Hi Robert,

I built and flew a Thorjet F-20 and had a great deal of fun with it using both Turbax/K&B.45 and, latterly, a Thorjet and OS.46. I found that you had to nurse it for a half a lap after take-off to let it get over the drag of take-off and get up to speed, and its low aspect ratio lack of wings meant it bled off energy very well in tight turns! For what it's worth, my advice would be to build it light - apart from the 4 'corner stringers, substitute the hardwood stringers for hard balsa ones, cut lightening holes in the formers and the inner fuselage floor 'plank', leave off the hardwood strips on the fin and tailplanes, and do built-up wings as opposed to the foam ones. I wanted to make mine into an F-5 so I left off the big balsa fairing at the base of the fin too.

Built light and straight and the F-20 will surprise you with its performance. Mine lasted 130 'adventures' with me as F-5, 74-1553, of the 527th AS done in brown/green/beige 'froggy' scheme. It did more than that with its second owner and it's final keeper, Paul Mitchell, (he re-painted it in blue/grey/beige and changed the number to 74-1535) was up in to the 170s when the fan came off and took out the control runs...no more F-20! I built it in 1989 and it 'blew up' in 2000 - 11 years...not bad for a wooden model! Incidentally, if you want to see pictures of this model, it features in Paul Mitchell's Ice Life columnn in the Oct/Nov 2002 RCJI.

Cheers,

Dick
England