I've just done some pencil/paper work to get a better understanding of what I can do with a Sukhoi31 of mine. It's flight has been tuned with CG moves for 5-6 months now. It started out with the CG around 3.5" back and has it back about 4.3" now.

It very definitely shows the ability to more quickly do snappy maneuvers, where the wing is stalled to execute the trick. But be darened if I've noticed the slower stall speeds. Why?

Because for almost every one of us, we really can't tell the difference between 15mph and 18mph. Yeah, moving the CG changes those critical speeds but darned if any of us can usually see the difference. If we could, there wouldn't be a single case of landing gear being driven up into the fuselage on those "drop from 10feet" landings that we see almost every weekend at the flying field.

The CG on the Sukhoi can be moved over an inch and the sucker still seems to land about the same speed. Why? Because the wind speeds it sees on any given landing vary more than how much the Vmin changes from CG changes. And most of us simply can't make accurate use of a 3mph difference in Vmin. Yeah, it's there, but who can see it?

It's one of those things that's kewl to discuss, but not much good for more than that.