Where are my manners? Speed37, welcome to the party! I'll bet it's beautiful (and really cold) in Montana right now.
It's hard to build a GSS wrong, it really is. Most of us just pick a few of the bells and whistles that appeal to us,and make sure the GSS ends up sporting them. It's pretty much a guarantee that if you install the radio gear right, and you get the CG anywhere near right, this bird will fly true and pretty. Mine sports a 30CC gasser, and it pretty much leaps off the ground; anything 20CC's or up is plenty, to tell the truth after seeing mine in action. I have to throttle mine back a fair amount of the time with the 30CC, although it does throttle back plenty for landing, so I'm very happy with that power. I use flaperons, and it slows down to near walking speed for landings. I went with bolt-on main gear, so I had to operate on the fuse just in front of the wing. Glad I did.
Probably my weakest area is the newer batteries and power systems being used in conjunction with them. One of the guys talked me into using A123 batteries in my other plane, but I haven't really used them to any real extent yet, and I'm still learning about them. My GSS needs some fresh batteries, and to tell you the truth, I'm a little torn between using my old tried-and-true faithful NIMH packs, or going with the A123's, or even the Li-Ion setups with regulators, etc. Like so many of the crusty older modelers here, over the years I've been dragged kicking and screaming into each new technology. I remember the first time, back when I fussed because I had to send my old Futaba Gold in to have it upgraded to narrow-band. Fussed over the switch to 2.4 too, but discovered quickly that it made a big difference. I'll just have to learn about the new batteries, and then I can move on to dreading the next big changes. There's always something new and exciting to dread for me.
~ Jim ~