Bob!
Long time no see. I still haven't dragged the dusty old ship down off the basement wall. I'll get to it.
The MK 5 (the kitted version) was intended to maximize what horsepower we had. We YS runners still had the short-stroke back in '88. When I put a 12-12 on the kit version in '90, with a YS LS, it went faster than any old-style pattern ship I ever had. Did your kit have the foam fuselage sandwich? Yup, Larry and I worked out a setup, where there was a 3" wide strip of 1/16" foam between the two layers of glass, running from firewall to tailpost. It did wonders for sound deadness and the tailcone twisties. First we tried it with 1/16" wood. We didn't know about vacuum bags yet, so there were little voids. It was still an improvement.
later,
Dean