RE: Balancing a canard or tandem wing biplane for initial flight.
Thanks for the replies. Somehow the responses are not logical. Here is why.
With conventional aircraft (wing in front, elevator in rear), a tail-heavy airplane puts too much authority on the elevator which makes the elevator too sensitive and the plane becomes difficult to impossible to control. Move the weight forward, the elevator loses sensitivity and the plane becomes better "behaved". Move the weight too far forward, and the elevator becomes insensitive and the plane becomes difficult to fly.
With a canard, the plane is backward with the wing in the rear and the elevator in front. Logic would suggest that too much nose weight would make a canard difficult to control like a tail heavy conventional plane. Elevator would have too much authority. Move the weight back and the fore mounted elevator would lose authority.
A tandem-wing biplane is yet another beast. Two equal sized wings located on either end of a fuse seems to be naturally stable where ever the CG is located between the wings.
Elson