Brian, I really think the Escape design was earlier...maybe 81-82. Reason being the layout was a copy of the Arrow, by the mid 80's the big names were using the sleeker inverted engine, fully cowled and enclosed pipe setup models (Hanno Prettner aside, he was still winning WC's with simple models like the Supra Fly and Supra Star).

Remember in the late 80's we had MK and Yoshioka balsa kits and glass/foam Atlanta's, PA-2 (Aurora clone), Summit, Cursor, LA-1, Mistress, Conquest, Avanti, Brushfire, Tipo's, litterally dozens of good choices and very few guys flew a design more than a year or so old. Airplanes came and went fairly quickly as the 'in' thing. Everyone on this forum loves the Atlanta (and it does look great), but as far as I saw (speaking strictly the Southeast) they were popular among the top guys for a very short timeframe before they were on to something else.

Would an Escape fly the higher classes? Sure, I had a friend (former Masters flier) fly my Escape several times and he said it handled well enough to fly the manuevers well, but being 'draggier' had to work harder on some of the taller manuevers. I think it was a very forgiving design and ideally suited for a low time pattern flier of the day...guys with more experience just naturally seemed to want the prettier designs.

I never built a Great Escape, but I do very much recall Joe Bridi displaying them as 'new' at the Byron Expo in 1988. The Great Escape as I remember included the mods Bill Cunningham made to the Escape back when he did so well at the Nats with his. It stuck with me all these years that Joe came all the way to Iowa to display his line of kits at a giant scale event, but this also tells me the Escape had to be from the early 80s.

Scott