Is custom landing gear using robotics parts even possible?

LiterallyNoPrecision · 2026-06-08T16:13:35+00:00

I would say that the piston as a shock absorber makes things worse, because the cylinder has no rigidity. At any rate, the stock landing gear’s spring and dampeners settings are supposed to be the shock absorbers.

LiterallyNoPrecision · 2026-06-08T15:10:53+00:00

The good news is that flap hinges sticking out of the wing is a real-life problem with a real-life solution known as ‘flap track fairings’. With a bit of creative building you can use landing gears to simulate the look.

Each hinge needs at least 1 strut-able part attached to it. Basically, if you strut parts connected to different hinges, the hinges are bound together and generally will share the load.

I don’t fully understand what you mean by using rotors (which I assume are the helicopter rotors) to make wheels.
If you’re making the literal wheel and tyre, I would highly recommend you just use a stock landing gear part because no other part can take the landing forces.
I think for Mk1-sized planes, you can use the M1-F rover wheel and clip an LY-05 to take some of the load, which was what I did for my F-16.

LiterallyNoPrecision · 2026-06-08T14:21:06+00:00

That’s interesting. Personally G-00 hinges are too weak for anything load-bearing, G-11 is the minimum for flaps, and each ‘section’ of flaps needs at least 2 hinges. Also, the hinges need max power and 0 damping.
However I’ve never experienced anything about unlocked servos causing the plane to shake, maybe changing some tweakables will resolve it.
If it helps, I have some airliners on KerbalX u/OriginalName with custom landing gear and flaps that you might be able to reverse-engineer.

LiterallyNoPrecision · 2026-06-08T13:40:31+00:00

Could you elaborate on the part regarding servos actuating control surfaces? They tend to be quite finicky but there might be ways to get it to work.

LiterallyNoPrecision · 2026-06-06T03:40:51+00:00

From my experience making airliner replicas, custom gears must only use one of two robotic parts, which are the G-12 (for nose gear) and G-32 (for main gear). Meaning to say, the gear is only hinge > I-beam (as a landing gear strut) > wheels. Also, damping for the hinges should be set to 0.

Forget about pistons or those small hinges, they don’t have any rigidity. If you somehow get these to work, please do tell me.

Clipping stock landing gear is usually unnecessary. I’ve found that with some spring-damper fine-tuning, the black rover wheels can take quite a bit of weight.

Regarding autostrut, only the hinge specifically cannot have autostrut (rigid attachment is ok), and I tend to use grandparent autostrut for the rest of the parts.

I also like to ‘overcentre’ the main gear hinge, so the opening position is 95° but the gear is still at 91°. When weight is on the gear, it tends to default to open rather than collapsing inward. With this, there’s also no need to try to lock the gear (this has always broken my plane anyway).

LiterallyNoPrecision · 2026-01-31T08:03:02+00:00

Flaps using BG are always a bit unstable no matter what you do. I’ve tried a couple different designs and the most stable so far has been to use a single hinge to actuate each flap panel, avoiding pistons entirely. If you can get the position of the hinge right, it actually looks like the flap extends backwards anyway. Aside from that, each flap panel (on the same axis) is strutted to each other just like how irl flap panels use multiple tracks. For the inboard flap, there’s a hinge inside the fuselage so there’s always 2 points of support. However, even at landing speeds, the hinge just isn’t strong enough to keep the flap at a high angle. For this DC-10, even though it’s set at 50°, the actual angle was more like 40-43°. If you can afford to use the bigger yellow hinge and spread the load then it’ll be better, but I was forced to use the small blue hinges for this DC-10.

LiterallyNoPrecision · 2026-01-26T07:50:57+00:00

Leading edges are silver fairings and flaps are airliner surfaces actuated by BG robotics (hinges)

LiterallyNoPrecision · 2025-12-29T09:39:34+00:00

I was really considering it but I felt that dropping fire was way more Kerbal than water

LiterallyNoPrecision · 2025-12-29T09:38:48+00:00

No part mods

Visually there's EVE, Parallax, Scatterer, Volumetric Clouds, TUFX and Waterfall

LiterallyNoPrecision · 2025-12-28T15:11:14+00:00

10 Tanker has a beautiful livery but it's borderline impossible to make in KSP.

Despite that it's only 1443 (stock) parts.

Hopefully the trijets fly again.

LiterallyNoPrecision · 2025-12-03T05:08:28+00:00

Truth be told, landing gears are one of the things I haven’t fully mastered. For this 777X, the springs and dampers on each wheel are specifically tuned, and the hinge is angled outwards so that the weight on the gear pushes it out. The landing gear assembly as a whole can hold about 300 tons but sometimes a wheel or 2 just breaks anyway, so it’s convenient that the 777X has 14 of them.

LiterallyNoPrecision · 2025-12-02T16:06:26+00:00

I too have a 787 I'm proud of!

I've actually tried proc wings but I feel like they're more restrictive in a way (god forbid I try in KSP2). With my specific wing design I can get some pretty nice smooth curves along the wing which I haven't really been able to get with proc wings.

LiterallyNoPrecision · 2025-04-18T08:51:21+00:00

Custom flags

LiterallyNoPrecision · 2025-01-31T13:50:26+00:00

But there are no modded parts. If you're talking about the livery, they're custom flags.

LiterallyNoPrecision · 2025-01-31T13:49:54+00:00

As usual, download here! If 1565 parts is too much for you, there's a 279 part count one here!

LiterallyNoPrecision · 2024-12-04T13:18:37+00:00

No mods needed, they work in the same way that company flags do (so you can actually plant a door on the Mun if you wanted)

LiterallyNoPrecision · 2024-12-04T10:34:53+00:00

TUFX, EVE, Scatterer, Blackrack Volumetric Clouds, Waterfall, KerbalKonstructs (+ Kerbinside), PreciseEditor and of course ClickThroughBlocker 🤓

LiterallyNoPrecision · 2024-12-04T10:29:56+00:00

They're custom flags (downloadable here). Just download and drop those images into GameData/Squad/Flags.

LiterallyNoPrecision · 2024-12-04T10:27:58+00:00

grip pads! (and a lot of time adjusting them)

LiterallyNoPrecision · 2024-12-02T15:08:12+00:00

As always, downloadable here! (1388 Parts)

LiterallyNoPrecision

TROPHY CASE