While this bird is amazing, I find the flight dynamics questionable. I cant bank beyond a certain point in either direction or the plane will stall and lose control. I have yet to get it up to 80,000ft  before stalling it out or the engines just shutting off with plenty of fuel left. Other times, it will accelerate ridiculously fast and nose dive until it crashes, and there is nothing I can do to pull it out of the dive. It also becomes VERY unstable at moderate speeds (+/-500kts) at altitudes below 20,000ft..

And the other thing that really irritates me is the fact that when I look at the bird via tower view, the afterburner flames are completely misaligned and appear is if they are coming off the wings instead of the engines. Why pay money for this crap, when I can get a Freeware Blackbird which doesnt look as nice, but behaves much better in the air? Anyone who has this thing, experiencing this, and is there a fix or something? I want a refund.

PD87 wrote on Aug 20^th, 2007 at 5:06am:




The newer Alpha Blackbird is by far one of the most amazing birds in my hanger. Next time, before you take her up, read the Kneeboard "Reference" section. It'll explain how you're supposed to fly it.

The plane has some very strict limitations, both in reality, and modeled in the Alphasim model.

The SR-71 was never meant to be maneuverable, thus banking in certain degrees isn't necessary, however it is possible to achieve barrel rolls and such with care.

The Engines randomly cutting out, and the nose-dive are easily explainable if you would have taken a few minutes to read the documents  See that nifty little Angle of Attack indicator right in front of your face on the panels? That can never go above 15*, no matter what your speed is, or the engines lose airflow and stall, while the plane enters a nose-dive that not even the best USAF pilots at the time could correct (I believe the common procedure when that happened was "Eject immediately").

The Blackbird was a very unstable plane subsonically 


I can outline your basic flight-plan for take-off and climb to FL800.

1. Take off. Increase pitch to 20-30* and climb to 15-20,000 feet. Decrease pitch if necessary.

2. Climb to 30-33,000 feet and level out. At this point, you should be breaking the sound barrier for the first time. (Note: Try FL300 first. If you cannot seem to break the sound barrier, climb to FL330, and do a short dive. This should suffice). Accelerate to M1.2, then continue climbing at around 15-20* of pitch, maintaining desired heading.

3. If necessary during your climb to FL800, level out once in a while and accelerate a bit. NEVER GO OVER MACH 3.0 UNTIL 80,000 FEET. The docs included in this package made it quite clear that the plane should never do that.

4. You should now be around FL800. Level out, put the throttle in place (Not at full, that will overspeed you at around M3.5).

All you have to do now is steer the plane via autopilot or manual. And avoid pulling more than a few positive G's, avoid pulling any negative G's, and watch your AoA indicator so that you don't kill your engines by accident.

Nice, I know I should have read the instructions

I had no idea this plane Actually behaved this way in reality, just thought I purchased a DUD lol. This will be fun, thanks for the info.

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Right. It's not so funny when you're spinning out of control, the plane itself is about to snap in half, and you've lost complete control of the plane going Mach 3.2 at over 70,000 feet