RE: Effect of too much nose weight
I've seen lots of advice on the online forum to run planes nose heavy for fear of being tail heavy. I heeded it too, for awhile. The truth is, it only takes one or two trimming flights to get the CG exactly right, and the reward is a plane you don't have to fight. Start in the middle of the recomended CG range, and see how it flies. If it's twitchy, stalls suddenly in tests, and seems to go beyond your controls, then go forward. If it's mushy, drops its nose quickly in a stall test, and doesn't want to flair on landing, then go back. Aerobatic CG tuning goes further, but for basic flying that's good enough until you want to tune knife edges and vertical lines.