Dave,
I just finished putting together one of their A26's and have some comments you might be interested in hearing. First, I thought the packing in the box was lacking...examined two other VQ A26's at the LHS and all three had suffered shipping damage to some extent, mostly damage around the aft end of the engine pods on the wing. The whole airframe is made of a type of wood I'm not familliar with...very brittle, definately not balsa. The cowls were nice...fairly thick fiberglass w/adequate detail however, the fairings were of a thin ABS and needed to be reinforced over the entire inner surface with light glass. Covering was adequate and I did like the panel line and hatch detail. All this plane needed to look really cool was a little airbrushing for exhaust aft of the cowls and some jet exhaust "dirt" to enhance the panel lines. I added wing guns and barrels to the turrets...really looked good. It came in at 10 and 1/2 lbs with two TT54 FS engines. I had spring air retracts and replaced the fuel tanks...the stock tanks leak and are REALLY bad...replace them. I reinforced the firewalls, they just looked weak, at least too weak for 54 fs's. By the way, I need the extra power up here at 5280 ft. I set the CG at the recommended 4.3" from the leading edge and set the control throws the recommended amount. The decals were marginal...the registration marks were'nt lined up properly so any multicolor decal was messed up...I still used them but...Also I need to mention that there were absolutely no pushrods supplied with this particular kit. I did check one of the others at the LHS and saw that in fact there were pushrods and clevises included...just none in mine...go figure. Now for the flight report. After breaking in the two FS's, I noticed the right one ran a little rough so I tinkered with it until it seemed right. After range check, batt. check etc. I taxied into position and ran the engines up one final time (I also fly a Wing Mfg. B25 with twin OS 70 FS's so I know how important two good engines are). I throttled up and the plane tracked straight down the center line. After about 200ft. I eased back on the elevator and the thing just went straight up...flipped me out...I pushed the nose down...it took at least half stick to get it level and I did check the elevators before flight. Since I was flying on a new 8UAP I asked my spotter for some emergency down trim as I started a left turn to bring the thing back. Of course that's when the right engine quit and the plane rolled over to the right and started to plummet. I was able to correct the roll with aileron and a bit of rudder but then the thing balloned up again. By this time it was getting pretty far away and becoming difficult to determine orientation. One final roll to the right and it was a puzzle. The whole thing took about 25 seconds. I probably should have shut down the good engine and bellied it in wherever I could but it was initially heading toward a street and I needed to avoid that. I don't know why it ballooned up so radically...since it was an arf I didn't think to check incidence. CG was right at mfg. specs. Will I get another one? I'll have to wait and see...one of my flying buddies is just about to maiden his. I hope he has better luck than I did. Maybe I'll just stick to the old Wing B25...I know it flys good!