RE: Reaction 54 Jet Kit
Unless you are flying from grass, dont worry about the short nose gear strut. Once you have it trimmed, it should just rotate on its own and lift off. It will take a bit more runway length than with the longer nose gear, but thats normally not an issue for an R54.
The other thing is use a bit of flap (20 deg) for takeoff.
The advantage of the short nose gear is that you are less likely to hit nose gear first on landing, and hitting nose first can cause some bad bounces.
It can be an issue with short nose gear if the main gear is too far aft of the CG, but the stock R54 has the gear in the right spot. (If you have trailing links on the main gear and did not adjust the gear mounts to put the gear back where it should be, then the more aft main wheel location means more elevator to get it to rotate)
For planes where the main gear is too far aft, the way to get a clean rotation is to hold some up elevator from the beginning of the takeoff run. That way, as the plane accelerates, it will gradually rotate, and then you can start backing off on the elevator. MUCH smoother than pulling elevator once its at speed.
The old BVM glow ducted fan F-16 had the gear way aft of the CG. It was the scale gear location, but, since full size F-16's are unstable, to make the model work, the CG had to go way forward. So, to get it off the ground, the suggested method was 1) have a high rate elevator for takeoff that was DOUBLE normal throw needed in flight, and 2) hold FULL up from the start of the takeoff run and 3) shift to low rate as soon as you got back close to neutral elevator once it was in the air. Sounds scary, but, in practice, it worked just fine!
Bob