Thanks, Chic. The ultimate goal of this little project is to allow me and others to branch out a little bit with some potentially cool extras onto scale aircraft. It was a little too windy this morning to take the Hellcat up (at least for me!) so I'll have to wait until I get back from a work trip in about a week to test out the new system with the bent spring to help keep the tailhook down when it comes fully out of the fuse. I really think this type system would work on your plane, especially at its larger scale. You could weight the end of the tailhook a little at that size which would help, and I think the spring idea is one that will hopefully work and make it reliable to use inflight.

I think the idea of making a low, slow pass with gear and flaps down with the tailhook hanging down will be very neat to modelers and others just watching the plane fly. I'll continue working this and report back as soon as I have the chance to fly it and get the results of the latest mod to the tailhook.

Cheers

davegee