On Thursday, April 9, 2015 at 9:46:26 AM UTC-5, Mike the Strike wrote:
I had a similar experience with a 20 year-old ASW-20. The previous owner had installed lead weights in the tail and wings without any logbook notation and the weight and balance was far off (aft of permitted). On one of my first flights, I eased back into a thermal and suddenly found myself looking upwards at blue sky!

I always do a weight and balance on new ships now!

Mike

And even if you don't have a scale capable of the weight on the main, at least you can check the weight on the tail. If you look at W&B numbers, you can see that the weight on the main has a relatively small impact on the CG location. Being off on that weight by 20 or 30 lbs has a smaller effect on the CG than being off by 2 or 3 lbs on the tail weight. If the tail weight is close to what is recorded at the most recent W&B, odds are you can get a good handle on where your flight CG will be with you on board. If not, well, you better get a bigger scale to be able to check the whole plane!

Steve Leonard