Right Jeff, I believe if you spend the time to align it properly when it's assembled and you trim it or mix the issues out it will be close enough that practice can make it a good flying plane. I did know about the issues but after flying a couple I felt it was worth buying anyway. But I still think with your skill you could fly a crooked stick with wings, stabs and an engine glued on it and win Expert so I don't think it's the plane. I think it's practice. You've been flying these a long time I assume.
My point was that I built a glass and foam DB and it flew much better from the start; however, after spending the weekend with the trim chart and mixing out some of it's bad habits, the ARF is closer to my built up plane and feel it could become a competitive plane for me but it goes back to the practice. I've practiced with the P7 and my timing and corrections are based on the P7 with a swept wing and a 2 stroke so it's different.
I meant to get across that it's not a horrible plane but that it has some issues to be careful of when it's assembled. One needs to know how to triangulate the wing with the v. stab and the h. stabs with the wing as well as the incidences and so on. It is not a glue the wings together with the pin installed and expect it to be straight or glue the stabs on without aligning them with the wing longitudinally and laterally. Most guys don't have a builders background to know that these things need to be checked and that's why we help as many of the Novice guys build their planes as we can.
A couple of issues I'm working on is that it pulls out of a dive on a straight line. It pulls towards the wheels and rolls inverted during knife edge while on the right side but not so much on the left side so slow rolls are hard work (for me). It seems that with a given rudder input on the KE the problem is not that much but give it a couple more degrees and it gets crazy. The rudder is bent. ALL of the controls are higher than the flying surface they are connected on to so this winter I will cut them all off and re-hinge them.
An interesting bit of info...if you go to the CPA web site and look at the bottom there is a Natt's winners link at the bottom. 1st place was won by a lot of different planes so I would be the first to say someone didn't win because of the plane they are flying, it's more than likely because they practiced and trimmed their plane. It was interesting too that the DB and Phoenix had a lot of use through the years.
Tim