RE: Help me pick my next kit - I can't decide !
Rob,
Been there done that. You'll love the corsair with an ST90 in it. Thats what I had many years back. Great flying combo. I used the slimline large volumn pitts muffler. It gives the ST90 a nice deep growl that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up on a low high speed pass. Do a ton of research on retracts. I used robart 615's and they were the worst curse ever put on that plane. Seriously, look at the robinairs or sierras. More money but you wont have the problems. I have no personal experience with CJ but know friends that have them. They ALL said they would buy something else next time. Just do the research, CJ may actually work out for you. But check it out thoroughly first and find someone with experience with them. I didnt put a lot of fluff on my corsair mainly to keep it light. Mine weighed just under 10 lbs ready to fly. Money kote covered, wont do that again either. When I use a mylar covering I use Ultra kote. It still wrinkles in the hot Texas sun but its not as bad and I can reshrink it for years. Money kote stops reshrinking after awhile and you have a geriactric looking plane. Building the flaps scared me at first but if you do it exactly as the plans and instructions say you wont have any problems. It was much easier than I thought it would be. The rest of the build is pretty straight forward. I built per the plans and was happy. The maiden flight made me a nervous wreak but in hind sight it really wasnt that bad. It was my first warbird. I had practiced doing power on landings with a SS60 and I think that helped a lot. Use the flaps when landing. Practice doing landing approches with the flaps up high. It doesnt take that long to get comfortable. At high speed it has the typical corsair tail waggle. Slow down a little and it stops, no big deal. I really miss that plane. Lost it due mostly to the retracts. The levers kept bending. I just couldnt land soft enough or slow enough on that grass runway and that was with shock absorbing oleo struts. The cowl took the brunt of the abuse. Broke the cowl mounts. During repair I missed some damage. The cowl broke lose during flight and hit the back of the prop, breaking one side off. The few seconds it ran shook the plane so hard that when I deployed the gear a strut fell to the groud. So I retracted the gear and spent too much time following the strut to the ground. Noticed too late that I was near stall. DONT STALL this plane. It takes too much altitude to recover. All the corsairs I've had stall the same way. They roll and dive inverted to the ground. I call that the corsair doe-see-doe. You better have the altitude to recover or you smack the ground hard. Thats what I did.
You're gonna love it. Nothing looks like a warbird low and fast.
The ST90 is currently in a .60 sized scratch built mustang with the same muffler. ST engines have been good to me. Got a .75 with around 200 hours on it and the .90 has about 40 hours on it. I didnt bother putting a hole in the corsiar cowl for the high speed needle valve. Just set it and forget it. The engine fit fully inside the cowl and make sure you put the baffle on. The engine will overheat if you dont.
Edwin