I’m very jealous that yours has arrived, and it’s making me wish I’d ordered that scheme.

apart from the damage, what are your first impressions?

Anyone got a recommended technique to easily take the shine off?

Really fine sand paper or scuff pads on gloss will dull it from what I hear. I would def add a piece of aluminum tubing to the clunk line to prevent the clunk getting stuck forward.

I’m afraid a 200N turbine is way over powered for this airframe. You see this F-18F is the same as the BVM/TAMJET one ( same molds ) with lots of updates in structure, landing gear etc ,all at a significantly lower weight. We test flew ours for a few hours with different power settings , started at 140N and went up to 180N.. we felt that that was the top power rating this airframe can be safely be operated at without possibly over stressing the structure through various manouvers , we took an as close as possible look at how much are the wings flexing at high G manouvers and yet keeping the ability of the model to do a quick landing abort ( fast energy response) stil if needed.
From our experience 160N ( is roughly what you get at 32 degree centigrade at 1000 feet above sea level from a P-180RXI) is where one would want to be with this airframe.

Since Jet Legend did all of their prototype test flights and videos with a 180, I felt it was fine to install a 180 sized can ( actually the Merlin is smaller in Dia and length plus a ton lighter than the P180) turbine and fly it turned down to somewhere between 170 and 180. Either way, i’ll provide some feedback after the maiden.

So you choose a turbine according to its physical dimensions? The P-180RXI is the same size . I was talking about thrust my friend........
i hope all goes well with you tests , good luck.

“and fly it turned down to somewhere between 170 and 180”

Good

I have over 40 years of experience in this hobby 21 of it in turbine powered models that eventually became my profession. No need to fit a camera on the wing to observe the flex if you’re flying close enough, beside one can calculate the force on a lifting surface considering , weight, speed and radius of turn at given angle of bank..
The exhaust is to my belief not suited for 200N thrust . The outlet diameter is quite small .. we suspect at 200N it will eventually fail . Reason for that is due to relatively small outlets the excess energy will turn into heat build up.
keep in mind the exhaust made by Tam for the yellow aircraft twin F-18 has a 65mm inner diameter for a 200N thrust turbine VS a 50mm inner diameter for a 160N thrust turbine...
The Y/A F-18 is 2.75 m long and weigh some 17KG dry if built light .
This small F-18F is 2.35 m and weigh 14.5 Kg .
Even with 180N turbine is almost a 1/1 thrust to weight ratio .. absolutely unnecessary, but we did test it and it handled well .
We started at 145N thrust setting which was well enough for really scale like flying .

The owner of Jet legend was my guest here in Israel for two weeks when we tested the new F-18F PNP along with a 1/6 Scale F-16 that he shipped to us prior to his arrival here .

Here are photos of the Y/A twin 200N pipe compared to the PNP F-18F pipe ...

Sorry not 2.35 m long but 2.25 m long and even on the official BVM site top power rate is 36lb thrust . If you trust BVM better listen to what they suggest .
As stated here we fly ours at 180N which is close to 16kg thrust at 32 degrees 1000ft above sea level..

From what I have seen when this jet flew at Ky jets the 160 class turbines are more than adequate.... it’s a very light airframe and even if it had all the wing stores/tanks on it the max I personally world go is 180 and even then you would probably be half throttle most of the time.