ORIGINAL: Spacey
ORIGINAL: UltimateFlyer12
I have to disagree completely with Spacey and the reason is simple But I'll quote the designer of the Boxxer Jeremy Chinn
"While you are setting the CG, don’t forget the vertical and lateral CG’s. The plane should balance tip to tip (lateral), and should balance top to bottom. The lateral and vertical CG’s of most airplanes is on a line through the crankshaft of the motor, through the wing and the horizontal centerlines."
Funfly profiles are very forgiving. Build it straight and without warps and forget all this other BS!
My best suggestion is take a plane with the motor nicely offset like they normally are with some right thrust and balance it your method. Now go back and use Dion's method to balance it and go back home and see where the lateral ended up. Definitely not in the same line. Now also as we know not a single model is built exactly perfectly so the right side of the plane and the left side would hardly ever match up exactly area wise when looking at it from above. Also the deflection of the elevator halves would never be exactly the same in flight unless you have a rock solid control system. That is why I said to use the pick up thing at home to get yourself into the ballpark and then fall back to Dion's method as that'll get you the closest if you can pull up elevator perfectly without putting aileron in. If you can do this and you don't see one wing dropping the whole time but rather the wings taking turns and so on you know you have a well balanced profile laterally.
I hope I made sense.
Spacey What you say makes sense to a point. If I was trying to trim a 2 meter Pattern plane or a large IMAC type plane sure I see your point. With my 4 1/2 lb 3D profile There is a easier way. Jeffro on the first page described how Morris hobbies instructed how to balance your profile. That method is great. My method grabbing the prop (with 2deg right thrust) and lifting the front wheels off the ground and hold the plane stable with the tail wheel and let the wing drop also does the trick. Just a little breese will throw a 40 size profile's wing around.