[Yoda voice] Strong is comedy riding in the Force today.... [/Yoda voice]

What a bunch of chameleons....

Stratman, you MUST be able to set the elevator trim for hands off flight for the dive test to mean anything. Having said that it sure sounds like you're on the ragged edge. Flying slower allows the use of very rearward CG's at or even slightly behind the neutral point. Let the speed come up and you've got a Nervous Nellie on your hands. Speed is also the villian when you use 3D type throw angles. Keep it low and the model will be a LOT smoother. If the model speeds up just BREATH on the sticks and no more.

Upping the ration of the exponential settings can help but at the root it sounds like you just need to adjust to the new reality of flying a model of this sort.

And I'm not sure what you meant about the longer tail moment messing up your controls by "stalling" the surfaces but that just can't happen. With the reaward CG and longer moments comes lower efforts for the tail surfaces to achieve the same effect. I think you're seeing something else at work. Perhaps the stronger control effects are confusing you. Looking at movies of 3D models the sudden massive increase in angle of attack that can be generated by the full measure of 3D throws is enough to completley stall and stop forward motion. But this has little to do with stalling the tail surfaces themselves. Even regular model controls are stalled when the angle gets much, if any, over 15 to 20 degrees of deflection. But there IS lift post stall so it doesn't matter as long as the big fan on the front can haul the baggage.

Oh, and a bunch of years ago one of the magazines had an article reviewing and offering to sell stick on CG's so you could put this important item whereever you wanted it without all the pesky nose weight and stuff to mess up your model. I'll leave it up to you guys to guess which month the issue was....