This was purchased from HobbyPeople.com for $99 plus $7 shipping. It arrived in another oversized box stuffed with some paper. GOOD IDEA !!! It was in perfect shape. Not a thing wrong with it from my inspection. The covering looks very cool even though I hear that it comes off after a few hundred flights. I went over the entire plane with an iron to find any loose covering and let me tell you it was hard to find much of anything. The quality of build is very good. There is not a ton of glue in the fuse. It was built light and it really feels light. And what a cool looking plane.

The only thing I did was glue the main wing tonight. I used a cool little trick: I glued it up and put the assembled wing between two bricks on my work bench. I pushed one of the bricks just a little bit towards the wing and it held it together really nice, like a huge vise Also the bricks had paper towls to cushion the wing. I took two pieces of thin balsa, a piece of wax paper and clamped the thin part of the wing joint so the two halves would stay perfect while I lined up the fat side. It lined up perfectly. Before I glued it I wrapped the two halves with masking tape a half inch from the joint like the manual said but I pulled them off right after the glue set. It made a perfect clean channel of epoxy along the joint. Looks nice. The manual said to let it cure before I pulled the tape off but I kept thinking that the glue would make the tape stick and would look like crap. Also the glue overflowed a little onto the masking tape so I'm glad I did it my way. It looks nice and man is it strong. THIS WING IS LIKE A FEATHER. It's unbelievable. The cord is huge and so are the ailerons.

The engine is an Irvine .53 and just arrived today ($128 shipped).

I'm sure I'll find some things less than perfect as I keep assembling but I did a search and read all the posts on it. I'm aware of all the problems people had and know some good tips.

I'll keep you posted for further build progress.

Joe