Bil;

I have absolutely no doubt you could save all the weight you mentioned in a modified Simla, but of course that wasn't our goal with the Simla project. If Ed sheeted the wing, we wanted to sheet the wings as well. Actually I'm a little surprised that Ed didn't want to use open wing areas with capstrips instead of fully sheeting the wings. He knew it was a large model, and he had large open areas on the Taurus.

Kevin Clark and I were talking earlier on about building what we called "an updated Simla", (kind of what we figure Ed would do now) as a future project. We want to do a lot of the same things you mentioned, (ie clipped wings (to make it 2-meter), redesigned fuselage with more side area, and in our case, a LARGER engine, [than the 2-stroke .90) for vertical performance that approximates the more modern 2-meter jobs).

I weighed the wing halves of the kit prototype:

Left wing: 1lb 12.3oz
Right wing: 1lb 15.3oz
C.F. tube: 2.3oz

Total: 3lbs 11oz....and this is of course ready to fly with landing gear, wheels etc., so your wing pre-finishing weighs about the same as mine RTF.

Duane