Ledge, I epoxied it to the furthest aft former that the ele pushrods goes through. Yes, quotes are appropriate around "manual"
I maidened mine today. Taking out 4oz of weight was a mistake as the plane was tail heavy. It wasn't uncontrollable, but was extremely twitchy (pitch sensitive). Good news is it was a successful maiden in that it will fly again. Bad news is that the engine quit and with the tail heavyness my dead stick landing (not my first) wasn't my best. Result was two bent landing gear struts, scuffed spinner, and the thin fiberglass aft of where the cockpit/hatch clicks into place cracked on both sides and further aft on the underside of the fuselage (see photos). Easy fiberglass repair there. Might be able to straighten the struts. The wings are solid! No damage to where the gear mount, and not a single chip or crack to on the fiberglass. One of the retract mechanisms may be damaged... I'll need to run it through to confirm.
Overall impressions: plane is beautiful from any angle...ground or flight. It handles great on the ground. Takeoff roll was no problem. I put a bit of rudder trim in and with sufficient right stick it tracked straight without a problem...even with the left to right crosswind we had today. It handles fine in the air...I felt like another plane might have been tougher to control with a similar CG deficiency. Slower flight was relatively stable, considering. No instability in the roll axis. It's also reasonably tough except for the thin fiberglass in the aft fuselage/empennage. The plane touched down on the mains, and then nosed over and skidded on the spinner. Never did the tailwheel touch the ground.
Way forward: I'm going to add 6 oz of lead, bringing it up to 45-46 oz total, and will epoxy it in as far forward in the cowling as it will go. I'll repair/reinforce the fiberglass in the aft fuselage. I'll let you know what I need to do to repair the gear. Plan A is to straighten the struts. I also need to figure out why the engine quit. Possible overheat, but I ran it inside the garage for 10 min with no overheat. It quit after less than 5 total minutes of run time, including ground ops.
Heres how she looked just before takeoff:
Here's the fuselage damage...as you can see, it didn't damage the former, which was loose (in need of glue), as it turns out. That may have contributed, but hard to say:
