shanksow,

Sorry to hear that your Sabre didn't fly well. You used the word "waddle" to discribe the flight performance. A waddle implies cylclic side to side swaying. This could be caused by alternate side to side tip stalling.

The second big mistake Kyosho made with their Sabre was in the manufacture of the wing. They were built with wash-in (the tips of the wings have a higher AoA than the roots). This is just asking for trouble. Also, wash-in on a swept wing like the Sabre produces a "down elevator" effect that the elevator has to fight resulting in a lot of performance-robbing "trim drag". Here is a picture from the construction manual to illustrate what wash-in looks like on the finished model.

This is how your wing tips should NOT look!!!

There is a pronounced washin in this photo af about 2 degrees. If your wing tips look like this your Sabre won't fly very well. I corrected this on my Sabre so that, from a side view like this, the bottom of the wing tips are parallel with the bottom of the aft fuselage. Also, drooped ailerons can produce "induced washin". So, reflex the ailerons up a bit.

In my testing, I didn't find any rpm improvements beyond 30% nitro. I don't know what effect altitude has on nitro content though. I'm at about 700'. The cheater holes on the bottom of the wing sound like a good thing to do. Given that your wing tips have the proper AoA, I would think that you should have a very flyable (not a hotrod) airplane with a thrust to weight ratio as low as 1 to 3. If you could do some static thust tests, that would determine if there is a serious lack of thrust .

I apologize if all of this is just a re-hash of stuff you already knew. Hope something here will get you some enjoyable flying time with your Sabre.