You certainly said a mouthful there, Tony. I prefer to fly on longer lines (52', 58') and with a little more power, although my current power the OS .15FP-S is a little bit of an overkill. Did you make your profile fuselages as framed built-ups?

Regarding lightening things up, I've been looking at the possibility of using round hardwood dowels as the leading edges, smaller round dowels as the trailing edges, a built-up profile fuselage, lighter wheels, increasing number of ribs but going to lighter ones, etc. There are no reasons why free flight building techniques cannot be used. The larger balsa wood pieces Sterling used were easier to kit, but it did make for a heavier aircraft. And you are right about the longer nose of it. The unmuffled .15 Foxes, OSes, K&Bs, etc. were considerably lighter than the modern day engines. I could shorten the nose at least an inch.

The RingJr will loop, but at this point they are rather large, but it has been a good trainer for me.