With all that's out there, the options are endless... For sure, your best overall value will be a brushless motor. Pushing the kind of Watts you need through any brushed motor besides an Astro Cobalt will be very inefficient, and more expensive in the long run due to constant motor replacement. For the cost of an Astro Cobalt, you may as well go brushless, IMHO.

A plane like this will probably come out at 6-7 pounds. I feel that a plane, any plane, needs at least 75 Watts per pound to fly like its overpowered glow counterpart. The point here is to impress the glow fliers, not "fly scale," right? You need a system capable of about 500 Watts, turning a large diameter, relatively high-pitched prop at a low RPM.

Between information I've gleaned over the years, and calculations I've made, I've concluded that most .40-.46 sized conversions will fly well on 14-16 Sub C NiCd or NiMH cells. I'm flying a Tower Trainer .40 on a car motor and 10 cells, but that's an exception to the rule. There are also conversions that are running on up to 20 cells, but they're a bit on the porky side weight-wise.

Use search and look up Greg Covey's Bohemia Models Monocoupe. That plane has a power system that should work well for your plane. I believe it's an AXi 4120/14 on 14 cells with an APC 13x8 Thin Electric prop. You could probably back off to a 12x8 prop and still have plenty of power, as his Monocoupe weighs 10 pounds!

Here's his review:
http://www.rcuniverse.com/magazine/a...&CFTOKEN=35481