spirit pilot

I'm finishing up my Bird of Time ARF. Doing a preliminary cg has shown me that it will that the plane will take several ounces of nose weight to balance. I have an E-Flite 15 motor in the nose, and am powerin the plane with a three cell twenty two hundred lipo. Is this normal for this ARF

skylark-flier

First, you've got my congrats for picking a great design to work with. The BoT has been around for a long time and is a proven great flier.

Now, my own BoT is a kit-built, as was its predecessor. I have no direct experience with the ARF version but I've heard just a couple negatives:
#1 the rear of the ARF fuse is rather weak, as compared to the kit-built, and has been known to break off just in front of the tail-group in the event of a ground loop during landing.
#2 the tail is heavier even than the kit-built version, which is already tail-heavy as originally designed. When the plane was designed it was intended to be a super-long-duration thermal sniffer and was actually designed to use ballast, the amount depending on local conditions.

So, she was designed to be tail-heavy, but she's much better if you use the nose weight (like most everybody else that I know does on a BoT). If you get the CG at or just barely behind the main wing spar you'll do just fine in nearly any kind of conditions. The original planes, in this configuration, are a bit sensitive during launch - using a winch or high-start you usually need a fair amount of down elevator while on a launch line - but once they're released from the line they're just fine, and GREAT thermal planes. Your own plane, with an electric motor, won't have this tendency to balloon unless you really punch the throttle hard during your launch. Just be ready to apply a bit of down on your initial few seconds of flight and you won't have any problem at all.

Enjoy your BoT, they're HUGE fun!!