guildnavigator

Wow, thanks for the replies! Turns out having the tailplane behind the engines was indeed the culprit, I moved those and it worked normally. I've made several aircraft but this was the first with that problem, so you can imagine my confusion.

Seriously. Am I missing something really stupid? Brakes aren't on, engines are throttled to full, but after maybe 20 seconds I haven't reached 1m/s. There's more! If I press w or s I take off like a shot, but as soon as I stop angling up or down it's like the air turns solid again and Jeb dies a horrible exploding death. Bug? Some other issue? I'm stumped! Edit: question answered by people who know more than me