I've been tinkering with a Mig-21 clone- that delta-wing is a godsend in FAR- and while it works very well overall and gets eerily similar performance to the original in a few ways I'm running into a small issue at higher altitudes and mach numbers that I'm not sure how to fix. It wants to nose down from the start, which isn't a huge problem and can be trimmed out. But as I start going faster and higher that tendency gets so extreme I literally run out of elevator range- it's all devoted to the trim keeping the nose up long before I have problems with lift or intake air. That's not too surprising in supersonic flight, but I'm not sure what the clean solution would be: inclining the tailplane forwards corrects that but only by giving it even worse in the opposite direction; the 5 degree minimum rotation is just too much. http://www.flickr.com/photos/98971750@N05/9303052572/lightbox/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/98971750@N05/9300269915/lightbox/ (These are the stripped down version with the minimum of mod doodads, but none of those should alter its flying traits) I've been experimenting with using it as a launcher for small satellites, but unfortunately the radial decoupler's force always makes the payload flip out on release and so far I'm too awful with piloting rockets to correct it quickly enough . If anyone's got tips on working round either issue I'd be glad to hear them!
