Got a pair of Widowmakers here

[Commander Wilmot]

I was having trouble making a good jet (my designs were unmaneuverable and would tend to pitch up or down) so I tried a new design. It worked but the landing gear was too low and it still tended to pitch slightly up (see first picture of three engine jet in album).

I tried to fix the landing gear, but that tended to damage the jet's balance even more. I finally removed the two bottom engines and made it a single engine (See second and third picture of album.) That was better as presumably because the CoM and CoT were closer together. I had issues with it going into a death spiral when ever I tried to brake after leaving the runway.

I then created my last revision, (see SPH screenshots and shots of it in flight) which was an improvement as I could keep the death-spiral under control and once or twice regained control. When I finally regained control with it facing the KSC and killed the engines to land I was about to overshoot the land. I had to turn and death-spiraled for the last time (See last photo.)

Is anything obviously wrong with the balance in the photos from the SPH. I will try to upload the latest model and maybe the one before it to the space port, would anyone be interested in looking at it to see what I did wrong and whether the design is salvagable? Thanks, sorry about the long post.

edit: thanks for fixing the album

Edited August 22, 2013 by Commander Wilmot

[ixolate industries]

Your Imgur album doesn't seem to be working

[Umlüx]

Javascript is disabled. View full album

fixed for OP

[Commander Wilmot]

Thanks for your patience, here the urls:

Plane 1

Plane 2

[Ojimak]

If you have a plane that tends to pitch up/down then you can just trim it with alt+w or alt+s to make it no longer to so. Or you could just fly with ASAS on the entire time, right?

Oh, and if you want a stable plane, your center of lift should be behind your center of mass.

Also, when you slow down on landing to close to your stall speed, don't try maneuvering too much or you will go into "death-spirals" regardless of the aircraft [citation needed for the regardless part].

-Ojimak

Edited August 22, 2013 by Ojimak

[Commander Wilmot]

It pitches even with sas on, but I will try using trim in the future thanks.