If you haven't built a kit, and would like to, the Venture 60 is available from Bruce Tharpe Enterprises.

http://www.btemodels.com/venture.html

This is an easy building kit with very good instructions, reasonable price. It can be built with anything from a .60 2 stroke, to about a 1.00 4 stroke and flies very well as a 2nd plane. If you were looking for a 4 Star kit, this would replace that easily.

It even looks like a Four Star! Nice!!

CGr

I've been waiting for it to come back. My tax refund should be here any day. [&:]

Tax refund - jeech... I don't even have my W2's yet.

I had a SIG Four Star and loved it. If this one flys as well as the original one did, it ought to be a nice plane. I recall that when it was ready for a maiden flight, one of our club "pro's" flew it. He had it doing more maneuvers than I thought were possible. He did a series of rolling vertical climbs.. right rolls up and left rolls down. Pretty neat.



CGr.

Yes, it does look like a clone of the four star and it probably flies very well. But Sig still lists a Four Star 60 at $10.00 less than the BTE Venture 60. Is there an advantage in buying the BTE? just saying..........

Bruce designed the 4 Star to begin with. So it's not a clone, just Bruce's next level of his original design.

The V-60 is my favorite plane for just plain everyday flying, at least until I finish the Ultrasport I'm working on now. It's very similar to the 4-star, but I think the V-60 kit was even higher quality than Sig's kits (which are very good). I did have some trouble with the landing gear on rough fields, as any less than perfect landing could cause some damage. I fixed that by replacing the gear with a 4-star 60 gear from Sig. The Sig gear is more flexible and I haven't had a problem landing since. On concrete or a really smooth grass field I'm sure the original gear would have been fine, too. My club's field was pretty rough a few years back, though we've fixed it since.

I would buy the one that weighs less. However SIG 4*60 has all the wood for 2 aileron servo mounts included...

I had a 2 students that I buddy boxed on this and they both felt it flew easier than their trainers. It will fly very slowly without stalling, but is still very stable in the wind. It took about 3 weeks to build the frame, both the fuselage and wing. The covering took me about 1 week. This was all after work, about 1 - 2 hrs per night. Almost no finish sanding is required of the parts, they are already sanded when you get the kit. The wheel pants kit I bought at the same time don't interfere on my grass runway at all. This has a Saito 91 on it, and it gives very good vertical performance, but not "out of sight" type of vertical. This also flies inverted easier than my 4*. I finished the underside of the plane all in black, and it makes figuring out "which way is up" very easy, even at any distance.