Are you saying that AFT fuel's effect on COG is negligible?
To the best of my knowledge and experience in flying the 152 in-game is that the aft tank, empty or full, has barely any noticable impact on its handling, especially when compared to noticable results from draining any of the other three tanks (but those tanks are also signifigantly larger). In terms of inducing a tail-first stall or recovering from it, I'd err closer to the aft tank being full or empty having absolutley no effect in those two departments in AH (which aint right).
Film!!
I putzed around in it for a bit last night and had a typical evening flying it. Induced a few instabilities that I recovered from repeatedly (the first one always being the trickiest, hehe). But nothing terrible, all were recovered using flaps and throttle only and I had an empty aft tank each time.
Only had one real odd-ball instability I wish I had recorded just for reference here. In going with assuming pilot error above anything with the model or game, <snipped>
Riding along with the lynch mob that likes going after those who self-admit a fault or guilt without reading beyond the first sentences of their statement (kick 'em when they're already down) much?
1) Because things don't make sense to you doesn't mean something is wrong 
.
2) It's illogical to make a conclusion that something is wrong without valid supporting premises. More specifically the argument appears to be this:
A) the ta-152 has handling issues
B) the cg of the 152 is wrong
This is a non sequitur. B does not follow A. What's missing are valid premises that link A to B. To do so means explaining how the handling issues demonstrate cg is wrong. I haven't seen any VALID supporting premises which lead to conclusion B.
3) As to clearing up the "obvious misunderstanding", others like Stoney, FLS, & mtnman have tried to point folks in the right direction but the misunderstanding is obviously still not obvious to you and some others . I even left a hint by mentioning the concept of the neutral point. Should we do more to clear up the misunderstanding? After 10 years of being on this board I now follow the philosophy espoused by Pascal...
"“People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come in to the mind of others.”
So where do you start with convincing yourself of the misunderstanding? I think Stoney has it right.You need to revisit the factors that impact the stability of an airplane.
That was such a vague and unhelpful post, good sir. You're basicly saying everything I've already read and taught myself on the matter is what it is, thus my understanding is not flawed - something I'm not opposed to, especialy when I assume I'm surrounded by a community of people more capable at such things than myself, but that I will always be a bit naturally inclined to defend.
Only thing I got out of your post is that I now need to ask you, "why are you convinced, yourself, that those of us here in these threads raising this issue all have a vast and glaring missunderstanding?".
For a fact I have never myself defended that it has handling issues, perhaps speculated with it as others suggested it, but the 152 IMO is one of THE BEST handling aircraft in the game with its massive wingspan, rudder and engine/torque. But I do know I have said that it has extremely unstable flight characteristics and possibley something miss modeled with it's CoG and fuel/weight distributions that are also in place hand-in-hand with extremely over-stable characteristics (damned if I can explain almost half the stalls I get into in a 152, but damned if I don't get out of them almost every single time, tail-heavy or not, also.).
To make a very generalized statement, if the CG moves so far aft, the elevator begins to run out of control authority, especially with respect to inducing nose-down pitch. When this happens, pitch trim does get very sensitive, but most importantly, if the aircraft gets into a spin, a beyond-the-aft-limit CG condition can make stall recovery almost impossible, as the elevator does not have the ability to lower the Angle of Attack on the wing. Similarly, with the CG beyond the forward limit, the elevator can run out of nose-up pitch authority. This can have less severe consequences, but can also result in very dangerous flight characteristics.
So, when we say that the CG is too far aft, we should see two symptoms: pitch instability and worsened stall/spin recovery characteristics. When it is too far forward, the plane becomes too stable--so much so that the elevator cannot make the nose pitch up.
Now, that being said, its obvious that the 152 exhibits some characteristics that suggest the aircraft has a bit of an aft-heavy CG. That's not to say that's its too far aft, just that the pitch instability and lack of effective stall/spin recovery characteristics are symptoms. It is possible for the aircraft to be safely operated in these conditions, just that the pilot needs to be mindful to stay inside the envelope. That's not to say that the 152 is correct--just that in order to actually make the contention that the CG is too far aft, more analysis should be done.
Thank you Stoney! So then, as I had assumed, an aircraft's CoG stays about constant, given no weight distribution or fuel distribution changes (you mention it shifting) during flight? And when the CoG is too far aft, "the aircraft should experience worsened stall recoverys", is that in reference to the lack of pitch authority (I agree, pitch authority is useless until you get it pointed in the right direction with some air traveling around it) or that there is more to it working against us recovering than a lack of pitch authority and the heavy tail leading the way for us to the ground (overall I disagree that the stalls are hard to recover from, and perhaps that is realted, but they are repeatabley easy to recover from, although not as easy as other stalls in other AC)?
