For what it's worth, I stripped out my crashed Top Flite FW yesterday and decided to look things over to see where I could lose some tail weight and found many places I could have cut back without losing strength. On my plane I had a sliding canopy and had the servo mounted in the tail section so there was one thing I could have moved to balance the plane without adding lead in the nose. I will build another Top Flite plane some day but one thing for sure, I'll cut whatever weight I can if I plan on fiberglassing it which I probably will.
Larry