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. 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. When braking most of the power should be on the rear, or you may see Kerbin up close. Your link has been automatically embedded. 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. If I'm running something with a long delta-wing layout, I'll then use canards and have the dynamic instability to allow for manouvering; if it's something without a lot of pitch inertia, I'll go tail stabilizer. 3. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. This should reduce ground control authority and make oscillations less powerful. The CoL should be behind the CoM on a horizontal angle, unless you're building a shuttle. For more information, please see our If it is, you'll never get the nose off the runway. So if you're getting those flame-outs, add more intakes until you don't get them anymore. The absurdly big wing and control surfaces make it highly economical for high-altitude supercruising. 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. 2023 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. First off, make whatever you want, just, start off making sense. Hi all so I accepted a contract to do temp scans on Kerbin and guessed a plane was the right way to do it so I made this. While I couldn't accept this one because ultimately it was changing wheel positioning that increased stability enough to elegantly take off, I don't think it's unreasonable to imagine that the oscillations originated or were exacerbated through asymmetric thrust. When your airspeed is near zero and you're above your landing spot, reduce throttle until you start descending. Your very own tutorial.). Valve Corporation. You arent doing anything wrong. Of course the cargo capacity is less than with a HTOL since you're using some of it to haul those vertical thrusters. Most of my planes I'm able to knock each of them down to 40% and still perform 7-8G maneuvers. We look at the principles behind designing a basic jet. Stunt planes tend to go for the latter layout and use powerful ailerons, because getting more roll authority is easier than getting more pitch and causes much fewer knock-on effects. There's no tutorial in KSP that explains plane design to you and this guide could have taken the lead on that. I would really suggest this guide for beginners trying to get into the world of planes in Kerbal Space Program. Ill edit this sometime this week. Jets are good for a certain amount of static thrust but they don't allow quick control of your vertical speed because of their slow spool time. TO achieve the easisest way to balance the fuel tanks i never put usable fuel tank in where i cant move ti easily eg. Now stick a jet engine on the back, and don't forget to put an . Note: This is ONLY to be used to report spam, advertising, and problematic (harassment, fighting, or rude) posts. There are some really useful tidbits here which deserve some credit. NEVER go forwards, causing the aircraft to crash itself. Why did DOS-based Windows require HIMEM.SYS to boot? I decided to look into that two intakes thing, and it turns out to make 11-12 m/s difference at 19,000m with my plane. I've been having some trouble lately in newer with respect to air flow. Here's how you go about building a VTOL under these constraints. A twin-pod design is similar to a twin-boom, except that it has a conventional tail extending from the fuselage. They sometimes coincide with ailerons on some, more space-economical, aircraft. Now I have a plane that will fly around the world at an altitude of the low-20s. It only takes a minute to sign up. This ensures that your aircraft will go up once it achieves a high enough speed, and also helps with placing ailerons. There are a few missions for which a VTOL aircraft is ideal. Which reverse polarity protection is better and why? [Stock] Brikoleur's Guide to VTOL Aircraft, fuel and trying to add more fuel means you need. Light craft have a single engine at the rear of the fuselage. Cookie Notice If you have a perturbation that gives your left engine a tiny bit more thrust, you will turn slightly right. Thanks to this guide I did my first ever landing on the VAB helipad! Interesting, though even being exponential theres a chance it starts out so small it takes longer than a takeoff to reach noticeable levels. Junos, Panthers, and Wheesleys are all fairly efficient at low altitude and low speed - when you said 'guzzle' i screwed up my face because when I think guzzle I think rapiers and whiplash's putting out 300 kN and just gorging on fuel. For the vertical engines, do you also need to have some verticalintakes? Powered by Invision Community. All rights reserved. Haha I think Ive perfected an aestheticallyclean turbine jet VTOL USAF F-35b Lightning II2020 https://imgur.com/gallery/918HyM4 https://imgur.com/gallery/f0NDJxR. Could a subterranean river or aquifer generate enough continuous momentum to power a waterwheel for the purpose of producing electricity? Not so with VTOLs: if the CoM shifts, you're not going to be able to land vertically anymore. As crazy as this sounds, it's true, they really get helped out, and it's a really nice thing to do. In vanilla KSP, wings have a predefined lift factor. if that does not work, lower the spring strength until it works properly. (Yes, you personally, you lucky thing! Paste as plain text instead, Kerbal Space Program, how do you disable autosave? Mach speed - 343 mps. Before you can make a successful plane, you must understand what makes a plane go in places other than the ground - the wings. However, don't put any fuel tanks on it yet, and empty any fuel-containing parts that you are using. You've just unlocked "Aviation" tech, you have a bunch of contracts that require you to stay at low altitude, and you want to build your first plane? 