I've been reading a lot of good suggestions here with a lot of good planes talked about, but is everybody taking into consideration the fact that skelrad is flying at 9000 ft.? If you've flown a full scale non-turbo/non-supercharged recip at that altitude, you know how degraded climb rate can be. While all these planes fly great at most fields which are probably at 3000 ft. or less, how will the thinnner air at skelrads atlitide effect it. Also how will the altitude affect engine performance? All engines have a service ceiling at which point they won't make their rated horse power. Guys I've talked to who live at elevations at and above 5000 ft. find that in a lot of cases they have to run larger engines to make up for the altitude, and this is just a bit more that half the altitude skelrad will fly at.

What he needs is a plane that will perform as well at 9000 ft. as everybody else see's at much lower atlitudes.

So here is a couple of questions -
Who knows why the average 2-stroke model airplane engine makes it best power at sea level or below, and loses power as the altitude goes up (i.e. why does an OS .40 AX make more power in Miami than Denver)?
Why will a plane (say a Cessna C-150, just to use as an example), climb at 650 feet per minute at 600 feet above sea level, yet less than 100 feet per minute at 8000 feet above sea level?

The basic theory behind the answers to these questions is what skelrad has to deal with.

Hogflyer