I bought a Modeltech Great Planes at a recent swap meet. This plane has a reputation for being VERY tail heavy. When I opened it up, I found the previous owner put the receiver battery in front of the firewall and 1lb-4oz of lead weight also in front of the firewall. That's an aweful lot of weight for a 40-size airplane. I haven't flown it, but it must fly like a brick with all that weight n it. I decided I didn't want all that weight in the plane, so I extended the firewall forward 1-3/8" to get it balanced with just the battery and the Magnum .52 engine. Purists won't like that because the plane is not as snub-nosed as the original Great Planes, but for me it's a good trade-off and the plane still looks good.

The next problem was this plane also has a reputation for being quite squirrelly on the ground (pronounced tendancy for ground loops). I installed a cheap gyro on the rudder to help hold it straight when taking off/landing.

The last problem is wing incidence. Relative to the hor. stabilizer, the bottom wing is 0 degrees and the top wing is minus 1 degree. The manual makes no reference what-so-ever to what this should be, and I have found some calculations on the web that are well beyond what I understand. Does anyone know what the wing incedence for this plane is supposed to be or better yet, what works best on this biplane?