I thought I would post something to help out. I have a few friends that have recently sat the PERF exam and failed, and looking at their KDR's it seems the 2 and 3 point questions about ECHO W&B is one of the stumbling blocks.
One friend in particular asked for my help, and we discovered that she had not added hard ballast before fuel ballast when the question asked to work out MINIMUM fuel for ballast.

If you are outside the AFT limit of 2680mm you have the Nose Locker (upto 55kg allowed) and the row 1 co-pilot seat if it is empty (upto 77kg) before you start loading the Main Tanks with Ballast Fuel. Remember your ZFW is 2630kg so load hard ballast until you reach ZFW then, and only then use the flow chart to work out how much Fuel to add in the Main tanks as ballast...

Hopefully this will help you pass first go!

Cheers
Ben

Interesting suggestion with the row 1 control seat. This question had me stumped for a while. The Bob Tait book makes no mention of the use of this seat (or other stations) for hard ballast.

Row 1 and the nose locker are the ONLY stations ahead of the centre of gravity apart from the main tanks. So there is no point putting ballast anywhere else to solve an aft CofG problem. In most cases, the row one seats are occupied or you are close to ZFW so the nose locker is the only option for hard ballast. There is a whole exercise devoted to this type of problem with fully explained answers on page 5.42 of the Performance book.

Bob

Hi Darkrider.
As Bob has said there is a section in his book about this. You can load cargo on ANY seat that isn't occupied even if it is a control seat and cargo weight is no more than 77kg and is strapped in so it wont move and the nose locker is only 500mm aft of the datum, so it is always going to be in front of the CoG.
Doing Air Law before Performance is a good idea so you understand what is legally allowed in regards to cargo.
Cheers
Ben

Thanks guys,

Good point Ben but I have to admit that I read up on cargo on passenger seats and in control seats prior to PPL so i really have no excuse for overlooking this solution

As for the exercises Bob mentioned, the ones on the page 5.42 have both pilot and pax in row 1 so hard ballast in that station isn't an option, however the phrase above it, " add whatever hard ballast you can" does explain what you guys have pointed out. Guess I need to reread that section again to fully grasp the concepts being explained.

Thanks for the help