I've created a basic sub-orbital plane in KSP, it flies well enough. On landing, I always cut the engines, then go into a glide from ~6km up then end up overshooting the runway or landing to it's side. Also, sometimes my plane will glide up when I'm pitching it up for landing.
How can I land straight on the runway? Do I need to angle the glide further down or do something else?
Best Answer
The way I try to avoid it is by trying to glide the last kilometer (or so) on approach close to the ground (100-200m above the terrain).
Don't just nosedive towards the beginning of the runway and then flare up close to the ground.
The problem with such a quick descent is that you pick up speed while doing so. Because you pick up speed, two things happen:
I actually learned this from War Thunder. Completely different game, but it teaches you to land a plane very realistically, and has a decent tutorial on basic maneuvers including landing. If you want to learn how to fly planes better intuitively, you might want to check it out (it's free to play, and a very good flight sim in my opinion).
If your plane either still has plenty of fuel, or can glide with ease, I'd always opt for maybe even just flying a round around KSC to bleed off speed.
If you can't afford that (out of fuel), another option to bleed off speed is by "wagging" your tail (yawing left/right to create more drag).