A couple of recommendations...

1) Do something about the landong gear mount! I had a harder than average landing a couple of days ago and tore out the landing gear. Its mounted with 3 x #6 cap screws into blind nuts. The LG plate is not strong enough and the steel screws have absolutely no give. I am re-doing mine with 2 x 1/4" nylon bolts into a basswood plate. I've tapped the plate rather than using blind nuts since drilling the 3/8" hole for the blind nuts weakens the plate more than necessary. Its a good idea to beef up the whole LG area as well as switch to 1/4" x 20 nylon bolts. The cowl cracked when the LG broke away so I am doing a little fibreglass/epoxy job inside the cowl. Relatively minor fixes.

2) On my Extra, I found the plane unwilling to do a knife-edge without losing altitude. Seems like not enough rudder but I was running at the recommended high rates. At least part of the problem is/was the rudder control horn. The balsa rudder is too soft for a horn with the small footprint of the supplied horn. I have peeled away the covering and inlaid 1/16" ply to make a hard point about 4X the surface area of the control horn. The covering went back down over the ply and hardly shows. (Also put a hard point behind the plastic backer for the horn). I'll see how this mod affects rudder effectiveness.

Ross