**WARNING !! Sportsman - Super Decathalon** 1. Check the wing dowels after several flights. Mine came loose, with one sliding back far enough to disengage from the fuselage bulkhead. This happened on the sixth flight, but I had rung it out on the 4th, 5th, and 6th flights. 2. Make sure you seal the hinge gap on the tail surfaces, and it would help to use Robart hinges. I used Sig Easy hinges with no gap seal, and broke the top rudder hinge on the 24th flight. 3. The landing gear is a little on the weak side and will bend at the fuselage if not landed smoothly. One of my gear legs was several thousandths thicker than the other.

My Sportsman (Hobby People) 86" Super Decathalon kit was o.k., but not on par with Hangar 9, Goldberg, G.P., etc. The covering is not as good as Monokote or UltraCoat, but I did not have too much problem with it. It took several applications with a heat gun to get the covering to quit wrinkling, but this was over several months with varied outdoor temperatures. The wing was full of scrap balsa pieces that were tough to get out, even with a vacuum cleaner and much shaking. The cowling panel lines are not correct and make the nose appear as if its cocked down. With the engine installed with the suggested down and right thrust the spinner did not match the cowling thrust line (large gap on the bottom and right side). I had planed on refinishing the cowling and installing the supplied star and stripes but never got around to it.

Overall, for the size, it's worth $279 (I paid $299 in January).

I installed my old Super Tigre 3000 with a Zinger 18x6-10 propeller, J-tec Snuff Vibe mount, and Slimline Pitts muffler. Dubro 24 oz. tank on the C.G. with a pressure system, Dubro tires on all three, one std. servo, two high torque servos, two 1/4 scale servos, and a 1700 mAh. battery pack as far back in the fuselage as I could reasonably reach (about six inches behind the most rearward window). With the exception of the landing gear bolts all hardware was converted to SAE, and used 4-40 rods on the wooden dowels for rudder and elevator.

Empty weight 16.20 pounds, including 3 oz. of lead by the tailwheel bracket to balance fore/aft (on the most rearward C.G. location per the book), and 2 oz. in the left wing servo bay for lateral balance. The C.G. range is conservative.

Flies very well with a lot of vertical performance, and will knife edge loop with ease. All this while only getting 6,800 RPM static. Inverted snaps are best done at low airspeed. Use good judgment while performing acro and try to keep the air loads to a minimum. Inverted flight only required two clicks of down trim; not bad since normal flight required three clicks up trim from neutral.

Mike