I had one years ago and plan on doing another. It is a smallish airplane so keep a target weight below 40 to 45 ounces. I have never done it, but weigh the plastic parts against a balsa part and see what you get. You can even try to use the plastic parts as a mold buck for molded sheet balsa. At the time I did mine, Chris McMillin and I sent the stock core along with a set of plans to Scott Smith at Aerosmith models and he tripple cored them, plus cut us some "optimized" cores as well. I used the best balsa I could find for the wing sheeting, and made the flaps and tail feather built up balsa. With a bone stock FP.40 in the nose ready to fly, it came in at 39 ounces and flew better that I could at that time. Won a few trophies with it. I also modified mine to look like a A or B model with the razor back fuselage. I lost it when it didn't want to pull out inverted inn a reverse wing over. Never did find the exact cause but the controls obviously hung up some how. If you can find a kit, and you like the looks and size, go for it. It's not a lot of work to get it light enough to fly really well and even in the 40 to 45 ounce range I think it would carry that weight OK, judging from my experiences and from what I saw of some heavier ones fly. It would not be too difficult to scratch build one if you can't find a kit but can at least scrounge up a set of plans. I think it was published in Model Airplane News just as the kit came out, and is one of Mike Gretz's designs.
Type at you later,
Dan McEntee