Balancing . . .

I set about balancing a model airplane.  You must center the weight of the airplane around the center of gravity (CG) or will either be tail heavy or nose heavy.  Either one is bad, the former will usually result in a landing crash and the later will result in controllability issues.   Adept RC pilots that fly on the edge of balance tend to make their airplanes tail heavy and use control surfaces to accommodate the bad CG.

I had set the airplane up with mounting the servos in the aft end of the airplane moving weight aft because the engine is a tab bit heavy.  I also added some weight in the tail too.  Well found out the CG was to far aft and now have had to add weight in the front.  I had to add a couple of ounces of lead way up front.  But it is done now.  Glue the lead in place and reinstalled the fuel tank.  Now I have to add a small block to keep the tank from moving aft.

I will either add a popsicle stick across the rear of the tank or glue a block of balsa wood to hold the tank in place.  The block of balsa is an easier solution.  Probably do that.

Next I have to set up the aircraft.  It has both ailerons and flaps.  Usually one configures those to work together and when flaps are selected to work differently.  Flaps are usually up or down, don't do much in between.  Ailerons on the other hand move all over the place.  It takes a seven channel radio receiver to do this.  And a transmitter that can be programmed accordingly.  I have both.  But one has to sit down and select switches, change sensitivities and so on.  Takes a while to get it right.