The 60 inch is a moulded early version of the Shooting Star. It was imported by Plane Sailing (Barry Hawkins & Jess Nichols) as a Sharp. I have seen it on the net now with flaps, and under yet another name for the USA. I got a second Shooting Star from Phil Howard, who got it from Neil Longman, which has a smaller canopy. The Sharp battery installation was much envied, and I was asked how I managed it (1000mAh NiMH's in two pairs), but then I did not know that Shooting Stars had a more restricted access to nose. The blue Sharp pictured is the prettiest I have seen. There have been red, yellow, and red/yellow. The new planes can be spotted by their multi striped tip art; just yukky! Barry Hawkins probably knows more.

I have fully ballasted the Sharp and then it shifts, but with some flicking out of tight manoeuvres. I compared performance with my second unballasted model. Light conditions and go for unballasted. Medium conditions then some ballast. Full ballast - I don't think I'll do that again! I have worked back from the cg inherited when I bought the model secondhand, and replaced all servos. I was confused by a tendency to tip stall when I first flew it, but that proved to be a wing servo glitching. The servo case had enough give in it for the cogs to jump just when they should not.

The 2.8m scaler is a Geriasis DG600, which I got secondhand unbuilt from Les. The other Trevor has one. It is a better scale rendition than the Multiplex DG evolution, which I desire. It has foam veneered wings. I put in flaps for a 4 servo wing, and a little down flap kept me in the air last July on a very iffy sloping day at Win Green. I was reckless as I only had the week before going to mountains unflyable. I was given a carbon wing joiner, but the plane is light, and the speed dropped off too much, so I use the steel rod supplied. The DG is my pride and joy. It flies fast or slow, is stable, allows a bit of tranny playing with trim switches and flaps, and packs down to fit on the parcel shelf on my Citroen ZX.

As usual there is another want - Can I have the fully moulded 2m ASW28 and the DG600 with stand up tiplets AND winglets to bring it to 3.2m please? see http://www.nesail.com for some very affordable planes from Czechland to Chile via Vermont!