Agcat, with the level of detailing you seem to be interested in (and the sort of weight that implies), I would strongly recommend that you build at the larger 1/6 scale and that you build using traditional all-wood techniques. Just out of curiousity, what sort of RC modeling experience do you have? What sort of construction techiques have you used in the past?

I built my first ever scale RC model about 6 months ago and it was a real learning experience. It was entirely scratch-built from technical drawings. Prior to this I had built a lot of those Guillow's kits as a kid but never an RC model. All in all, I think it came out pretty well but I'll definitely do a lot of things differently next time around. Mine had a 62" wingspan and with all the scale detailing came out a tad heavy at about 8lbs. Here are some photos:

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_19..._1/key_/tm.htm