ORIGINAL: Drmeff
Funny, that seems to be the argument on the escapade thread too. Some people lambast the plane and others say it is incredible. I really don't care about flying really fast, in fact the JBA .56 I was looking at could be overkill. I might look into a smaller engine if I go with the escapade, perhaps a .46AX or even LA... I had good luck with the .65 LA, ran like a champ! I just want enough power for decent verticle, maybe not unlimited, but darn near.
If you're looking for an opinion on the JBA 56 I would advise you to steer away from it and go with something else. I did a review on that engine for RCU. Please remember that when we are reviewing a item like this we are basing our review on about a week or so of working with the product. For the first couple of weeks with the engine as I was doing the review the engine ran great, had lots of power, and seemed to be a good engine. However, about 3 months in (well after the review had been submitted) I was having problems with the engine cutting off in flight. On one flight (on an Escapade by the way) I pulled into an upline to do a stall turn. In the climb the engine died. So I brought the nose over on it and then deadsticked the plane back onto the runway. Brought it back to the pit to fuel up and restart it and when I put the chicken stick on it I noticed the prop had come loose. So I took off the spinner and tightened the prop nut. Went to start it and found the engine was completely locked up tighter than a drum. Pulled the engine off of the plane and took the back plate off to find the connecting rod was snapped in half. The engine was shot. I run all of my engines very rich and take it easy on them when they are still new, in fact the engine was running rich enough to leave a smoke trail. I wouldn't buy another JBA engine ever again.
As far as the Escapade goes. It is a nice flying plane. I've had two of them so far. The first one had teh elevator pull off in flight. This is a known bug on the early production run planes and has been fixed now. However, it doesn't hurt to put some CA on all of your hinges to make sure. The second crashed plane was my fault. Put it into a flat spin and let it come down too far in the spin. When I tried to get it out of the spin I just didn't have enough room left to pull it out of the spin and get the plane flying again. Nosed it straight into the ground and totalled the plane.
This plane is a great flying little plane and is a ton of fun to have. It can do a knife edge loop if you move the CG back. Now in regards to today's aerobatic planes doing a knife edge loop isn't anything spectacular, but when you consider this a approximately $100 plane that is an accomplishment. I'm not sure if you will be quite ready for it yet as a second plane as it doesn't sound like you have much airtime on your other planes yet. But once you get some more experience you shouldn't have any problems with the Escapade. Put the controls on a low rate and it will keep the plane pretty tame for you until you get some more time on it. Or you could buddy box on it until you are ready for it. But it would work ok as a second plane.
You said above that you have take your current plane to the "limits". I firmly believe there are no boring planes, only boring pilots. If the plane is getting boring you're just not pushing it to it's limits!!!
Hope this helps
Ken