On the Synergy/160 combo. There is no need to change the layout by tossing servos into the tail in order to achieve a good CG with this combo. The standard tray mounted servos allow the airplane to finish with a nice balance.

The nicest set-up I have seen for the Synergy is Yves Van Gompel's airplane. He uses a ZN mount made for the 160. It is a beam mount similar to a hyde mount with a couple of differences. One, it is far lighter in weight. The beams, however, are only long enough for the two rear holes of the motor. This requires a nose ring and he uses the standard ZN nose ring which attaches to the nose ring mount behind the fuselage nose. A further addition he made was to demount the needle valve from the motor and mount it on the fuselage itself. It is a superbly clean looking set-up and makes tuning very easy as the needle valve does not jump around as the motor occilates in the soft mount. I believe he is using an ES muffler (not a tuned pipe) and he is using the Hatori header.

Recently another test on this airplane was conducted with the 3M170. The test was a smashing succes. A small modification at the bottom of the firewall was required to allow the pipe to pass over the ridge. Although a significantly higher cost to begin with in comparison to the OS160, it runs smoothly with great transition and outstanding power on 10% (we used Coolpower for the test flights...we also tried 0% but the results were not great with that). It is also about 100grams less that the OS160, so there is another option for saving on fuel costs. I believe that the battery was the only thing changed to keep a good CG for those tests.

Me, I have a couple of DZs so I shall continue to use those, but when they reach the end of their first lives I shall switch to a more economical power plant so that I can put a little money into my girlfriend's house (like the workshop and jacuzzi!!!).

Regards,
Mark