Personally the Ultimate, while a great plane, does not do well for IMAC unless you are really good at trimming and wind correction and hiding those corrections. I have a well trimmed Ultimate from GP and H9 and while I can run through all the sequences up to Intermediate (my skills stop there) it does not do them well. Give it a bit of wind and you can have a hand full.

The key to IMAC is a well trimmed plane that is not too light that you can easily predict what it is going to do at any moment wind or no wind, there is something to be said for Extra's and Yak's. I have both in 50cc and larger sizes and (I used a C-Arp 2.3M Extra 330L this year with a 3W70iUS and it was an absolute joy to compete with.) the Extra has gottem me quite a few good scores in basic) I took 6th in my first conrtest flying a Cap and second in my second one flying the Extra and have mainly scored firsts since then with it). I would not run them (50cc) through anything higher than sportsman though. I am in the process of trimming a 3M Comp-Arf 260 for next year in sportsman, possibly higher and I feel I need this to be competitive in the region I fly in as the smallest plane this year in sportsman was a WH 35% Extra 260 protoype. Remember, the judges are gonna be pilots that have been doing this for a while and know exactly where you will be trying to hide mistakes. I also have Wh 33% Edge and while this thing is flying very well, running it through the sportsman sequence is a bit of work.

The basic class is all about having fun as is IMAC in and of itself, but to truley be competitve your gonna need something a bit better than the Ultimate. I'd go with the Aeroworks 50cc Yak with a DA50 on a pipe and you'll be pleased. You'll have a great IMAC machine that will serve you well and you can 3D the pants off it.

There are some really good IMAC pilots in your area, contact Pride Grimm, Mike Dinu, Kent or Alex Porter or Pete Castine. Pride and Mike have been neck and neck all year in basic and Pride is basically a robot which until recently was flying a 10yr old Carden Extra and then he bought a well trimmend C-Arf 2.6 Yak and has been basically unstoppable since that point, Mike is good but he quickly found out he needed something a bit better to be competitive with Pride and he went with the 2.6M Extra and saw his scores go up. Kent is just flat out good in Intermediate as is his son Alex in Sportsman and Pete flies Advanced with a C-Arf SuperExtra. Anyone of them can really help you out