Chucky,

        I built Sneekers out of Riley Wooten's Flight Line Kits back in the 1960's. Still have three that are in good flying condition.  I flew them in competition during the mid 1960's along with Riley's VooDoo's and Vampire's using the Fox .36x BB and later Super Tigre .35 Combat plain bearing engines.  I am sure that these engines are lighter than the Fox Mk III.  They all balanced fine with no tail weight using standard length booms and the afore mentioned engines.  I have two Fox Mk IV Combat Specials in my collection and I know that they are certainly heavier than the earlier Fox Combat engines or the Johnson CS and/or Johnson .36BB.  I always used the standard length booms, however, I just took measurements on a Howard Rush Nemesis II and found the following:  Total boom length is 9 and 3/4 inches.  The distance between the trailing edge of the wing and the leading edge of the stabulator is 6 inches.  Howard claimed this was the best boom length for maximum performance on the Nemesis II........and believe me............the 6 inch booms on Howard's terror of the 1960's combat circle work REAL GOOD!        

Chucky,

      The Sneeker is a real fun airplane, kind of sports car like perfomance, but the Nemesis II is the best wooden combat plane I have seen in my 58 years of control line flying.  Find the Nemesis II plans and build with light wood.........use a Super Tigre .35 Combat engine, bladder tank, and a 9/7 prop (Howard used a Tigre G-21 .35 and an 8/8 prop, slightly more powerful, but heavier).  They are not quite as simple to build as the Sneeker, Demon or VooDoo, but they are well worth the extra effort.  This design is stable, very fast, very smooth, extremely quick in maneuvers and will not slow down, no matter what maneuvers you execute (unless you hit the ground)! You will love the Nemesis II!    

Thanks for the offer, Howard.  I can handle PDF's if you have the Nemesis II in that format.

When I was stationed in Lubbock with the USAF, I got to know Riley. I was never very good at flying the Nemesis and decided they were too hard to build, and they were more expensive than the $2.95 Sneeker kit. I had Riley cut me the booms to allow the 4 1/2 inches between the wing TE and stab LE.

We all flew SUpertiger G21's on pacifier tanks housed in the metal pudding cans. I als moved the engine halfway into the leading edge and added a gusset between the rib and LE to keep the wing from folding. I wrote an article about this set up in the MACA news letter around 1973.

I'd go with the long booms on the Sneaker. I had one with a ST .35C on a real pacifier, and liked the way it flew with the short booms, but with a heavier engine, the long booms would be da bomb. It wasn't a real fast design, tho mine was clocked at 116 two flights in a row (50% nitro) by guys that knew how. It'd do about 108 on M.Mist and propped for combat, but without the streamer. I had faster, and they weren't smaller.  The wing itself is just not real clean, IMO.

Might add, that I have an original Flite Line kit of a Sneaker Mk. 11 (?) that has the long booms, and a sticker on the box that announces that detail.     Steve