Thanks for all the advice.. For some reason my message posted in July has suddenly come to to the top of the pile so you'll appreciate things have moved on since! I did end up buying a Graupner Ultramat 14 charger which makes things deceptively easy.. I coupled this with a Tornado balancer and bought a few Duremax 2S packs and voila.. Things suddenly got lighter and flights got longer.. I swapped the kit into a Seagull which went really well until the Rx packed in and I had to just endure the sight of it spiralling into the Stroud valley complete with ESC, LiPo etc.. Bye bye Seagull! I then upgraded the EG to brushless using the Multiplex upgrade and what a difference that makes.. I was at the common last weekend and the fog was closing in. After an hour of practising landings it was still going strong with two other fresh packs in the car. So I did make the jump and I've been so impressed with the LiPo batterys I'm converted The Orion build almost went well when a twist in the fuz went un-noticed. My fault completely. I've yet to sort it out so I might include the mods suggested. I've currently got a West Wings Fournier on the go for the coming months. I'm currently looking at the Multiplex Gemini as I fancy a power model to learn some more advanced flying with and from what I've read it handles ok at lower speed (for my lower speed brain!). Of course all suggestions of better things are welcome!