I have flown this airplane (arf) 2 times. I stuffed it the second time. ( lost 1 elevator due to electrical connection seperating) I broke the nose off. I since reattached the nose. Epoxed the joints and attempted to rebalance. To my surprise it was "tail" heavy! I even replaced the 600 M/A battery with a 2000 M/A mounted just behing the fuel tank. The servos are mounted externally for competition. As per the directions. I have a Saito 100 in the nose. Don't know the weight of the whole aircraft. I had to add "12" ( thats right 12 ) ounces of weight to the nose to get it into range. I have never had to add that much before. It seemed to fly a little nose heavy inverted so I removed about 1 oz. That is when the second and fatal flight happened. It says to balance between 4.75" & 5.25" back from the inbd leading edge of the wing. I just can't see that much weight in the nose but its true. I just wondered if anybody else experienced this?

Yep, Saito 100 up front and I added 12 oz of lead to the nose, then took 1 oz off and added a half an oz to the tail when I replaced that piece of crap tail wheel set-up that came with the kit with a better tail wheel.

I replaced the tail wheel assy. myself. How does yours fly? Inverted? any other probs? see thew review mounted a magnum 1.20 2C. That engine comes in at only 3 oz. more that the Saito 100. It never mentioned and extrordinary amount of balance weight needed.

My mistake, the magnum 1.20 2C weighs in @ 32 oz. thus the extra 12 oz required to balance! Thats why the review didn't have a problem. The review in hobbypeople.net put in a Saito 100 and had the same situation.

With 11 oz on the nose and the heavy tail wheel I'm perfect upright and inverted. very minimal down stick inverted and no sudden pitches with throttle reduction upright or inverted so I'm convinced the balance is right and we'll just have to live with the nose weight.
Far as other problems, I hate the covering that Modeltech used. I've got almost 60 flights on it and nearly every time I fly it I have to repair covering that keeps coming off. Last weekend the blue came off the glass wing pan (think I'm just gonna paint it rather than try to cover it yet again) Crappiest covering I've ever seen.
I'd get rid of it if it weren't so much fun to fly.

are you balanced at 4.75" back? I will say one thing for this plane...it can take a lickin' and keep on tickin'! I just finished repairing it after a rough ( I mean rough, only 1/2 of the elevator) landing. Survived pretty well. only ripped the nose off at the gear. nothing special.