Now that I think about it I also can't recall if anyone has mentione wing and tail incidence in the thread up till now. I simply can't stress this strongly enough, if you are trusting the ARF manufacturers to sell you straight, warp free planes out of the box then you are going to be buying stock in an asprine company.

NONE of the ARF's I have assembled have had their incidence correct, all had to be tweaked a bit to get them where they needed to be. warps are alos a concern and the use of an incidence meter can reveal their presence. If you have a warped panel or a mis-aligned stab(s) NO AMOUNT of tweaking/prop changing/practice will cure the problem.

As for the lateral balance it is crucial to get it as dead on as possible. I have experimented by adding as little as a 1/2 ounce to a wingtip and it turned a docile, easy to 3D plane into a handful that was much more difficult to hover and harrier smoothly.

Another mistake I see pretty often anymore is the assumption that this is easy and just because all of the other planes a guy has flown presented little to zero problems that they will all be that way. Sure there are some designs that are pure garbage but most simply need to be tweaked and massaged a bit to make them shine. If you got good results on the first try you were either lucky or you are easily satisfied with a plane that could potentially fly much better but we'll nver know because it's fine as it is...I know a LOL of guys that are that way, I'm not one of them.