I have a Tower 40 Trainer that I yard darted the first time I flew it and am going to rebuild it and me and another guy in my club are going to start trainer combat. I was wondering what some of the key fetures are when building a combat bird.

Hmmm….been there, done that. Lost a couple of trainers and a stick in the process. That being said, trainers do not have the durability to hold up to the rough and tumble they will see in combat. The key feature of a combat plane is durability. One midair or dirt nap and you probably color your trainer gone. You would be better off in building a plane that is designed for combat flying. You will be a lot happier in the long run.

However, if you still want to combat with your trainer I would suggest that you use a 50’ string and a 30’ streamer and if you and your opponent agree to go for the streamer and not the plane then you can reduce the chance of a midair somewhat.

There is a lot of combat activity in TX and you can hook up with hard core combaters on the website [link]http://www.rccombat.com/[/link]

If you just want to chase each other around and play combat in your local club, build some SPAD HOR's and run Magnum 15's on them. Plenty of power for launching and flying, still low enough speed to be surviveable crashes, cheap and easy to replace parts when they aren't. Order your coroplast from Harbor Sales by calling up and talking to the people there otherwise the web shipping calculator will try to charge you incredible prices. And of course the HOR is off the SPAD website at www.spadtothebone.com

No we are planning on going full combat balls to the walls all the way and go after each other with full intintion on best man wins. I am planning on putting a 60 size motor on it and try to beef up the wings and sutch up as mutch as posible with out makeing the plane heavy to where it wont fly.

Don't do too much, the first streamer overshoot and most of your trainers will dis-appear. It'll look pretty cool spiraling in though, I'm telling ya.

If you enjoy it, follow my suggestion so you can have airplanes that can do it again and again.

combat is great! had my first meet last month. try to keep it even. go to the rccombat and check out the classes, open b or SSC is the most common. SPADS are also a way to get in the air cheap, clean is very correct. the hor will handle the abuse. I started with the spadstang with a longer wing, it is a 25 size plane. very fast and fun. the hor can be built for around 15 bucks, balsa plane, well you know. have fun