When in doubt just use an online CG calculator and be sure you have it right. It only takes a minute to make the measurements you need, and you can be confident that you'll have the plane set up right when you are done.

dce21b - It's always better to start a new thread when you have a new question. But I'll give you the answers you need. First, you have to put the wing on something that will let it pivot freely. A flat piece of wood won't do that. Your fingertips are better, but still not all that precise. I built a small rack with triangular shaped pieces sticking up for the wing to sit on (tops are rounded so they don't poke the covering). That lets me stand back and see how the plane is sitting instead of holding it and trying to figure it out. As for your plane, a dropping tail at low speed normally means a very tail heavy plane. You are lucky you were able to repair it after its first flight, because most wind up all in pieces. As for how nose heavy is too nose heavy, flying the plane tells you that. If you can't hold enough up elevator to keep the plane in its flare when you land, you're too nose heavy. That's enough to know for a trainer, but when you move to aerobats, you'll look at things like inverted flight, behavior in uplines and downlines, which way it pulls in knife edge flight, and so on for setting the CG right. Personally, I've never liked the advice new pilots get to set their trainers nose heavy. Yes, it's better to be nose heavy than tail heavy, but that advice is only good for one flight after which the CG should be moved. What I'll suggest is that you start in the middle of the manufacturer's recommendation, then fly the plane. If you have already soloed, do a few landing passes at 25-30 feet so you can get a feel for how the plane stalls with a little altitude left for recovering. Do the throttle off and fly straight test. When you chop the throttle, assuming your thrustline is set right, you should see the plane continue to fly straight for a few seconds and then gently start dropping its nose. With an elevator throw that is comfortable for flying circuits and doing loops, you'll want to be able to hold the nose up with the throttle off until the plane get so slow that it mushes the nose down. You'll have to be quick on the throttle to recover from that stall, but that's a pretty simple thing. If you can't hold the nose up enough to get the plane to slow down, you are too nose heavy. If the plane flies straight for a few seconds then raises the nose on its own, you are tail heavy (not likely to happen if you use the right tool and follow the manufacturer's recommendation on CG). A neutrally stable plane will let you hold the nose up until it is nearly motionless in the air, which is then followed by a very sudden nose drop. That's not a "bad" CG setting overall, but it can let beginners get into trouble when flaring for landings because it gives you so much elevator control you can force the wing into a bad stall when you'e still too high off the ground. The smooth stall of a slightly nose heavy plane will keep you out of trouble until you have good control over your landings.