Has anyone flown the Stearwing or Learstar to orbit and back?

[Galane]

Stock, without altering them? There's a distinct lack of YouTube vids on both stock craft.

[CalculusWarrior]

I've done so with both; the Stearwing is an interesting craft to fly, it looks like an SSTO but actually stages in the upper atmosphere rather than simply shutting off the jets. As for the Learstar, I had to do a lot of manual thrust balancing to make it fly straight on the way up, but it got into orbit alright. However, on the way down it made the 'flying brick' Space Shuttle seem graceful and crashed into the ocean...

[Galane]

I'd like to see a video of launch, orbit and landing of the Stearwing. Must take some very careful flying to stretch out the fuel.

I launched the Learstar straight up with SAS on, until it began to get unstable. I cut throttle, dumped the SRBs and big tank then managed to glide it to land on the ground near KSC. Nearly crashed into the ocean before getting it to pull out of the dive. If KSP had effects for air/water interaction it would have thrown up a rooster tail from the woosh. Had no mods installed in .90 yet, I was intending to just let it crash but decided to see if I could glide it.

I tried a few times but could not get the Stearwing to do anything but act as a lawn dart without being under power. Stick on a couple of canards and it will glide unpowered.

The problem I have with bringing spaceplanes down from orbit is losing altitude fast enough, while not getting too low and hitting that pesky mountain range. MechJeb's landing guidance is not at all suited for spaceplanes. It might work to get down to a starting altitude and distance to switch over to Spaceplane Guidance with the right target coordinates. I have used Ascent Guidance to get various planes to orbit, though usually after a manual takeoff and several times manually flying quite high before engaging the autopilot.