Landed on the moon!

[TMac3000]

Finally figured out how to do a hover landing on the moon. It took me two days to get it right. The first day, I was tearing my hair out. The closer I got to the pad, the more I would drift, as if there were some kind of shield around the blasted thing.

Today I got it. Three times in row! :speakcool: Fortunately, I have a joystick. Seeing as I have to apply constant translation trust to compensate for the drift, trying to do it with a keyboard was driving me insane.

 

[MeDiCS]

Great! I still have some problems landing vertically, but you seem to have mastered it :lol:!

 

[Kaito]

Congrats!
I remember the first time i landed on the moon...I winged the entire mission.

So, you're drifting? Try using the numpad and cancel out your HSPD, then use small translation as needed

 

[RisingFury]

Hit the L key to engage level flight autopilot. That should help out a LOT.

 

[TMac3000]

Hit the L key to engage level flight autopilot. That should help out a LOT.

Will this also engage the HOLDALT?

P.S. Got to big for my britches and tried to land a fully loaded Shuttle-A. Crashed and burned

 

[eveningsky339]

I haven't flown with a joystick for seven months. :mellow:

Congrats on your first Moon landing! :speakcool: I remember when I first touched the pad at Brighton Beach... Sent chills up my spine. :lol:

 

[James.Denholm]

Well done! Well done indeed! I remember my first moon landing... Good times, good times.

 

[unknown_orbiter]

Ahhh my first moon landing... back in my day you had to roll the window down to land, see we didn't have these fancy rearview mirrors. And you people think you have it hard, pff...
Congrats on the landing

 

[Andy44]

One of the best "firsts" in Orbiter, after actaully getting to the Moon from LEO.

To answer your question: the horizontal-leveler autopilot (L) is NOT the same as hold-altitude autopilot (A).

(L) controls your attitude and uses your rcs thrusters to force you to get wings-level and stay that way. Joystick inputs will move you out, but you will be fighting the L-pilot (and burning more RCS propellant) and releasing the joystick will bring you back to level.

(A) controls your hoverjets in an attempt to stay at whatever altitude you were at when you hit the A key. It has no knowledge of your attitude, so if you are upside down and decending, it will light up the hoverjets to full thrust and increase your falling speed. So it's up to you to make sure you're in the proper attitude first, usually by hitting (L).

 

[HiPotOk1978]

congrats on your Lunar Landing and welcome to the 380,000km high club. e-mail Martins for your Lunar landing wings ;P

 

[ar81]

My first landing on the moon was a spectacular crash. Those old memories...

 

[Woo482]

all my landings wear crashes but now I can do a Earth to moon and back trip

 

[TMac3000]

but now I can do a Earth to moon and back trip

Working on that for another day. Right now, I intend to focus on getting docked with the ISS as my next major skill.

 

[ar81]

Working on that for another day. Right now, I intend to focus on getting docked with the ISS as my next major skill.

See [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=3074"]Tutorial: DG to ISS[/ame]

 

[MajorTom]

See Tutorial: DG to ISS

Also be sure to try [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=3070"]Soyuz to ISS tutorial[/ame], if you like to use "real life" spacecraft.

Congrats on the moon landing. It's easier to land "on the surface somewhere." Landing on a pad at a moonbase...well, that's an accomplishment!

 

[TMac3000]

The trick is to get down to a few hundred meters, and then use HOLDALT for the run up to the base. When I have the base in sight, I release HOLDALT and switch RCS to translation. This gives me total control over where the vector goes, except for a little drift, which I can easily compensate for. All I have to do then is lower the gear and keep the vector over the pad. I aim to touch down at a speed of less than 2.5 m/s.

 

[Andy44]

A good tool to aid landings is computerex's AutoHover MFD, which allows you to choose a constant vertical speed, similar to the way the Apollo LM was flown. This way you don't have to keep nudging the hoverjet throttle to compensate for the vertical speed creeping up as you burn off propellant mass.

Another MFD which provides a similar function is the older, but still useful, Arrive MFD, which has an "antigravity" mode that holds your vertical speed steady and makes landings much easier.

 

[TMac3000]

Starting to figure out how to land the Shuttle-A now. God, that thing is a big beast. Is there an addon that would make hotkeys for the aux pods?

It's a very heavy craft, but still my weapon of choice, since in reality it would be the only stock craft suitable for interplanetary missions. I may d/l some of the addons, but I'm still coming to a decision about that...

Some nasty tricks about landing it: very poor landing visibility in virtual cockpit mode, which I insist on using as much as possible. Also very hard to control with translational thrusters.

 

[Shadow Addict]

My first landing on the moon was a spectacular crash. Those old memories...

Ha, same here! I got all the way to 5 km away from Brighton, then I crashed. I haven't made it back to the moon since.

 

[Tommy]

I find it helps a bit to orient the vessel to one of the cardinal directions, ie 0, 90, 180 , or 270 degrees. There's a tiny bit of regression (westward drift) that is easier to deal with if you're oriented right.