Avenger Fans,

I picked up an Avenger 8.0 Kit several weeks ago and now have about 20 flights on it. I too had the question about the chord length but cut the length down per the instructions. Doing this leaves about a 1.25" step between the bottom of the ailerons and the bottom of the trailing edge of the wing. I kept the upper surface of the wing and ailerons flush, so the hinge line is actually above center.

Turns out that my Avenger flies excellent. It's really fast, turns incredibly hard, and even has terrific slow speed characteristics. If you build it per the plans, you'll have a great plane!

A couple other things:

My plane ended up balancing at 2 1/8" from the leading edge. AJ recommends 1 3/4" to 2.0". I couldn't seem to achieve this balance point. I imagine that my combination of servos, engine, battery, etc. knocked me out of the range. Nonetheless, I'm extremely happy with my planes performance.

Another issue that came up was that I was slowly abrading away the tip of my muffler on landings (even though the landings were very slow). I added a skid per the plans (I used thin aluminum because the G10 scuffed quickly). At the end of the landing, the plane tips up on the nose and scraps the muffler. To save the muffler, I added a nice bead of JB Weld. The JB Weld sticks like crazy and is very durable.

My conclusion is that this is an outstanding combat plane. I'll be flying it in an event in San Diego this weekend. Looking forward to putting it through it's passes and hoping I wont stuff it before the meet is over.