RE: New Viper 500 RTC
I don't think Hobbico is going after the racer market with the Viper. They sent me a RTC to do a review on for MA and it looks good for a racer that want to have a plane other than Red or White. I know when I first started racing the AMA 424 locally, that was the first thing I did was to strip the covering and replace with my own colors. The RTC gives you the chance to do that without stripping it all down. No matter what you get you will need to do some mods to go racing with the Viper. The one thing that I did to the review Viper is put some 3/4oz. glass on the rear section on the fuse around the LE of the tail, hoping this will help out with the weak area. You still have to Glass the center section on the wing and around the nose of the fuse, in my thoughts, it does no good to pin the firewall because there is no ply up there to begin with. If you replace the top hatch with ply you could go ahead and pin it then, but you would also need to replace the bottom as well to make it durable. The best way is the glass the nose per the instructions and use epoxy and chopped glass inside the nose area around the firewall and under the wing hold down, and landing gear block. I have not checked the tail yet for incidence problem, but will soon and get back to everyone in the article.
Scott Causey