Kurt, you're getting hung up on the sematics of what folks are typing. I'm sure that Jim meant "if nothing ELSE is changed.....". Just read between the lines a little, OK?

Onewasp, so many things come into play when you're looking at model performance and steadiness in the wind. There's roll and pitch damping, mass distribution, pitch stability margin and likely a few others. Roll and pitch damping and mass distribution plays a big part in turbulent wind behavior. A model with heavier extremities will be displaced less and slower by wind direction and velocity changes than a lightly built model. Such a model will look more "stable" in turbulent conditions. But once accelerated into a displacing velocity it'll be harder to get it under control and back to where you want it to be. Like on landing approches where you're working the path to conform to a rather narrow approach corridor to land where you want and not where the model thinks it should be. When you're coming into a touchdown a lighter model will kick around more but at the same time it takes a lot less to stop it and less control input to correct it. It'll LOOK nervous as heck but if you sort of average out the "palsy" it seems to have it'll actually be easier to keep it in the approach corridor. Being lighter and able to respond to power changes more easily, or having a higher power to weight ratio in the case of your weight matched examples, the "lighter" model can also deal with the airspeed changes brought on by the wind velocity gradient in that last 10 feet and deal with any sudden turbulence velocity issues with less drastic inputs.

The pitch stability margin comes into play as well. Models trimmed closer to being neutrally stable will respond with much less nose rising and dropping to the sudden localized airspeed changes. Again the flight like pundits will nod knowingly and say "that baby sure don't balloon much.... ". This tendency to "balloon" is strictly due to a higher pitch stability margin. With a higher margin the model is going to react more strongly to speed varitions. This makes for a fine behaviour in a traner where the student just dove it as it'll return to level flight more quickly. However it's a bad thing for aerobatic models or those flown in blustery turbulent conditions. But your pattern and 3D models will both be excellent on this count.

I'm not sure I'd class these charactaristics as "penetration" since it's more about cutting through turbulence. Although like so many abused terms I've heard many a flight line pundit describe a heavy model flying in rough conditions as "penetrating well". To the bystanders on the ground this may well be the case. But to the pilot the model seems stable enough until something more major hits it and then he needs to deal with the effects in a much stronger manner than the minor jiggles that a lighter model undergoes in the same turbulence and where only smaller or no corrections are typically required. The heavier model in particular will often feel "sluggish" if the disturbance also suddenly reduced the airspeed.

When it comes down to it I'd rather have a lighter model that kicks around more but that is more controllable for correcting and is more tolerant of the often sudden airspeed changes that occur on such days. And I often do so. I actually love "storm" flying in such conditions as long as it's not some snazzy new scale model or something where I have far too many hours involved or where it's too new to know how it'll behave. But the ragged old sporty model? BRING IT ON BABY ! ! ! !

Does that sort of describe your findings?