RE: Calculating CG for a Biplane
By "baloon on landing" I'm wondering if you mean that it wants to nose up after charging in to the landing. Any airplane will tend to nose up if it has extra airspeed. And having the CG on the forward side of things makes it worse because of the extra up trim needed to compensate for the forward CG.
If you can confirm that your model has a very strong nose up tendency when the airspeed comes up a bit you can try a couple of things.
First move the CG back and retrim for level flight. How far? Try some dives and release the stick. Watch how it recovers. For a model the size of the Lazy Ace I would suggest that a dive recovery from a 30 degree nose down dive at 1/2 throttle should take about 80 to 100 feet of height to recover between neutralizing of the stick to level at the bottom of the first pull up. If it happens any sooner than you're probably struggling with a too far forward CG.
Secondly learn to slow the model a bit more in the landing pattern by flying the model with some back stick pressure but not so much that it's on the verge of a stall. Many models will settle into a nice descent rate when flown at a slow speed like this. Practice a few mistakes high at first to get the hang of it. The idea is to avoid the stall by a wide margin but to not let the model drop into a shallow dive in the glide. Here again if your CG is quite far forward you're probably running a lot of down trim to avoid the nose high pitching when full throttle is added. That same down trim works against you at low throttle by forcing the model into a fast glide or even a shallow dive. Adding up elevator to flare before touchdown will turn that extra speed into a "balloon". The cure may be as simple as learning to add some up elevator trim to flatten the glide before you start your landing approach. But if you do be ready to push forward slightly on the stick if you decide to add power for a go around. That up trim will tend to make the model pitch up into a stronger climb than you're used to. Going back to the first trick to move the CG back and retrim the elevator will help to minimize this power off to power on difference but it won't eliminate it entirely.