Hello,
I am working on a model of the Douglas Dolphin, and i have it looking the way I want it to but I'm having serious issues in the balance department. I've spent the last few hours moving weight/ lift points around but I can't seem to find the right combo to make this plane fly level. It will take off, but it seems front heavy despite having only 50% weight in the forward blocks. Also likes to stall a lot when pitched up past only like 20 degrees.
If you have any suggestions, please let me know. If you have a solution, here's a link to the plane: https://www.simpleplanes.com/a/eb8GT2/Douglas-Dolphin
Thank you for your help.
@F104Deathtrap Thank you! If you haven't seen them already, you should check out the two I added today!! I've been on an Inter-War kick lately...
Hey, in my haste to be a smarty-pants I forgot to tell you that your plane looks great, good job!
@F104Deathtrap Noted. And yes, 13. Its a bit steep but it virtually eliminated issues on take off.
@Sgtk 13 degrees?! Usually wings stall if the angle of attack is over 10. But if it works, it works. As for takeoffs, remember that the tail won't help at low speed, if you bring your throttle up slowly, and let the speed catch up to the throttle, you should notice that the nose feels less heavy.
@F104Deathtrap I do, and use it quite frequently although maybe not as effectively as I could. I did take the tail and make it bigger and also angled the fins down about 13 degrees and saw a good change in level flight, but I need to make some adjustments with the landing gear now so they stop dragging the front of the boat down on water takeoffs.
@Sgtk Do you have the Finetuner mod? If not, get it. It allows you to rotate anything on your plane to any angle you want, it can even rotate multiple things at the same time, super useful for complicated designs.
@F104Deathtrap Thank you for digging into it. I would like to do more seaplanes, so this is useful information.
@F104Deathtrap hehehe
It took me a lot (A @#&%ing LOT) of reading to figure out why seaplanes are so hard to fly level. It's because the center of thrust is so high up, it pulls the whole thing face-down, like someone pushing you by the back of your head. And it gets even worse if you suddenly gun the throttle at low speeds! The solution? A really, really powerful tail to counter all that pull.
What I do is I rotate the tail about 2 to 5 degrees (depending on the plane) so that the tail is constantly pulling the nose up. Or you could make the elevators trimmable (it's in the settings). It looks like @MaximusTheMinimus already beat me here, but hey, at least I typed out all this stuff that no one will read :)
Here you go