Hello,
I am designing a plane from scratch, and I have decided to use a simple bungee launch system. I have performed multiple bungee launches successfully, but today there was a very significant issue with the launch.
It was launched in FBWA. I was on the controls with someone else holding and releasing the plane. Upon release, I throttled up and pulled back on the pitch control. It started fine, but began to pitch up hard after detaching from the bungee. Once I noticed it pitching back, I pushed forward on the pitch stick as far as possible. The plane continued to travel upward until it stalled and eventually crashed from an unrecoverable dive. One error that I acknowledge is that I let up on the throttle soon after the plane detached from the bungee which likely contributed to loss of control authority.
After looking at the log, the plane was at more than a 60 degree pitch before the elevator flipped directions and attempted to pitch the plane down. I am wondering why the elevator (AETR.elevator) didn’t react more quickly to the pitch up that was happening? I feel like FBWA should’ve reacted quicker, especially since I was attempting to pitch forward as much as possible.
Any thoughts would be much appreciated. Some of the data from the incident is shown in the screenshot, but the log is also attached via the google drive link.
Thanks!
