DonGonzo

1: Make sure you have adequate flight surfaces for control of all 3 axis. 2: Make sure your have sufficient lift to hold the engines up so they don\'t fall through the vertical, causing nasty pitch changes 3: Until you\'re sure how the airframe will perform while banking, avoid rolling past 45 degrees. 4: Until you\'re sure how the airframe will perform while turning, avoid pitch input while rolling 5: If the aircraft cannot get off the ground without running off the end of the runway first, it is too heavy or does not have sufficient flight control surfaces. 5a: Obviously if once you have an airframe and you go about making it heavier with external stores etc. this rule does not apply. 6: The keyboard is very unfriendly for flight, and joysticks cost less than keyboards 7: Once airborne, test thy aircraft... how low and how slow can you fly it. 8: When flying clean [no stores attached], without huge amounts of thrust the nose should tend to pitch right at the horizon, if it tends to pitch up even when trimmed the rear is too heavy and / or does not have enough lift. 9: Make sure your joystick control for flight surfaces isn\'t at max sensitivity [mine are right around minimum], but make sure the throttle is very responsive... when you turn throttle all the way to low responsiveness, responsiveness get very sluggish making gliding difficult.

My first piece of advice would be to use a joystick if you aren\'t already using one. Control of aircraft with the keyboard is tedious at best. Canards at the front AND the rear of the aircraft, this will seriously limit pitch and will probably annoy you at first but once you get the hang of where to place them you can still make highly maneuverable aircraft. Also make sure all the wings have sufficient flight surfaces, this will allow for much better roll and yaw control even if it looks hilarious while using SAS to autopilot the aircraft.

Here\'s an aircraft I created this morning loosely based on the F-14 Tomcat. Unfortunately I couldn\'t get the desired maneuverability without the forward canards but they are placed in such a position that the aircraft shouldn\'t do back-flips unless you really pitch hard. The runway is sticky still, so you\'ll need a lot more power to get off the ground than to land, but it should pitch up off the runway somewhere around 90m/s but can land probably sub-60, which can be tricky to manage with the throttle. There\'s one tiny issue in that if you\'re already in flight with the aircraft, and decide to restart on the runway, the aircraft may disintegrate. Launching from the hanger fixes this. Joystick highly recommended. =P Specs: Rev i. Stall: -50m/s[clean] Top Speed: 550+m/s [Mach 1.6] Ceiling: 13,000m Range: Currently Untested Payload: 3000kgs external stores, plus internals Max G: +/-12 More soon ... Rev c. ->Rear canards added on the engines. Aircraft is far more stable now but will still pull +/-7 g\'s in a turn or as high as 9 in a loop without losing pitch control. Rev g. ->Engines reduced to single nacelles and mounted beneath rear wing area ->Tail fins switched to a slanted configuration ->All active flight surfaces doubled ->Four individually releasable bombs added for air to ground harassment of those dirty kerbmunists. 8) Rev i. ->Refitted for intercontinental flight, fuel payload increased to 3500kg ->Drop tanks now drop in pairs, so you don\'t have to re-trim the aircraft for asymmetry every time you drop one ->Engines can be individually toggled. This didn\'t seem to work without separate fuel feeds. Be ready to trim. ->Can easily make it to KSC2 [1500kg+ fuel remaining], probably better if you don\'t mind going slower. ->Outstanding low level flight once clean [no external stores], can even knife edge pass if you\'re good with the controls. ->Wings reinforced, have pulled 12+ gs without airframe damage Rev j. ->Heavily reinforced front landing gear, touch and go is now far easier.

Not enough wing area and the landing gear is too narrowly spaced. That oddly spaced rudder doesn\'t help anything either. Here\'s an aircraft I made earlier today. It seems to fly fairly well, but be careful with rapid pitch changes. The stall speed is somewhere around 80m/s. The do not exceed for parachute deployment is somewhere around 140m/s.