Has anyone installed their smoke system forward of the firewall? I don't want to use up baggage space and I'm lite in the nose already due to FP wood prop.
I don't see any advantage to doing this. The empty weight of a typical smoke system is about 11 pounds. Add 5 gallons of smoke oil and you are up to about 45 pounds. With the system foreward of the firewall you would have a pretty long moment arm and your aircraft CG would move quite a bit as you burn off the smoke oil. Plug the figures into any weight and balance program to get the exact figures. Aircraft designers try to put fuel tanks near the aircraft CG just to avoid this sort of problem.
Lastly, smoke systems burn about 0.8 gallons per minute. I don't know where you would put a meaningful amount of oil foreward of the firewall.
If you are tail heavy it would be easier and more practical to move your battery to the firewall as it doesn't get lighter as you use up the volts.
