Mother nature was on my side finally. I got to fly the kit bashed Miss Ashley. For me it's my Baby Magician. Although rudder and cockpit are altered I like it. The Medallion is out of the box new. I gave it a few ground runs letting it cackle back and forth and off to the circle. The plane is light, I'm not sure if that's why it flew so well but the Medallion indeed proved to be viable. I was shocked that a single bypass could do so well. I was on 35' lines and certainly it could've handled 5' or more. This tank mounting is new to me and I was surprised how rich the plane went after a lap. The faster the plane goes, the richer the fuel setting. The second you give it any input to the controls, it rockets off like a bullet. It was pretty neat. The problem was setting the needle to where it wasn't a bullet and maintaining level flight speed without quitting.
Lessons learned here, tank height was good after I installed a trim tab. This improved the engine setting inverted. The tank rather than requiring shimming up and down needs to be shimmed in and out. Next flights will be moving the tank outboard 1/8"at a time.
Initially I started out with old faithful the Top Flite Nylon 6x3. THE LAST ONE I HAD. Worked great until it backfired and broke the prop over my index finger and it shed the blade. This was followed with "SON *&^%$#. I even flexed that prop repeatedly inspecting the hub for any stress marks. We all agreed however that as much as it was nice, it really wasn't all that warm and this could've certainly been a contributing factor.
3rd flight Medallion was yanked off and TD installed. This particular TD is not a stock TD as it's had the piston lightened and the crank lightened and balanced as well. It was on a 1/2A racer so I figured it has to work, it's a TD. APC 4.75 x 4 and some 40% nitro added made for some spectacular entertainment. The engine required additional gaskets which I have no reason why as I've run this engine prior with good success. I can only attribute it to my fuel concoction possibly having too much oil. It was readily apparent all over the plane. Went out to 42' line length . If the tank was large enough could've flown 50' or better. I was amazingly happy with the performance as I used many things I've wanted to do through the years on this plane and even though this wasn't planned, the plane basically utilized many options I wanted to try. I can only state that for those who who like to experiment, just get out and do it. Ken