• First, obtain a cockpit. It should be pre-generated.
  
  
• Build your fuselage. It is equivalent to your ship's body. You can make it in normal blocks(under structural) or fuel tanks(under propulsion). Build it into a reasonable shape! Remember, you can mirror your ship through the menu bar! Also rotate parts through the rotate menu.
  
  
• Now add the engines. You can add jet engines facing the back of the plane, or propeller engines facing the front. Remember to provide plenty of thrust, and add intakes if you're using a jet engine! If you plan to attach your engines to your wings you can skip this step.
  
  
• Time to slap on those wings and control surfaces. Just drag them on. Double click it to get a better view. Click on the "wings" section on the side of the screen. There are tweakables there. The dihedral is the angle of the wing, the fuel tweakable the amount of fuel, the control surfaces the shape of the surfaces, the control direction, and the invert option. Also if you drag round the triangular things on the wing, you can change the shape. Same applies for the stabilizers. Remember to place vertical stabilizers vertically, and horizontal ones horizontally.
  
  
• At this point toggle the display of the COM, COL and COT.As it’s your first plane it must be messy… I prefer not to look! Anyway, make sure everything is aligned and that your COM is in front of your COL with a gap of at least one block (it’s your first plane!). Try to stick to a gap not too big to have a maneuverable plane.
  
  
• Put on some landing gears, and accessories or whatever you'd like. You can use stationary/folding gears. You can also add passenger ragdolls, corners to reduce drag, and etc. Remember, your COM must be between your front and rear gears or your plane will fall on the runway. And I know that you put your rear landing gears at the very end of your plane, STOP! You won’t take off if you do so, place them close to your COM to allow you plane to pitch up on the runway.
  
  

• Hit the "fly" button! You should load onto the runway.
  
  
• First, hit "c" to get a comfortable view and move your mouse(clicked) around to navigate around. And scroll to zoom in/out
  
  
• Either A) Move the left joystick up or B) Hit "2" to throttle up. You should start accelerating off, and away!
  
  
• Once you get to a comfortable speed, either A) Move the right joystick down or B) hit "S" or "up arrow key". This should lift you up, up, and away!
  
  
• Soon after you get liftoff, punch "g" to put the gears in(if you have retractable ones!)
  
  
• Cut your throttle by A) Moving the left joystick down or B) hitting "1" to maybe 40-60% to conserve fuel.
  
  
• You can roll by A) Moving the right joystick sideways or B) punching A, D/Left, Right
  
  
• You can pitch by A) Moving the right joystick up/down or B) via W,S/Up, Down
  
  
• You can yaw by A) Moving the left joystick sideways or B) clicking Q/E
  
  
• Fly around! Beware, too much G-Force can damage your plane!
  
  
• Try clicking F10...
  
  
• When coming in for landing, align yourself with the runway well. You should come in slow and steady, with perhaps 10-30% of thrust. Come in at an angle not too steep, 5-20 degrees is optimal. Don't forget to hit "G" for gear!
  
  
• When close to the ground, kill your thrust. get closer to the ground. You want minimum vertical velocity.
  
  
• When landing, make sure your rear gear hits the ground first! It is okay(For most planes) if the front/back gear hit the ground at the same time, but only front gear is a no-no. And hit "B" for brakes.

Note: These instuctions will not work if you have re-mapped the controls

Just in case you forget...

• C - Change camera (Fixed Chase, Free Chase, Cockpit)
  
• B - Cut throttle and stop wheels from spinning.
  
• Shift, Ctrl - Decrease, increase throttle.
  
• A, D - Aileron
  
• W, S - Elevator
  
• Q, E - Rudder
  
• Left/Right - Aileron
  
• Up/Down - Elevator
  
• Left Mouse Button - Pan camera
  
• Mouse Scroll Wheel - Zoom (when in chase camera modes)
  
• Mouse Click and Drag The Screen - Rotate first person view when in cockpit mode.
  
• On-Screen Controls - Right stick controls elevator and aileron, left stick controls throttle and rudder: Mode 2 transmitter configuration
  
• NumbPad Enter - Autopilot
  
• Click and drag VTOL slider or Z, X - VTOL Forward and Reverse
  
• NumbPad 1-8 - Activation Groups (For things like detachers and turning one engine on at a time)

All landing gear but the rear landing gear have a setting that lets them turn. Just glick the gear icon, and on the menu it will say . Change the value so it says . This allows your planes landing gear to turn like a car's wheels, making it easier to control on the ground.

You can adjust sheen (flat, semi-gloss, gloss) and custom colors only in a custom theme. Other preset themes must be used with their current color palette.
Keep in mind that the undo button works w/painting as well...you will likely accidentally paint parts.
You may need to temporarily remove parts to paint those underneath (especially under the cockpit).
Custom Themes

• When you adjust a color, all parts which have been painted with that color will be updated. This is handy if you have originally painted your wings w/a gloss black and decide you want a semi-gloss...less black...or maybe lime green. All parts will be updated w/o having to repaint them all.
  
