Best Wing Designs

[76561199637406677]

From my experience, a delta-wing with a v-tail is the superior design. For some reason it has the most lift and stability. What do you guys think?

[Lisias]

It depends of the drag. Some wings are more draggy than others.

Usually I agree on somewhat heavy crafts (as almost every space plane), but when the aircraft is no that heavy, cantilever wings usually have a better lift/drag ratio - at least, on the crafts I do.

Interesting enough... My cargo planes are all (until this moment) high cantilever wings (lower wings are more unstable, and a cumbersome when loading cargo most of the time). But I never tried a high delta-wing for cargo planes before... Something to try out.

[g0rml3ss]

Honestly depends on the aircraft size, I prefer swept wings myself especially on what I consider my "Stubby" range, cockpit attached to tail, fuel and engines attached to the sides.

For planetary craft ( on kerbin or similar) these are incredibly stable and you can get some pretty cool looking craft by just rotating them back a touch.

[ee]

Yup, a small delta or a swept wing with a V-tail, especially a V on a lifting body is pretty optimal for very high speeds (over mach 2). The handling is also great all around.

T tails can also be pretty nice in combination with those long skinny lightweight wings (which looks like it's somewhere between the wing of a F104 and that of a U2). However, the delta and swept lifting body V or U is far better as speeds go well above mach 2. So this arrangement is better for airliners and airplanes, and less suited usually for spaceplanes.

[ee]

I love me those flapperons (ailerons serving as flaps) except they have this terrible effect when approaching stall speed. The KSP flight dynamics actually correctly predicts what should happen in real life.

At speeds near stall higher angle of attack of flight surfaces such as these trailing parts don't increase the lift... you actually get less lift and just extra drag. So (if flapperons are your only roll control surfaces) using the flight stick to roll right actually rolls you in the opposite direction (left) plus yaws you to the side on which you want to lift the wing.