the weight of the item. The spreadsheet will calculate the MOMENT about the firewall for the item as well as the
total weight of the aircraft. The final calculation performed is the Center of Gravity as the distance from the firewall.
When designing your own electric RC aircraft position the components as required to get the CG at the correct location on the wing. In most cases I have found that the heaviest item, the motor batteries, can be repositioned to correct the CG. This results in the lightest airframe possible without having to add lead to balance the aircraft.
I use this to layout the components in Scale Electric RC because it ultimately leads to the location of the motor battery and the battery hatch method that will be used.
(This spread sheet has been posted to the EFO site. To access it, visit the Keith Shaw, Tom Hunt, et al page. If you have a computer that runs Excel, but don't have internet access (shame on you), I can send you a disk with this, and a few other goodies on it. Km)

covered types and most of the entries in my log book are for Piper Cubs, Fleet Canucks, Aeroncas, - only one Cessna. (You know you are getting older when…. You visit the national Aeronautical Museum in Ottawa and see one of the planes on which you learned to fly displayed as an historic artifact; not the same TYPE of plane, but the same ACTUAL plane: Fleet Model 80 Canuck, registration CF-DYM)
With marriage and a family flying became too expensive, and I turned to something different - boat building. I started with a canvas covered kyak, (not unlike a model plane in construction, with frames, stringers and covering) and over many years and many boats worked up to a 40 ft catamaran.
When I retired after 30 years in the Canadian television industry we went sailing and spent most of the next ten years living aboard the boat. We spent much of the time in the Caribbean, but made three Atlantic crossings and on our second trip to the Azores decided to buy a house here. That was five years ago and we are still here operating a small computer-based graphic design company (the "Lápis Azul" in our e-mail address is Portuguese for "Blue Pencil" the traditional graphic designer's tool)
A little over a year ago I discovered that a neighbour of ours, a South African charter fishing boat skipper, was a modeller, but was not doing much as he had no one to share with. When he discovered that I had once been a keen model flyer (and even still had some model plane books from the fifties) he at once started plying me with magazines and catalogues to get me interested again. It worked!
I found the Keil Kraft Playboy kit was still available after 49 years, so I had to build another one. I followed that with a sailplane kit. My new friend, as well as glow engines, had an electric plane, the first I had seen - a Great Planes Spectra. This seemed a wonderful way to go, so on a trip to Canada last fall I bought one for myself and I am learning to fly all over again. My next project is an own-design slow and floaty sort of electric sport model so that I can learn to fly off wheels.
It is not easy being a modeller when you are 1,000 miles from the nearest model shop and more like 2,000 from the nearest that speaks English. It would be so nice to be able to go into a shop and just compare things in front of your eyes rather than wading through the glowing, biased descriptions in ads.
Ampeer is a really great help to us lonely ones out here - keep up the good work (and I know how much work it is - I put out a yacht-club newsletter for seven years)
All the best,  Roly Huebsch, Canada Larga Nº 1, Cedros, 9900 Horta, Faial, Azores, Portugal
Tel and fax: +351 92 96450
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