Planes are pretty complex!

To make a functional plane there are some important concepts to consider or research. This section will not cover the basic things that boats and aircraft have in common, with the exception of COM.

Center Of Mass (COM) is extremely important when building plane, even the slightest unwanted shift can spiral you into the ocean. Make sure your aircraft is well balanced.

Aircrafts need to be very light! Using heavy materials will most likely prevent you from taking off.

Note: much of this behavior will depend on the currently available parts / engines

Roll dictates how you control the aircraft's roll-axis, generally speaking rotating left or right. In order to control this your plane needs ailerons (google it), in terms of parts that means wings that can be controlled when deployed.

Yaw dictates how you control the aircrafts yaw-axis, generally speaking it means rotating the plane horizontally as if it was on a flat surface, like spinning a plate on a table. For parts, that means you need a rudder.

Pitch dictates how you control the aircrafts pitch-axis, generally speaking that means how you move the nose of the plane up and down, in this case that means having rear wings.

Note: Parts may have built-in control surfaces specifically for one or more axis

Certain parts and mass in general will introduce drag into your design, consider the location of your parts carefully relative to the COM.

Landing gear is most likely required to take off and will reduce any impacts you make encounter to the landing gear themselves in terms of hull integrity. Landing gear of course will also allow you to land the plane with enough practice.

Similarly to a normal plane, a sea plane is just a bit more complex. This logic will also apply directly to a sea helicopter.


Sea aircraft require a few extra considerations

Landing gear for the sea, sea gear will allow your plane to rest on the surface of the water without damaging the engines or immediately sinking depending on your velocity and angle to the water. Landing a sea plane can be challenging, taking off is pretty straight forward once you have mastered normal planes.

The velocity of the planes rudder will not allow you to steer on the surface of the ocean as it would in the air at high speeds. Unless you only need to move in a straight line powered by your engines, you will need a special aircraft rudder as seen below.

Helicopters are a bit different but also still pretty complex, many of the concepts from boats and planes apply directly to helicopters as well. For controls, consult the in game menu.


Some key concepts related to helicopters

The primary rotor on the top of the helicopter generates lift directly instead of the wings of the plane redirecting velocity generated by the engine (airflow, more or less...). You need one of these to go up and down.

The primary purpose of the tail rotor is to allow you to rotate the the helicopter on its yaw-axis. Without this you will likely be out of control.

Like landing gear, this is helpful for takeoff and landing. It is located at the bottom of the helicopter and will absorb some physical impacts that would otherwise damage your helicopter on landing.

In this example, these are located in the middle of the tail section of the aircraft and are mirrored on both sides. These parts introduce an element of drag and controllability to the aircraft, while not required they should be helpful depending on the size of your helicopter.

Here we have an airship powered by gases that are lighter than air (i.e. helium, hydrogen).

• The larger you make the balloon, the more mass it can lift.
  
• Use propellers to aid in movement
  
• Rear helicopters rotors make it much easier to turn
  
• Carry very little fuel
  
• Use thin materials for the balloon
  
• Use very little throttle for maneuvers
  
• When going up or down, use small increments to avoid instability
  
• Go slow

In reality, airships use ballonets to fill with air (which is heavier than helium / hydrogen). It is assumed these are built into the balloon, so you don't have to manage that to go up and down, instead you have a "Gas" control meter that will appear in the bottom right that will work similar to the ballast controls for submarines.

Auto feathering occurs when an engine detects that it is no longer producing thrust and/or it is creating drag. In order to minimize drag, the engine will feather. This also prevents unrealistic scenarios with the physics engine.

This is likely to occur in a few scenarios:

1. A jet engine is attached to a plane with propellers that are overpowered and now creating drag.
   
2. There are multiple propellers attached to a plane that is moving beyond the effective maximum power of the engine type
   
3. In a nose dive with multiple propellers engines

Non-retractable landing gear that can disable steering (g) will likely not register as green vs red to indicate state. This is because the overall state is determined by whether or not landing gear is deployed, so fixed landing gear will always be green.

Increasing the size of the landing gear will increase the max load they can handle relative to the mass of the aircraft. Increasing them too much can still overpower the mass of the aircraft (bouncing). Other than than, the landing gear will automatically scale forces to match the mass of the aircraft as much as it can, this is not strictly accurate but it makes things more fun.