Help! I need help understanding center of lift and center of pressure.

[GreaterAviation]

So I lost interest in aviation for about a month and I forgot what I mostly learned.
How does center of gravity and center of lift work? I know that if the center of lift is aft of the CG then the lift the wing creates will pitch the nose down. I have seen that horizontal stabilizers have airfoils so wouldn't that create more lift behind the CG which would pitch the nose downwards more? And if the horizontal stabilizer gets downwards lift from a negative angle of attack, then in a dive wouldn't the wing also get a negative angle of attack?

 

[Hondo76251]

Not sure I'm following entirely, but I'll take a stab at it...

In most cases the horizontal stabilizers don't inherently have lift in one direction or another, though they can have a teardrop "airfoil" shape sometimes.

You normally use the elevator controls to induce lift in the horizontal stabilizer either up OR down. That is why, in a traditionally laid out plane, it is important to have the CG and center of lift of the main wing as close as possible. If you have too much lift aft of the CG the plane will want to nose down and the elevator will have to be creating lift "downwards" (ie, pulling "up" on the elevator controls) to compensate for that. That is also why we tend to favor a "nose heavy" plane vs a tail heavy one. If there is too much lift generated fwd of CG then the plane will want to pitch up. This is much more likely to induce stalls and other nastiness... "Nose heavy planes fly poorly, tail heavy planes fly once"