Somebody said they come out tail heavy? Really?

Mine flew ok out of the box. I think I opened the box around July '07. I balanced it about a half inch aft of where the main gear are held in the wing. That was about where the book says to place the CG. Like I said, it flew ok, but really didn't want to knife edge or snap roll. I never bothered to run the measurement through geistware.com because the Tiger has been around a LONG time and I figured they'd have the CG pegged pretty good.

Well, the other day I ran the numbers and found out how conservative the new manufacturer is with the CG. Don't worry a bit about any CG that's not more than about 4.75" back. Middle of the winter, I moved the battery pack to the rear of the equipment bay, under the wing hold down bolts basically. It snapped a bit better and didn't lose altitude as much in KE. I still didn't bother to run the numbers yet. For fun one spring night I doubled the elevator chord. It snapped better, but of course didn't KE any better. Well, like I said, I ran the numbers the other day. And decided that I hadn't paid the little girl sufficient attention. I picked out a piece of lead that weighed .8oz and glued the sucker inside the fuselage just ahead of the rudder hinge line. Whoo hah........ Nice. Still didn't bother to check the CG because you really don't need to if you're working with known flight performance. I had already cut the elevator throw on low rates to tune the new larger elevator, so had not a worry in the world about the dreaded TAIL HEAVY DANGER.

After seeing how nicely almost an ounce of lead did for the flight performance, I stuck another .8oz back there. She flies excellently well now. Decently quick snap rolls, but not too quick. And KE is solid. The CG is about 4.75" back now.

You got to remember that the Tigers have big tails. Yeah, sort of sounds like a joke, but they do have pretty decently large horizontal area back there, and "back there" is decently far back. So you get a lot of pitch stability from those largish tail feathers.

Do not worry a bit about rebalancing a model with known flight characteristics. That is, if you have reliable info like geistware.com supplies, and you don't go crazy with the weight. And you do need to be careful and accurate checking the CG if that's the way you're going about it. I've got some years doing this and knew that an ounce would be very safe to test with MY Tiger60. And wound up with 1.6oz back there and an airplane that is now flying excellently. And safely.

If you either move a CG back on a model you've flown already OR choose to start with the aft most recommended CG location when building one, keep in mind that the elevator will be effective. Expect for the airplane to respond to elevator and you'll be ok. Set the elevator throws with a conservative low rate throw and you'll be more than ok. But do pay attention to check CG location accurately and with some decent numbers. No balancing "with a little nose down tilt" is going to cut it. Balance level and you know right where it is. Being accurate is how you do a CG "safely".