Eddie,

Not tail-heavy. It was nose-heavy. That's why I moved the battery back there - to move the CG back towards the tail. Mine still needs the CG moved back a bit more - it takes too much down to maintain inverted flight.

There's really no getting into the turtledeck without cutting out the Ultracote on the bottom. Prior to cutting out the covering, I fiddled with the battery for 30 minutes and gave up. Putting a pull-pull rudder servo in there is way more difficult. But it would be a piece of cake to put a pull-pull in place of the two in the standard tray.

I really can't say if this plane needs a pull-pull. I did some knife-edge circuits today. I kept mostly full rudder (by-the-book high rates) and throttle all the way around the pattern but couldn't tell if the rudder was being blown back. The plane has Futaba 3004's all the way around. I'll get out the servo load spreadsheet tonight and see if that servo is enough for this rudder. It won't even come close to a knife-edge loop. But hey, it's not a 3D plane, it's a pattern trainer!

My guess is that if you put two elevator servos in the tail and put the battery up front you will still need some lead in the nose unless you install a OS 50 SX or similar heavy engine (4-stroker). I guess it depends on how far back you put the servos. This plane isn't a 3D plane - isn't designed for it. After 8-10 flights I feel that the published elevator high rates are not quite enough to make it really jump through the loops, but it doesn't need much more to tighten them up. There's no tendancy to tip stall in a tight loop - but I can tell I need some lead in a wing to balance laterally.

Scotch RX tape, eh? The tape I put on there is Scotch. It's holding up fine. I'll have to take it off tonight to see if I can put that battery behind the next fuse former.... Funny that all that sawdust I made is now stuck on the tape.

I wouldn't worry much about any nose-over tendancy. I'm thinking those guys left the plane in a severe nose-heavy balance!

Off to make a LG plate and move a battery. Except for the LG, nice plane, H9!