After looking around for the right price and sized Extra I finally ordered the CMPro 1.40 Extra from Chief. List price 219.99 I asked if they would match GSP's 199.99 price as I did not want to risk purchasing through them after reading several posts here. They agreed without hesitation, took my info, and shipped the bird on Monday. I'm pleased to say FedEx ground delivered today, and on initial inspection everything looks good. Chief plainly marked the box as fragile, and top load only. Shipping cost to San Diego for a 19lb box was 21.xx and is on track with FedEx's price so I'm sure I wasn't overcharged.

Opening the big brown box revealed the planes full color box. This would be a nice touch however the cardboard is thin, the images are blurry, and the box construction weak. I pulled off the top and 3 of the major joints of the box snapped with no real force applied. At this point I'm a bit worried. However looking inside the box I find a nicely packed ARF. Each piece bagged and wrapped in a sheet of thin packing foam. The major parts secured with cardboard pieces holding both ends. Cowl, hardware, tank all in seperated compartments, wheel pants inside the cowl, again individually wrapped. Nicely done CMP. Conclusion : Well packed inside, poor outer packaging, great experience with Chief.

Covering...

Ok there's good and bad here. The covering is fairly transparent, especially the red on the belly side of the wings. That being said... this stuff makes a frog's a$% look lose! very tight, not a wrinke to be found. I'm impressed considering the number of GP, ModelTech, Global ARFs I have had that all had horrible wrinkles. The paint on the cowl matches nicely and the blue canopy doesn't look too bad from the pics I thought it would be cheesy, but now that I see it... not bad at all. [8D]

Quality...

So far I can't complain... I am planning on squeezing some extra CA in a few places but nothing I wouldn't do on a GP ARF. Lightly built, nice and big, thick airfoils, looks good. Nothing rattling around in the wings, or the fuse. Again this is preliminary just overlooking it for 30 mins.

Hardware...

I'm throwing it all away. I will be using Du-Bro and Rocket City hardware throughout. Of particular note the main gear...This thing is going to make a fine doorstop. I'm all for strength in a gear, just not at the expense of half as much as the plane weighs.

Manual...

This thing is a joke... good toilet read fo humor, not informative at all.
Thats all for now.