How (and what) to tweak with a new aircraft design?

[dr.phibes]

Good evening everyone, and I hope everyone has see ' Worzel Gummidge' because I need you to bring your best thinking head with you.

I have just started designing aircraft and cargo aircraft in particular. Most are just very basic designs until I get the hang of all the parts, but what I need is some help with refining anything I do build. If any of you have built, or do build, aircraft then I would like your help with the process of improving the design.

What do I look at? What should I start with when trying to improve the performance of a design? (beyond just using bigger engines, etc,) What needs to be tweaked? What should I always have?

You get the idea...any help would be appreciated. No jerks.

Edited May 16, 2018 by Vanamonde
Mind the language, please.

[Mark Kerbin]

Umm. Always keep center of lift behind center of mass?

 

[KerrMü]

Hi dr.phibes

When I build a new plane, the most tweaking I do is to the angles of the wings, stabilizers,  control surfaces and so on. When you put wings on your plane, they are by default (most of the times) parallel to the body of the plane, but if you increase the angle of attack of the wings, this can have a pretty substantial effect on the performance of the plane. This is always a compromise. The higher the angle of attack, the higher the lift factor, but also the drag. Simplified: high angle of attack for slow planes, low AoA for fast planes. Also making your wings dihedral or anhedral can have a huge impact on the flying characteristics/stability/maneuverability of your design.

The same is also true for stabilizers. Enable the good old Center of Lift-indicator and watch it when you change the angle of your horizontal stabilizers for example. You simply have to play around with that a little. Soon you´ll have a pretty good idea what change will lead to the desired effect. sometimes you want more lift at the back of your plane, sometimes you might even want a little bit of downforce.

With this little technique I can build my planes so that they can fly on SAS set to prograde and hold (mostly) course and altitude. Yeah, I´m a very lazy pilot.  

Other factors to play around with: Center of Mass, where to put the engines, control surface authority limiters and fuel distribution.

I hope this helps a little. Have fun building lots of different plane designs.

(quick pic of a plane, since pic of ... something else was expressly not permitted)

[Vanamonde]

This question about how to play the game has been moved to Gameplay Questions.