Chuck - I run that same motor in BadAss and I have had one of the same Cobras as yours.  Very little difference.  You have the right motor to parallel a 60-75 IC.  My planes are in the 690-710 sq" from 65-72oz.  I use 2800 5s and 6s batteries.  Props vary.  My "go to" is the MAS 11-6 three blade because I don't have $75 to spend every time I nick a blade trying one of those 40 point takeoffs.
I have successfully used 11-6 and 12-5 two blades.  How well it runs will depend on your timer.  I would recommend getting something simple at first to get used to the drill.  Active timers can be a real head scratcher, but they are pretty much a necessity to become competitive. 

Ken

Note on the Prop Charts - they are for RC and not very useful for our purposes.   Watch your ESC and motor heat closely if you run a 12-6 on a 5s battery.  I would use a 6s.

Thanks guys, good info and helpful.

I have chargers and I used to solder boards and build prototype electrical devices many years ago as a part-time job during college.

Thanks for the advice on the prop charts too. I looked at them with a tad bit of scrutiny anyway because they appear to be measuring static thrust conditions and of course, for a fixed-pitch the thrust, HP required falls off with forward velocity such that the charts are not real-world application. I intend to measure the current and thanks for the advice on going 6S.

Retired this year, hoping to make it to a few contests and the NATS next year, meet some old friends and make some new ones. Wife has been dealing with cancer this year so took a package at work to be able to stay home and care for her. Good news is that she appears to be cancer free at this stage (!) and being retired is allowing me to get some serious building in. My gosh, this hobby becomes easier when you retire.


Thanks again and hope to meet you all in person soon,

Chuck


 

I don't have experience with a big variety of systems, but I am quite opinionated, so I'll opine anyhow. 

I fly 68-74 oz stunt planes, same airframe as with acoustic powerplants, but built lighter, especially the forward fuselage.  Well, not quite the same. CG is 1" farther forward, leadouts come out farther back (leave room), nose is about 1.5" longer to balance.  Why the different CG and leadout positions is among the Mysteries of Stunt.

Cobra should be dandy.  My Cobras didn't last too long rear-mounted.  People who front mount them say they last a long time. Last year's fashionable motor was the Bad Ass 3515.  This year's is the Bad Ass 3520. 

The current fashion in batteries is homemade packs of 18650 Li-Ion cells.  Jim Aron organized a big battery-making seminar to be held at my house.  I haven't made any yet.   Although I have been taking hundreds of 18650s with me to contests, I've just been leaving them in the car and using my trusty Thunder Power LiPos.  Thunder Power usually has a half-price sale about Thanksgiving. Get you some 25C Prolitex 2800mA-hr batteries.  Thunder Power will add connectors for $5 per battery or so.  Deans connectors have reliability issues and have fallen from favor.  Yellow ones are probably better.  My homies are switching to IC3s.  They seem to be good, and Horizon Hobbies sells them cheap in bags of 25. 

Other stuff depends on whether you operate the motor at constant speed or use an active timer.  Constant speed simplifies things.  You don't care about ESC dynamic response to inputs, so you can use any old ESC.  Popular ones are the domestically sourced Jeti Spin 66 Pro and Castle 75.  You can use the massive, but efficient APC props (I'll give you some from the PTG estate) and get away with 5S batteries.  You can use most any timer.  The dirt-cheap Hubin works great. The KR timer has the virtue of having a motor sensor that shuts power off when the prop hits the ground, but I'm sure you're past the point of needing that feature. 

If you want an active timer, there's this guy in Bratislava who is about the only credible source for timers, ESCs, and props.  He seems to be a controls guy, among other things.  The timers he's been making for several years work, and have many world champs and US Nats wins.  He is working on a new timer design that will be even better.   He has had the Jeti people make him a run of the old Spin 66 (not the Pro) ESCs, which have good dynamic response and a brake.  He also sells 16-gram hollow carbon 3-blade props, which, as Ken says, have better dynamic response than heavier ones.  Get either the 12" narrow-blade or the 11."  Use 6s batteries.

There are some alternatives to the Igor stuff: The Climb and Dive may be open-source, such that you can program your own control laws, which you would probably enjoy doing, and which could give you an advantage.  Mark Gerber measured the moment of inertia of Bad Ass (or maybe Xoar) wood props and found it to be even less than Igor's.  No doubt there are quick-responding drone ESCs out there, but we haven't found them.  I'll look when I run out of other things to do. 

I have found retirement to feel very natural.

As I recall, fuel only accounted for about a third of CG change. You might check that calculation.

We have rain here. No lumps to hit with props, and you don’t have to shovel it.

I would only add to all of the above the need to design very good airflow for cooling of the ESC, motor, and battery- perhaps the biggest challenge in adapting existing designs to electric powertrain. Most cooling systems I have observed look more like an afterthought, tacked onto the traditional nose layout.
Properly cooled electric powertrain will run happier and live longer.