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. I can make a design that's quite good at hovering, landing, and maneuvering around a site like a helicopter, but it'll be crap as an actual aerodynamic plane- as the control surfaces and wing setup are designed for forward flight - and for hovering I want something that has no forward-bias (ever started sliding backwards in a vtol craft designed for otherwise normal forward flight? 1. What Trump's very stable geniuses lack in intelligence they more than make up for in confidence. That would oscillate slowly between 16000m and 17000m but was otherwise fully controllable. You too!Like - Subscribe - Check out my other tutorials. principle. The rudder is mostly used when landing and when attempting to line up a shot (in a fighter plane). Site design / logo 2023 Stack Exchange Inc; user contributions licensed under CC BY-SA. How do I make aircraft stable & smooth to control? Next question? And there's the ever awesome 101 from @keptin. It is certainly possible to make VTOLs that can circumnavigate the planet. Eventually you either crash, or you reach a high enough speed that SAS wiggling can't cause a significant enough difference in engine speeds. As with everything in KSP, experiment, experiment, experiment. Your main lift, though, should always be as closely centered on your CoM as you can manage. 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. Also, I would like to know how I can tweak my aircraft to make them smooth at the controls. 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". LTTP but anyway: the question is, practical for what? 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. Also hopefully you're not using any mods that use throttle (Throttle Controlled Avionics etc) as with engines as sluggish to react as jet, this is bound to cause trouble. The same applies to Laythe, although it has gentler topography. The BAK Cyclone, delivering a station module to Duna. Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. 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. I didn't try for 20000m as it probably wouldn't do well. [1] At this speed it is possible to circumnavigate Kerbin in about 29 minutes at an altitude of 40 km. If you placed the main wings at the centre of mass and then added the smaller wings behind, this should be correct already. KSP should be handing out engineering degrees :). LTTP again (KSP on hiatus for a bit), but here's an answer anyway. Nothing bad will happen. But be careful and don't crash it! If you believe your item has been removed by mistake, please contact, This item is incompatible with Kerbal Space Program. The CoG shouldn't be TOO far in front of the CoL, though. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account. These tend to handle best. Do you by chance know how much the thrust varies with these small velocity perturbations? Plane - Kerbal Space Program Wiki SAS sees this and turns the other way, which just causes the same problem in the other direction. More air is better. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top, Not the answer you're looking for? They both create a dihedral effect, tending to return you to level through a roll-sideslip interaction. @gokcet @DANKTER I usually run my front wheel override friction on 0.3 when the front gear has steering disabled, it needs lower friction. 2 will usually do nicely, but 3 or 4 are usually better (but of course heavier, and this tutorial assumes you use 2). Also, layout matters: aircraft with a wing that runs along the length of the craft, but with a narrow wingspan (like the Mk2 fuselages or wing strakes, and to a lesser extend swept or delta wings) will take more effort to pitch over but will roll very, very easily. A basic tutorial on building a single prop plane. Go on, and take the plane capsule which looks like a converted fuel storage device. ps. jet engine efficiency in this game is based on built in thrust curves. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. The BAK Zephyr, a rocket-powered VTOL craft designed for conducting science missions on Duna. Unexpected uint64 behaviour 0xFFFF'FFFF'FFFF'FFFF - 1 = 0? It also depends on whether you're using FAR or another aerodynamic rewrite mod that would change the way your aircraft behave. How do I build a good stable basic plane? Kerbal Space Program - Beginners Guide to Aircraft Aerodynamics Valve Corporation. 100% is fine for doing a pure Pilot Assisted flight but for keyboard piloting it's too much. Touch down, CUT throttle, CUT engines, BRAKES ON. Your link has been automatically embedded. - but they were talking about having two intakes/engine. Check out Mike from Merrimack, New Hampshire as he explains to filmmaker Rod Webber what' It is entirely powered by Terriers. Move them back and fill them with fuel or weigh them down with control surfaces. Because they're fun and educational and you can. Whiplash is the engine you would want to use on a plane meant to go 20km. 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. I think it might be so small it starts with floating-point rounding errors; it's exponential and compounds every frame. I only very recently got into planes. Elevators are usually places in the front or back of an aircraft, and their function, as the name implies, is to change the pitch of the nose up and down. So yes, it most definitely is possible. Wings have been flown both with and without struts, Wheel friction was even decreased to 0.3 for front wheel and increased to 2.0 for rear wheels, as per a tip found online. Have you set your control surfaces to only respond to appropriate controls? 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. Imagine that first plane but with the bubble cockpit and the old style round intakes. 