Can any of your aircraft fly well without SAS?

[3 Crab Fish Sauce]

Is SAS the god of flight?

[Harry_Robinson1]

I have a couple that work without it, but SAS improves the flight in all of them. Back in the day though, I had a few designs that flew better without SAS because back then the SAS worked very differently. With the modern SAS and aerodynamics, the SAS just makes things easier.

[Venusgate]

If you have a relatively pitch balanced craft and have dihedral wingtips, you shouldn't need SAS, just adjust pitch.

Bonus easier with a joystick.

SAS is the lazy way to go though if you want easy of build over ease of flight

[A Terrible Modder]

with sas i made a jet and left it (iwentafkinatmosphericflight) for a whole 40 to come back to it flying #sasisthebeast

[RoofCat]

Originally posted by Venusgate:

If you have a relatively pitch balanced craft and have dihedral wingtips, you shouldn't need SAS, just adjust pitch.

Bonus easier with a joystick.

SAS is the lazy way to go though if you want easy of build over ease of flight

you can introduce small permanent pitch on main wings and your plane will also get cruise altitude, which will depend on mass, velocity and that angle. So basically you can leave your Juno to fly around the globe somewhere around 8km altitude completely on it's own. It can not hit the ground, because going down for some reason it would reach speed and thus lift necessary to bet put back up. After a few waves it autobalances itself. After that it just slowly gains altitude due to less mass (fuel) in a rather level flight.

You can also use deploy on extra elevons with very small limit angles to achieve the same during flight as needed. Or trim (Alt+WASD, Alt+X) the main ones.



Just got curios what happens if you attach elevons to wing tips at 90° and use the same deploy function to imitate dihedral wings on demand...

[SpaceKraken]

Yes. But with SAS it's much easier to fly. And with AtmosphereAutopilot[forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com] mod it's even more easier.
I have an aircraft that can be controlled ONLY with this mod...

[Toastie Buns]

Yep. I try to build level planes, because I'd rather spend 5 minutes more designing something that can fly level than ♥♥♥♥ around flying a huge S in the sky. Even SAS struggles to keep that VSI locked at 0 unless you design the plane right, moreso with warp introduced.

When CoM changes during flight, you trim to win.

[Chibbity]

One could argue that a plane that needs sas isn't a plane at all.

Considering you can't use trim without turning sas off, and no pilot worth his salt would give up his trim options.

To asnwer your question more generally, most planes won't fly straight without some adjustments, those should be coming from trim though. If you aren't using trim, no reason not to have sas on I guess.

[Silver Foxfolk]

I think of flying planes with SAS (Which I always do, honestly, I'm just not that patient to design perfect planes as much as rockets) as like flying the B2 in real life which requires computer assistance to fly.

Seems legit to me and my head-canon is that the planes I'm flying are after all very high tech ones requiring such assistance both out of necessity and safety.

[Toastie Buns]

Originally posted by Dirt the fox:

I think of flying planes with SAS (Which I always do, honestly, I'm just not that patient to design perfect planes as much as rockets) as like flying the B2 in real life which requires computer assistance to fly.

Hit caps lock, leave SAS off and fly. You'll be taking off normally, so don't worry. What you want to do is achieve level flight, then watch as your plane either dips up or down. That's where you hold Alt and start countering it.

You'll be suprised at how nice it is to fly this way. You'll now have unlocked axis, so you'll be able to make banking turns without having to fight pitch (a problem with SAS since it's a case of all or nothing; player control or full SAS control, which means pressing Q to roll means SAS won't hold the pitch whilst you do so). As your tanks drain, a mininmal input will be required to counter that. It really helps to assign rolls/pitch to specific small control surfaces too, this eliminates huge roll inputs or sudden pitch shifts.

Remember; slow speed, small changes. High speed; big changes.

Pitch authority is your friend. (or whatever the ♥♥♥♥ that option is when you right click a control surface)

[=BB= Misophist]

For most of my planes they fly tolerably without SAS, and quite easily with it. For some of my attempts at hypermanuverability they can only turn without SAS, but those are special cases.

[WhiskeyJim68]

I dont use SAS so.....

[Harry_Robinson1]

Originally posted by CaptainTightPants:

I dont use SAS so.....

You are missing out! How have you built any rockets?

[doum]

Plane fly well without SAS as long as i dont stop holding joystick. :)