Hi Lnewqban,
you bring up good, well takenpoints, all of which ran through my mind as well . thearrangement to "buddy-box" also included some time with a trainer plane first, the club has a few that are set up just for the purpose of breaking in greenhorns like me (believe me, i make noclaims to retaining muchmore than a rudimentary idea about flying an rc planeafter 40 years!).... i'm well aware it's not like riding a bike!
my thoughts about theincedence as about the same as yours....leave it as is and see how much trim it'll wantfirst, thenmake adjustments to get rid of the largetrim inputs
i've already discussedthe mods/scale-up and initial flight of my plane and the consesus is that it shouldfly, as itwas pointed outto me thatwhat i built was, for all practical purposes,a mid-star40 with a T-tail andjust bit more "pylon-racer" looks. i set out to end up with exactly that. i liked the mid-star, but wanted more pylon racer looks.i suppose i could have just bought a mid-star kitandadded the cosmetics to make it more racer looking, but i enjoyand have a good understanding ofthe "designing/building" part of the hobby maybe even a bit more than the flying part...i'vealways been that way,... abuild-it-rather-than-buy- it type,... maybe to fault,... as ultimatly, the goal is to fly, where i sort of look at the flying as the "by-product" of the effort put into the designing and building of themodel.i have no reservations about piling it up if i built something wrong, or it not flying very good because it's so far deviated from the original design, that goes with the territory!