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. You would need a lot of orbits at 69 km to come down into the ground. 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). Note the landing area markers. and our Upload or insert images from URL. Yes, although they have only been flown with nearly full tanks. Can I use the spell Immovable Object to create a castle which floats above the clouds? Take the large delta wings and place them on the aircraft. It may be too far forward, especially if the tail is too small relative to the plane's wings. Adding more engines without adding intakes will make the problem worse. You want those tires facing straight to the ground! In that vein I drag optimized the Karmilla, and added science parts. ps: use caps lock(fine control) to reduce the amount you're actually moving the control surfaces. Are there any canonical examples of the Prime Directive being broken that aren't shown on screen? For most small-to-normal-sized craft, you should end up with CoL sitting right at the back of the yellow CoM ball. @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 cheesy and wouldn't solve the root problem. Can you check what happens if you swap in larger gear? Terriers will also work on Duna. If you (or SAS) turns even just a little, the engine opposite your turn will have a higher velocity than the one towards your turn. Pasted as rich text. That should just about do it for basic planes. 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. When you're close to it, INCREASE THROTTLE until your rate of descent nears zero. Your plane is almost finished. The CoT (Center of Thrust) is purple. What is Wario dropping at the end of Super Mario Land 2 and why? - SF. This can be most helpful when transitioning to or from level flight. You want an elevon on each set of wings. Making a fuselage. rev2023.5.1.43405. How to Make a Perfect Space Plane - KSP1 Tutorials - Kerbal Space CoL (Blue ball) position relative to CoM (Yellow ball) is very important. Then at the top, we'll put one tail fin, centred on the end of the fuselage. A bigger twin-boom design using two arrays of 18 Junos on each boom and a single array of 9 on the nose. One of the most finicky problems with VTOL craft is managing centre of mass. On 11/1/2018 at 10:54 AM, Brikoleur said: On 1/25/2019 at 4:03 AM, panzerknack said: This thread is quite old. 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. For more information, please see our What are the arguments for/against anonymous authorship of the Gospels. So thanks for the pointers - I'll take a look (and try to cure my prejudice re canards). Have you noticed this or do you think I might just need more vertical engines when using horizontal intakes only? Display as a link instead, Another pointer is to make your wings larger with the same amount of control surface. You've landed. Somebody figured out how to make a stable orbit inside of the atmosphere Scan this QR code to download the app now. Two MacBook Pro with same model number (A1286) but different year. Even though it just spawned. [Stock] Brikoleur's Guide to VTOL Aircraft - Kerbal Space Program Forums 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. Edit: After reading it again, it just seems to have a bit too many errors. Control surfaces near center of mass sometimes get "confused" as to their role and do stupid things. On the other hand, something with a wide wingspan but narrow wings (like the connector Cs) will pitch easily but need more oomph to roll. You can park a ship into an elliptical . 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). This happens in two instances; initial placement and plane body deformation. Their hoverjets just have a TWR of less than 1.0. You cannot paste images directly. 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. In particular, there's one constraint that needs special attention: centre of mass, and the invariance thereof, as you burn fuel. 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). I've spent the past three hours committing a genocide of historical proportions against my Kerbals, and it's making me quite sad. 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=. Privacy Policy. Thanks for any answers! To start off with, use ANY cockpit you want, this tutorial is going to teach you how to make anything using anything, as long as you follow these directions. It can be as crazy or as normal as you want, just remember these basic tips, 1. And you would need to stay hours spectating the ship, because the game doesn't simulate atmospheric drag otherwise. Build yourself a plane. Throttle up to full, activate SAS, stage to start the engine (you'll only have one stage here), and start rolling (or sliding) down the runway! This page was last edited on 19 February 2020, at 07:08. 2023 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. 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. You can horse hundreds of tonnes, up and down both, with the standard canard pieces. Please consider starting a new thread rather than reviving this one. Wings on the front of the craft can cause pitching and rolling, causing you to hold W constantly. 2. Keeping it from crashing is usually the hard part. To land a VTOL aircraft, approach the landing zone as you would with a regular HTOL craft, until on final approach. zombie2u, In the crash log, it says that at 00:00:00 there is "Lift-Off!" Powered by Invision Community. I've always found that best way to not crash on the take off is to take off. Hint:The engine pre-cooler and engine nacelle are fantastic air intakes, and they can be mounted in-line or combined with other elements. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com. 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). Embedded hyperlinks in a thesis or research paper. 