I'm kind of in the same boat, I mainly like to design rockets and do space stuff, but I decided to try out doing planes after not being in to it after a long while. As far as I can tell, looking over what other people have said, is that after 1.1 came out the physics for planes seems a lot different. I can barely control them now, even stock planes pretty squirrely. Taking off has become a severe headache. The landing gear are really touchy now and you have to have them perfectly aligned now, it seems. Even when I get the landing gear aligned I spin out on the runway way too much. If you can get your plane to take off and is stable in flight you are ahead of me. Designing and flying planes just isn't enjoyable for me anymore and I think I'm going to stick to rockets.
