After 2 years flying I'm still loving my Foxcomp Hawk.

I even still love the Stumax EDF unit which is faultless in operation along with its Schulze controller.

But I'm fed up of over-hyped lipos which have insufficient life at big EDF powers for them to be cost-effective. A year ago I decided to branch out and bought an autostart MW44 Gold, fitting it in a Boomerang Nano with the aim of finding out about and getting used to turbine operation.

What I found out is that the full autostart MW44 is less hassle to operate than EDF, and the Nano needs no more washing than the Hawk! And flight times are much longer. And the frugal MW44 is very affordable to run even on DIY store paraffin. Besides which the Nano is enough fun and versatile enough regarding the roughness of the take-off and landing area that I felt no need to immediately move the MW44 into the Hawk which could be rather more fragile ref landing zones.

Well, I've saved up and bought a second MW44 Gold and tailpipe and am about to retro-fit it in my Foxcomp Hawk. Apart from every other advantage, my MW44-equipped Hawk will weigh about 2lb less on landing than it does as an EDF model, which will help when taking off and landing on the rough flaking concrete area we often have to operate from.

As I don't have the turbine mounting lugs in mine, I can pick and choose where I fit the engine. I'm wondering how much leeway I have with the location of the MW44. I'd like to use a simple one-tank setup with a 1200ml tank like that in my Nano positioned centrally and just in front of the turbine, but I'd have to move the engine aft about 6 inches from the usual position to get the centre of the tank slightly foward of the CG, which is where I think it should probably go. I did read earlier that one builder needed to add tail weight to his P-60 version, and as the MW44 is quite a lot lighter than the P-60, it struck me that it could go aft a bit, especially as the tailpipe will then be shorter and weigh less. Naturally I'd position the significantly heavy bits of avionics and engine ancillaries as far forward as poss, and could even use twin 2S A123s (with some weight penalty over lipos) to help with the CG.

Whaddaya think, guys?

Gordon