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. Control surfaces are your friend. If you forget to put an air intake on your airplane, don't worry! Tutorial: Your First Plane - Kerbal Space Program Wiki 1) Before adding your pitch control surfaces, move the main wing to make sure that CoM is very very slightly in front of CoL, or exactly on the same spot (if you want more maneuverability). 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? In fact, nothing will happen at all, and that's probably bad, so put an air intake on your plane anyway. You cannot paste images directly. Remember the, fuel flows from the front in KSP, so you might want to start off with the CoM in front of the CoL. Ill link it if interested. 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. Congratulations! Getting all of this into one craft is a pretty intricate business, however. Your, Add enough downward-pointing jets to lift the plane, as symmetrically as you can around the, Adjust the thrust limiter on the fore (or aft) hoverjets until the thrust vector lines up with the. 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. User without create permission can create a custom object from Managed package using Custom Rest API. 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. They have in common that it's easy to tweak the balance by moving things around, rather than having to add or remove pieces. 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. Plane veering off course is not uncommon but uneven fuel draw can exacerbate it a lot. I have made a couple VTOLs in the pastand had a lot of fun with both the engineering and flight challenges. I didn't try for 20000m as it probably wouldn't do well. air) that high up. 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. This is always my strategy for building planes (although sometimes things go horribly wrong for a different reason.) Roll is the main way to change direction in flight, and best way to crash the plane on the ground. I've found that all my runway wiggling planes are caused by the wheels. The craft will lift off once generated lift + hoverjet thrust overcome its mass. They'll still happen but you'll have more time to get off the ground. Your plane will be slow and have limited range, or you'll have to make it a lot bigger to brute-force your way around that limitation. The parts regarding landing gear placement is especially relevant in 1.1.x. My question is really about controllability. The CoL (Center of Lift) is a blue ball. Always look at your aircraft from a 90* angle on the side. If additionally you can give it a controlled tilt and hold it there, then it'll start accelerating in that direction, like a helicopter. Now I'll walk you through a basic aircraft; fancy stuff like science equipment can be added later. 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. I might try to write a more advanced guide for spaceplane construction. I wrote a post that covers similar topics. by fixing the suspension issues the need to sacrifice traction, and in turn, braking power, is not needed. By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. and our Ok, the panther engine is still not good enough. I was hoping that the new intakes would give it the added altitude. Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible. The Kerbal Space Program subreddit. 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. Better still, three screenshots showing side, top, and rear views. Archived post. But mostly, the answer is still "because they're fun and educational and you can.". Any plane needs speed - so you need thrust (usually). 3. Also stock fuel priority is in 1.2, allowing very stable CoM builds. May 19, 2013 in KSP1 Tutorials. They can be placed on wings. And start small. Any insights? Then I'd go with moving it towards more maneuvrable by moving CoL towards CoM. 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 other words classic tripod. Set the thrust limiter on your main engines to zero. About the landing gear, the best way to stop the weird self steering issue is to increase the spring and damper strength. Lift, the canard button), and finally CoT (Center of Thrust, the thruster button) 2. To do this, take a few barrels of your jet fuel, stick them on the back of your aircraft. Keep pitching up as you approach stall speed. The BAK Karmilla. Go ahead and make a new save file or use an old one, it doesn't matter! Mount your rear wheels out on the wings for better stability. So, if you're having this problem then. Here's how you go about building a VTOL under these constraints. Privacy Policy. high altitude flight :: Kerbal Space Program General Discussions Your CoT vector will disappear. The procedure for a vertical take-off is as follows: The procedure for a short take-off is the same, except that forward jets and hoverjets will both be ON from the start. Throttle up to full, activate SAS, stage to start the engine (you'll only have one stage here), and start rolling (or sliding) down the runway! 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. 2023 Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. All other versions are slower and lower and unstable in turns. ps2. It is also said that a good landing is one you can walk away from. All you need to do is add landing gear (one right before the cockpit, and two on the tips or middle of the wings), and you're done! 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). Love it!! if you are making a plane that's going to be pulling stunts or making extreme maneuvers, a stabilizer is pretty important. 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. Hi @Brikoleur, nice work! (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. Build yourself a plane.