Dennis and Caroline,

I wanted to thank you for another great Carden offering, the Carden 126 inch Extra 300.

I found the wood and materials in this kit to be the best of any I have seen.  The wood is very clean, light, straight and as good as if not better than any competition balsa I have ever used.

I built the airplane over the winter 2009 and have about 50 flights on it now.  I held off on my letter so I could get some flight time on the plane for a better analysis of how it flies and handles.  All up weight with Dubro 50 ounce fuel tank 37 lbs 11.5 ounces!

I found the plane very easy to adapt to from my previous  40% Carden 260’s  I have found the plane to be “easier” to fly and more honest somehow.  Spins, snaps, rolls, pretty much anything I have thrown at it has not yielded any bad habits.  It handles the wind great and is very predictable.    Not sure how you could possibly improve on it!  Rolling circles are easier with this plane than anything I have had previous.  45 degree up and down lines need very little or no rudder input to keep the plane on track. 

I get asked a lot if the bigger plane feels any different than the 40%.  I would say it is almost like the jump from the 35% to the 40% plane which is a notable difference. 

The DA-170 is definitely plenty of power as vertical maneuvers don’t seem to slow the plane down much.  Vertical snaps are a piece of cake, no issues accelerating out of 5-10 vertical snaps in a row!

Flying pace from horizontal, to vertical up and vertical down seem very closely matched giving the plane a good presentation and plenty of time for rolling elements on down lines.

My set up is as follows:

Carden 126 inch Extra 300

DA-170 on RE-3 exhaust, 14 inch solid headers.

Mejzlik 30-12 2 blade or 29-12 3 blade propellers.

Mejzlik 5 inch carbon fiber spinner.

All Futaba 9157 servos: 2 per aileron, 1 per elevator, 2 on the rudder.

Futaba 6014 FASST rx’s

2  FlightPower 7.4 volt 2 cell 3350 Lipo for flight packs.

FlightPower 8 amp regulators.

Fromeco 2400 LION ignition pack.

In addition I documented my build on Flying Giants in effort to help others along the way to building the best plane available today, a Carden Extra 300.  I have over 1000 high quality pictures and tips that great people like Terry Boston shared with me over the years.  It can be found here: http://www.flyinggiants.com/forums/fg42/37629-carden-43-300-build-thread.html

Here are a couple of pictures of the plane and two other of my Carden’s with my favorite scheme on them.  A Carden 35% Extra 330, 40% 260, and 126 inch 300.

Thanks again and look forward to seeing you soon.

Will Berninger