• Switching between themes will change your aircraft to match that theme (based on part type).
  
• Some parts have different trim options (wheels, engines, cockpit, wings, etc)...they are places on a part which can be colored differently than the rest of it. Experiment w/this to put fine details on the aircraft.

Build half of your aircraft first (including the fuselage), and then use the mirror tool (click on a part, then click the icon which looks like a semi-circle arrow, then on the one that looks like an open book) to mirror wings (and other parts) across the cockpit. This is very important, and one you will use often. You normally create wings on half of the airplane first, and then click on the innermost wing/part to mirror it across the fuselage (main cockpit). To make adjustments after this point, delete the entire wing on one side, adjust the other wing and then re-mirror to ensure your aircraft is symmetrical.

Pylons are primarily attached to wings (use them to attach landing gear, engines, or anything to a wing): when a wing is adjusted after a pylon is placed, the pylon will need to be re-positioned on the wing.

Wing settings. You can adjust your wing from “symmetric”, “semi-symmetric” and “flat-bottom”. If you are wondering what the difference is, IRL this is it. Now how does it affect your plane? As all your wings in SP have the same angle of attack, if your wing have more camber, it will lift more. Meaning: “flat-bottom” lift more than “semi-symmetric” that lift more than “symmetric”. But hold on young designer! I already see you run and change all your designs to “flat bottom”, just don’t. Those options are here to allow you to balance your plane (assumption made here, post on the subreddit if you can prove that it brings more), it will require some testing to choose the right configuration for a leveled flight at nominal speed. Remember, to master this configuration imagine that you suspend your plane with wires attached to the wings, if you increase the camber, you’re pulling harder on the wire.

Your plane flips instantly after take off: From the beginner's guide, your COM is behind your COL. It also can happen if your COM is slightly in front of your COL but your COT is on the rear of the plane.

1. Move your wings back so the COL is well behind the COM
   Your plane pitch is really bad; gaining or losing altitude is hell. There are two possible causes:
   
   
2. Your COM is too far from your COL. Closing them will improve maneuverability.
   Your control surfaces are too small or too close to the COM. Remember, the torque applied for pitching will increase with the distance you put between control surfaces and the COM.
   Your plane pitches up by itself and it bothers you:
   
   
3. Move your COT in a higher position (around the same level than your COM).
   Try to switch your vertical stabilizers from "symmetric" to "semi-symmetric" or "flat bottom".
   Try to switch your main wings to "symmetric" if the middle of the whole surface of the wing (careful if your wings are swept) is in front of the COM. If not, the effect will be reversed.
   Your plane pitches down by itself and it bothers you:
   
   
4. Reduce the gap between your COM and your COL
   Move your COT in a lower position (around the same level than your COM).
   Try to switch your vertical stabilizers from "symmetric" to "flat bottom" if you have a canard configuration.
   Try to switch your main wings to flat bottom if the middle of the whole surface of the wing (careful if your wings are swept) is in front of the COM. If not, the effect will be reversed.

Your plane yaws left or right all on its own:

1. Check to make sure your vertical stabilizers are set to "symmetric."
   Re-mirror your aircraft. Make sure all the pieces on the opposite side of the blue plane are deleted otherwise you'll have overlapping parts which weigh down half of your plane or cause explosions.
   
   
2. Check to make sure the drag on each side of your plane is the same. If it is not and you're sure your plane is symmetric, remove any cockpits and rotate the whole plane until it is back to its starting position, then put the cockpits back on. (This forces the game to recalculate drag)
   Your plane won't take off before the end of the runway but flies good afterwards : your rear landing gears are too far behind your COM, they must be close to allow the front wheel(s) lift off.
   
   
3. Remember: the rear landing gear must act as a fulcrum during liftoff so you wont be able to take off if your rear gear is too close to your pitch control surfaces.
   You can also add canards to the front of your plane but remember to invert the control surfaces on them since they are in front of the COM
   Your plane spins and crashes as soon as you make a turn : your vertical stabs are not sufficient. You must have at least one vertical stab behind your COM, the closer to the COM the bigger.
   
   
4. Your elevators are inverted (pitching down will pitch you up and vice versa) even if they move in a regular way. Your wing must be delta with a really long chord. The force produced by elevators is applied at 25% of the chord of the wing (front), so if you have a delta wing it's likely that this point is in front of your COM, this is why it's inverted. Try to move your elevators on the tip of the wing where the chord is usually shorter. For a better explanation, please look this picture (the "AC" in the picture is the point where the force is applied).
   
   

Links

• SimplePlanes Website[www.simpleplanes.com]
  
• SimplePlanes Reddit
  
• Further Reading

Sources

• SP Wiki