Need help,my Tuff Flight Predator needed a full stick of lead to balance it and i was wondering what i did wrong.Had to put the lead on the engine mount half a stick on either side and and this is making it a little squirrelly when it loops.Engine is a Norvel.25 and battery is on leading edge of wing.Servos are mounted in front of the main spar and centered on the wing.Any help would be greatly appreciated and thanks in advance.

Not sure about the kits these days but a couple years ago the secified CG was about .5 inch too nose heavy. They fly and launch tons better with the right CG.
run a search.

There was a guy namd Dave McDonald (?) who did a great web page on them. i set mine up like his, flew great.

If you're reffering to the Predator X model, I have one that I mounted the battery next to the fin near the tail to get it to balance. I'm flying a much heayier os46fx though. You might look at the Tufflight website, then Tuff. X testimonials to see my planes with the batteries to the rear.

I'm surprised nobody's called you on this, but are you sure you don't mean TAIL heavy? You put everything on the nose, including an extra 3oz of lead, which means the plane was either really tail heavy to begin with, or you're doing the wrong thing to correct a nose heavy situation.

One thing that can make a plane want to snap out of a loop is too much elevator throw. Any plane, no matter where the CG is, will snap roll if the elevator throws are too high.

The TuffFlight guys (I fly against the actual designers/manufacturers of the Predator in several meets each year) are flying theirs on the ragged edge of snapping all the time. When they get a couple of streamers loaded up, they have to be really careful.

My mistake,the plane without the lead on the engine mounts is tail heavy.With the weight needed to balance it it fly's like it is nose heavy.Just looking for a possible way to get rid of some of the lead.The plane fly's great but with all of that weight it can get hard to recover from a loop(it doesn't want to pull out of it) thought about cutting the holes in the wing to lighten it up but just cant imagine removing that much foam.With battery in the leading edge and the servos ahead of the main spar i thought that would do it.Any tips would be great.Sorry for the confusion and thanks for any help.

There is only one thing that would cause a plane to fly like it is nose heavy. --- IT IS NOSE HEAVY!

Trust what the plane is telling you, ignore the instructions. If you trim it out for upright level flight, then flip it over to inverted it will dive if it is nose heavy. keep removing lead untill you can flip it over and fly with little or no down elevator, then it is perfect.

I will give that a try this weekend.Thanks for the help.

Mine will do a weird wiggle stall, not quite a full tip stall when pulling very tight loops. i set my throws just to the point where that starts to happen.

Enjoy!

:stupid: I got to fly today and was looking at the trims and figured out what i had done wrong.I had set the low rates with half of the elevator at 60% and had not adjusted the other one it was still at 100%,yeah that will make it tip out of a loop.Wow what a difference,I did not get to try your inverted flight method yet but that will be my next project.Thanks for your reply.

I think you just need to learn how to fly and quick complaining.LOL

I thought you would like that.

Scotty540
"Who's Next"

You will get yours,if you can ever get yours in the air??????and keep it there.

I was in the air you were the one on the ground!!:-)