Al,
I did not view your post as upsetting in any way, I thought if you new a little background history you might better be able to understand the spirit of what makes an SSC engine legal.

Provisional means that the rules are open for tweaking still and will probably be so come July. I was looking for some input from someone like yourself as to these grey areas that pop up from time to time.

Lou is the ultimate source on issue like these and it sounds as if some older engines laying around just might have a use.

As for a little SSC design history, the 8X3 prop is the real kicker, it is a "major dog" of a prop, but needed to keep things slow, @ the minimum weight of 2 1/2 lbs and 400 minimum square inches of wing, if your not turning that prop atleast 16,800 hand launches are difficult in cross and downwind launches, also it becomes very unstable when pulling a streamer or even two when going slightly vertical, thus you have a plane that is a handfull for even the veteran combat ACES. History has shown the wing area increasing to 500+ squares are proving to help flight envelope. 17000 is about the top rpm IMO, you can safely set the engine at, to comfortably pass a pinch test and have a safety margin for error so it does not exceed 17500 when tached during a tech inspection.

I would get something together, put some 30% heli fuel in them dinosaurs, use 7X4 prop and get em airborne and trimmed out. This will ensure a succesfull day of fun. Then you can worry about detuning with the 8X3 and legal rpm's. I say go for it, SSC is combat for all ages. If it works out like we hope, you can just hang your model on the wall and bring it out for battle time and then just put it back on the wall for the next battle..............