My general impression of this Wind RC product is that it generally is of better than average quality in design, construction, and finish.

I have owned only a few other composite airframes: a CARF Extra 260 from about 2006, a Krill Ultimate, a Krill AreS XL, and the Wind RC Viper. I'd place the Krill products in first place; they were excellent designs (Seba Silvestri) with lightweight but sturdy structure, good bonding, nice parts fit, and a decent finish (painted in the mold with the usual visible seams and some small trim line misses). Both of the Krills were easy builds with moderate interior equipment mounting work required. I especially liked that the AreS has all control surfaces center hinged and no live (molded in) hinges. Live hinging is a sore spot for me as you'll see in following comments. The CARF Extra was from another era and I was disappointed that for the price the quality was lacking in many areas. What I've seen of the current CARF airframes are a lot nicer.

The Rafale has a very sturdy structure of primarily fiberglass skins over plywood formers. It is a noticeably heavier structuring compared to the more lightweight Krills. It's evident that Seba's competitive aerobatic influence is more favored in the Krills over Wind's sport scale airframes. There are carbon fiber laminated formers and CF laminated to the skin in the higher stressed areas. Bonding of parts appears to be good overall with me adding a bit of epoxy here and there for "feels good" but no major gaps. There are plenty of interior mounting plates and platforms for all the equipment but as is my usual, I changed some up a bit. The nose cone is removable for battery mounting as far forward as possible. The turbine access is through a huge belly panel only and no fuselage access panel on top (cleaner looking but a pain). The fuselage is in two sections joined right behind the canopy and canards; I wouldn't count on disassembly for travel but the airframe is not that overly large. The wings, vertical fin/rudder, and canards are joined by CF tubes and concealed aluminum clamps. There is a CF wing tube included. The landing gear appear to JP units with molded plastic scale-like strut sleeves.

The finish is painted after molding and bonding and is a very good representation of the full scale Rafale 2017 Solo Demo aircraft. There's a few small blems from sticky fingers and such but you really have to look hard. Not this subject but the Wind RC Viper's finish was excellent (except for the d....d live hinges)! My biggest complaint is that the live hinges are painted over and as soon as they are flexed the paint cracks and flakes. Can't take that much factory effort to place a 1/16" masking tape on the hinge lines so that there's a clean flexing without paint damage! The canopy was pretty clean with some light scratches that I polished out. The clear canopy was factory bolded to the frame, not too sloppy inside but I could have done better. I'm so-so about factory bonded canopy frames (CARF makes you do it yourself) since I really hate dealing with clear canopies. When you go scale...hey.

Biggest gripe so far is that there is no manual that I can find or get Wind RC to provide. It took repeated requests to get the recommended CG (a CG drawing is now on their website) and but they will not reply when asked about control throws. I understand a little that us turbine guys are all supposed to be experienced complex aircraft modelers but some basic setup info would be nice. Upon getting home from Chief I found that several servos were missing as were the gear and lighting control boxes. Freddie at Chief was very helpful in getting the missing parts sent from Wind but it took a while to get here. I previously listed the discrepancies in Chief's online description so beware if you order. The servos provided are from GDW that I know nothing about. I used the GDW's in my Viper so far with good results. I instead went with MKS HV9930's on the Rafale's control surfaces and thrust vectoring for more peace of mind. I did use the GDW's for the gear doors.

I'll post more photos and comments later.