Well, while its true that a shocky below 5oz will require a very light battery, such as the one you listed, the plane doesnt have to be under 5oz to fly great. With a 2cell 340-730mah lipo, average weight is around 5.4-5.8oz loaded. This is probably the best option for most pilots. Offers great performance, and run times of up to 15min. Most of the guys here are using the Thunderpower 7.4V 430 or 730mah lipo's. So far I think Im the only one experimenting with the smaller batteries. A little 7.4V 340mah would be a good lipo for someone looking to fly with extreme light weight without sacrificing to much flight time. I can usually get about 12min out of a 340mah lipo by using power conservatively. Hovering sucks the most juice.

Ive also found that Im starting to use flying tactics like a military dogfighter. Flying maneuvers to load up inertia and kinetic energy to use instead of jumping on the throttle. Use dives to build up speed for vertical maneuvers, requiring less throttle for climbing. Using slow ascents for gaining altitude instead of rapid pull-ups. Using just enough throttle to keep it airborne during maneuvers, and not a touch more. Turn the prop brake off, and pull off all the power whenever coming down the backside of any maneuver.

At our local indoor meets, our flight times are limited to 7min. And then the next group of flyers goes up. With this time limit, Ive found that the little 250mah lipos perform fine. Ive got multiple batteries, so if it goes down during my time, I just land and pop a new lipo in, and go at it again. The performance gain from using a super light battery in my opinion is worth the lack of flying time. Most of the TOC guys are also flying the little 250-340mah lipos. Just because their routines are only a short few minutes, and it performs so much better.

Biplanes. OH boy...where to start.

Most of the biplanes you see at the TOC events are custom builds. They've been tweaked and modified so much to keep weight down, and they are flown by master pilots. For instance George Hicks Tensor4D. The plane he flys at the TOC has probably been tweaked ALOT to get it to fly like that. The ones that we get as kits in the hobby store need alot of work to get that kind of performance out of it. Stock tensors come out around 8-9oz which in my opinion is too heavy for indoor flying. Heavy weight coupled with the Tensors odd flying charectoristics = pain in the neck. There are three people here, myself included that have built tensors. NONE of them perform indoors as well as a shocky. All of us, (Tony Stillman included) really have to fight it to get the tensors to do the same stuff as we easily do with a shocky. Dont get me wrong the Tensor is a fun plane. Just requires more piloting to fly it.

In my opinion, as of current there aren't any biplane kits that can keep "pace" with a lightweight shocky, and the main reason is you just cant get them light enough. And if you do build it light, you sacrifice alot of durability. It ends up really fragile.

The latest biplane to get alot of attention is Great Planes new "Reflection", which promises to be the next anti-shocky indoor plane. The ones flown at the TOC look good, but only time will tell if the ones we get in the kit are as good as the ones the pro's are flying.

I have a strong suspicion that the reason for the delays in releasing the Reflection are due to them tweaking the design trying to get it to fly like a shocky. Have no doubt that Great Planes is going for the throat of Ikarus. They know that the only way they are going to get the huge Ikarus crowd to flip, is to produce a airplane that flys as good or better than a shocky.

Ive already got mine on backorder, only time will tell if it lives up to expectations.

I really like biplanes, and hope that sooner or later they will come out with one that can perform like a light weight shocky, but as of yet, Ive not seen one.

Ikarus also has a pitts special shocky biplane, but Ive been unable to locate one. If anyone knows where I can get one, please let me know.