Cost:

The airframe, gear + brakes, and bifurcated pipe are around $3500. See http://www.altecare.com/jaguar.htm for details. If you want to order from Peter, I suggest hat you double-check with him just what the retract kit he is quoting includes. I ordered direct from Didier, and purchased his complete set of retracts, wheels and brakes, but when I received the goods, the parts included did not match the "instruction pics" ... several components from the brake side were missing. When I queried this, I was advised that the parts I had paid for from CD was a "partial" brake set, whereas the pics showed the complete set. I felt that this was a tad disingenuous, but will write it off as a learning experience such that in future I will demand a full list of components in English.

I don't know whether the parts that Peter is quoting on his website is the new "REALLY complete" set that CD apparently is offering now, or the "Cut-down" set that only I was sold, so please check that with him just to be sure that there is no misunderstanding that could create bad feelings. Note that I'm not in any way suggesting Peter would play shell games with what's in the box you'd receive from him - he's a stand up guy - buy he may or may not have adjusted his web page based on things like this change in contents, and he's possibly also stil learning what exactly Didier includes and what he does not.

The pipe is a single-wall affair, which I may choose to replace with a double-walled unit from Tam. I'm not sure I like the way the pipe sticks out eihter, so I may also see if Tam can do some metal tailcones just like he's done for e.g. the Super Bandit etc - but that has yet to be determined.

Impressions:
Obviously this could still change as the build progresses, but so far my impressions are pretty favorable. As mentioned, the glass quality is very good. A much sturdier shipping container would be nice, to help protect that lovely glasswork, but in my experience the smaller European manufacturers do seem to have overly optimistic opinions of what happens when you write "fragile" on the outside of a box. e.g. my Hunter kit from Mick Reeves was in an equally thin and floppy box when it was sent to me, and it too got shipping damage (though not nearly this bad). I think most of us would be happy to pay a few bucks more for a good quality box that prevents all the heartache.

The quality of the landing gear has impressed me. This is an area where the smaller manufacturers often suffer IMO - since they don't expect to sell that many kits, they sometimes won't invest in high quality gear. The gear (retracts, struts, brakes) in this kit are certainly not cheap, but so far they seem well worth the money.

Issues like the servo hatch placement causing it to be glued to the spar, some issues with the gear mounts and placement etc. that I have come across so far are IMO quite typical of the problems that you find in a very early kit. I found those in my Hunter kit (Again, I supposedly had kit #1), and even in my BVM Super Bandit kit (which was one of the very first customer kits released, with only a few rep-built kits preceding it). If you want to avoid these kind of issues, wait until the kit has been out a whlie and the manufacturer has had a chance to fix the gotchas. For me, it's not a big problem and I accept these kind of things as part of the price of getting the kit at an early stage.

Gordon