find having my dampening a little lower then the spring strength keeps the wheels from "biting". 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. In particular, there's one constraint that needs special attention: centre of mass, and the invariance thereof, as you burn fuel. 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. Reaction wheels will balance smaller craft just fine, but are probably insufficient for bigger ones. Getting a plane of the round isn't that hard. May 19, 2013 in KSP1 Tutorials. Control your vector primarily with pitch, and your descent rate with throttle. Browse other questions tagged, Start here for a quick overview of the site, Detailed answers to any questions you might have, Discuss the workings and policies of this site. Guest, (However, it must be noted that it is bad practice to use ailerons as elevators since it makes it hard to control the aircraft), The rudder moves the tip of the plane left and right; it is rarely used, since it is hard to put it both up and down due to the possibility of hitting the ground. @gocket the reason why your solution works is because you are counteracting the imbalance of friction in the wheels as they wobble. This item has been removed from the community because it violates Steam Community & Content Guidelines. For more information, please see our And you would need to stay hours spectating the ship, because the game doesn't simulate atmospheric drag otherwise. 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? Because they're fun and educational and you can. 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. Mount your rear wheels out on the wings for better stability. Interesting, though even being exponential theres a chance it starts out so small it takes longer than a takeoff to reach noticeable levels. Site design / logo 2023 Stack Exchange Inc; user contributions licensed under CC BY-SA. I'm finding it quite surprising you didn't manage to get the plane to fly yet. (Yes, you personally, you lucky thing! 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. Paint a picture in that little head of yours, imagine that the Mass was in the back, when you stall it, it will ALWAYS fall backwards and. Even exponential growth can take a while to get going if it starts out microscopic, and Id be fascinated to find someone who could figure out a way of measuring the growth rate. In a twin-boom design, you have one hoverjet at the nose, and one in each of the booms. 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've landed. Also, make sure you read this slowly, some of this stuff may be confusing, but, if you read carefully, I will help you out with what everything means. I was a diehard rocketer (5k hours or so) until a month ago and then suddenly got the spaceplane bug, I can now see why some people (*cough*Val*cough*) come out with dozens of designs: it's neat when it works so well. 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. Remembering the FW TA152 and the U2 I put long wings on it and while its turn rate makes an airliner look like a fighter plane it is stable enough at 19000m. Rasterpropmonitor for Kerbal Space Program, How can I cheat docking in Kerbal Space Program. I only very recently got into planes. We look at the principles behind designing a basic jet. Your link has been automatically embedded. Your main lift, though, should always be as closely centered on your CoM as you can manage. Upload or insert images from URL. also, you state that a stabilizer (you called it a tail) isn't necessary, and although that's true, it's worth noting that a stabilizer is vital in preventing, and recovering, from flat spins, which can be extremely dangerous. Of course the cargo capacity is less than with a HTOL since you're using some of it to haul those vertical thrusters. Now for the engines. Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. Remember the, fuel flows from the front in KSP, so you might want to start off with the CoM in front of the CoL. 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. 3. I wrote a post that covers similar topics. Imagine that first plane but with the bubble cockpit and the old style round intakes. Another pointer is to make your wings larger with the same amount of control surface. Control surfaces are your friend. You should have something called an "Elevon 1"; this will be the moving part for your wings. https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?title=Tutorial:_Your_First_Plane&oldid=103052. Turns out it was wheel positioning! 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. 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. 2. 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. The Panther engine can hold 19,000 steady and oscillates around 20,000. You want an elevon on each set of wings. How do I build a good stable basic plane? User without create permission can create a custom object from Managed package using Custom Rest API. do you put them vertically or are they at an angle to the ground? 2 will usually do nicely, but 3 or 4 are usually better (but of course heavier, and this tutorial assumes you use 2). Paste as plain text instead, E.g. Try not to make your first airplanes longer than 3 MK1 fuselages. Unexpected uint64 behaviour 0xFFFF'FFFF'FFFF'FFFF - 1 = 0? If the fuel flows from the. 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. A bigger twin-boom design using two arrays of 18 Junos on each boom and a single array of 9 on the nose. The second one is likely to be aerodynamics if you just stick on some downward-pointing jets, you will find that they produce a lot of drag, which is going to be really inefficient. All rights reserved. So, if you're having this problem then. Touch down, CUT throttle, CUT engines, BRAKES ON. That would oscillate slowly between 16000m and 17000m but was otherwise fully controllable. Also stock fuel priority is in 1.2, allowing very stable CoM builds. However, don't put any fuel tanks on it yet, and empty any fuel-containing parts that you are using. [1] At this speed it is possible to circumnavigate Kerbin in about 29 minutes at an altitude of 40 km. Move them back and fill them with fuel or weigh them down with control surfaces. (as in, like 45 degrees) usually resulting in the plane exploding. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com. Always look at your aircraft from a 90* angle on the side. That SAS can hold a craft stable doesn't mean it's a stable craft. Some more advanced tips you can use in the guide: In stock (no FAR) game to have a stable plane its also important to place control surfaces behind the wings, since their lift increases faster with AoA. Body deformation can be caused by heavy parts, many parts connected together, or forces on the plane. It only takes a minute to sign up. Before building planes though, there are some inportant things to know. The first challenge you're likely to hit is choice of hoverjet. 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). The BAK Cyclone hard at work on Duna. The Center of Gravity is ALWAYS above Center of Lift. if that does not work, lower the spring strength until it works properly. The Cyclone uses Aerospikes for propulsion. I have also used rocket-powered VTOLs on Duna. Control surfaces near center of mass sometimes get "confused" as to their role and do stupid things. The main challenge for hover control is to keep the craft horizontal. I had my rear wheels mounted on the tail, and it seems the taper of the tail messed up the angle of the wheels creating instability. air) that high up. I've always found that best way to not crash on the take off is to take off. People put waaaaaaaaay too many control surfaces on things from a lot of the screenshots I see. You may need to change control authority to a negative value if they bend "the wrong way". Note: This is ONLY to be used to report spam, advertising, and problematic (harassment, fighting, or rude) posts. You arent doing anything wrong. Privacy Policy. Plane veering off course is not uncommon but uneven fuel draw can exacerbate it a lot. Your choice of RCS jet is the Place-Anywhere or the Vernor. Thank you and happy landings. and adust the springs according to how much weight thier carrying. That is really weird. Go on, and take the plane capsule which looks like a converted fuel storage device.