I think the midrange is pretty good, especially for a 2 stroke. I've been trying to fly a constant type speed with it, so I spend a lot of flying time at mid throttle and have my curve set up for that, thus when I'm entering the verticals I'm usually going to full stick because I don't have the speed to carry me. These are the masters maneuvers I fly. With the 20.5" prop, controlling the speed is a lot easier. If I was worried about vertical I'd go with the 19.5", but it's a faster prop and harder to control the overall speed as it doesn't downline brake as well. With the 19.5" I can go into a hover, and power out of it while doing point rolls straight up with authority, not crawling. This is all in really good air, haven't tried it in real hot conditions. Last summer I thought the 20.5" got marginal in some up lines during real hot conditions, but now I'm about 5 oz lighter so will have to see what it does when the time comes.
One other thing flying at reduced throttle so much, I do get into the midrange on the carb and get the rich sounding motor gurgle. I've leaned the low end some to try and help it, but the sound is still there so far.
I'd also recommend the 1" throttle arm extension. My throttle curve right now is nearly linear with it, bumped up a little on the low end side. With the 1/2" arm my curve was nearly flat throughout the midrange.
I find the 20.5 really good for constant speed throough P15 with the YS. The downlline braking is really good and I just throttle up gradually from around 1/3 throttle pulling into an upline and get to about 3/4's once vertical and hold it at that. It just pulls through the upline 4 point roll in the figure 9 effortlessly.
It will be interesting to see the comparison. I will be putting it in the same model with the YS, so it will be comparing apples to apples.