I was in search for a plane which is quickly assembled on the field and always ready to use the few hours of daylight in the winter season. So I found a Valiant kit just one year ago and finished it.
The Valiant was built by Composite ARF some time ago and they did a very good job on it. The parts are highly precisely build and highly reliable. The most outstanding feature of the Valiants construction is that the surfaces are center hinged. The flying with the Valiant is easy - it just does what it should and tracks in every manouvre just great.
Bryan Hebert did a fabulous job on the plane. For the painting I have chosen something quite special: It is a design which Gichii Naruke once flew on his famous Aurora airframe – I think it fits perfectly on the Valiant, too!
The Valiant has a very low landing gear which I really like. It fits nicely to the aircrafts shape so I had to go down with the prop size from the „normal“ Yamada YS DZ-185 CDI and decided to give the new Yamada YS DZ-185 CDI ZERO a try.
On OPTI FUEL with 5% Nitro and 10% XLV Oil the engine performs just gorgeous with an APC 19x8 IMAC prop. The power on the uplines is great and the downline breaking of the prop is superb – but the best thing is that the fuel consumption of the engine is comparable to none. You can fly 3 ½ (three and a half!) FAI P-schedules with one 600ml tank which is incredible!