Final notes:
As it sits right now and most probably will stay the weight is 52.6 ounces without the battery. I'm using a 3000 mAh 5 cell Hobby Star Li Po from R/C Juice.com. It's shorter and lighter. As stated above the balance is at 6 3/8" from the trailing edge or 1/8 inch inside the c/g range aft limit. The leadouts sit at 6.0 inches from the trailing edge and that gives me 1/8 inch per foot nose down or perfect placement, set it and forget it. The push rods from the bell crank to the elevator horn are in the holes shown on the plans. Middle hole on the bell crank to the outer hole on the flap horn, then the middle hole to the middle hole on the elevator horn.I'm still going to install the Du-Bro adjustable horn when they come in as It gives me more adjustability. .0010 up or down if I want. I'd have to move to the north west to feel that change. I have one ounce of tip weight which can change as I'm not good at getting that right by myself. I did put an insulator between the weights as they rattled. The thrust lines are set at Zero all around.
The kit itself is typical Brodak, quick and easy to build, very complete and with the balsa supply as it is pretty good wood. The wing ribs have the holes for the Brodak wing jig and that's what I used. I much rather use the Adjusto Jig as I can build the wing in one piece. As it was the wing came out nearly perfect. I was surprised that the finished wing fit into the fuselage cut out with no sanding of either part to make it fit. The fit was real close with no gaps anywhere. The laser cut ply sides held the wing and stab in perfect alignment. ( As perfect as can be expected with plastic incidence meters.) All the hinge pockets are located for you. I like to make my own trailing and leading edges but I had to use the fork tool to make the hinge slots, it worked out fine. As far as tapering the aft end of the fuselage after gluing the ply sides on, I used the belt sander and sanded away from the ply. The taper ends up under the stab anyway. That is the best method to taper anyway. Gluing a full length of ply to the taper would create problems. The only wood I didn't use was the 1/8 ply nose doublers and one of the engine mount bearers and the wheel pants pieces. The jury is still out on the printed motor mount. I have 4 other planes with the Brodak conversion mounts and they work very well. Measuring engine thrust is the simplest I've seen on a model plane. The thrust line runs through the screw on the weight box in the rear of the fuselage. Measure from that to the prop tips, piece of cake. Side thrust I measure from the wing trailing edge. Mr. Cunningham worried that a larger engine, .51, would be too heavy. No one says you can't trim the nose by a 1/2 inch. The Stalker line of engines are very light also. I added only an ounce to the nose and it ruined the turn. Once removed it flys very well.