Bought the 1/2A shrike kit a few months back for $20. I finally got around to building it. I decided to make it Mig-like with a few simple mods. I also drew some panel lines and used Rudderman's trick for easy faux rivets. I'm pleased with the results. Maiden flight probably wont happen for a week or more, but I'm expecting good things. I threw together a web page with some pics which I'll update after the maiden.

http://users2.ev1.net/~nbad/shrike.htm

Looks good, but I hope you have a contrasting color on the bottom

When I had mine it would roll quick and with one solid color I would have never been able to tell if it was right side up or not.

very nice, i like that old fashion mig look. I had one a long time a go with speed400 and 7cells 600mAh. It can move nicely, great aerobatics, but too bad i didn't know about snap spin back then
mine met its demise when i yanked the elevator up too much at too low an altitude, smack! So you should stick with the recommended throws, especially with a design like this one.
It's so funny thinking about it, it flew like a F18 when i was gentle with the controls, but when i yanked it......i just couldn't figured it out back then...hehe.
have fun.

I put 2" wide "invasion" stripes on the bottom of the wing for orientation. Hope that's enough.

Time to go camping...have a good weekend everybody.

Update: I still havent flown the shrikeski, but I did rework the nose a bit. I didnt like the looks of the 1.5" spinner that was on there. So I put on a Graupner spinner (smaller) and added a lip around the firewall to make it look somewhat like the nose of a Mig-21. This also allowed me to add some air inlets on the firwall just outside the perimeter of the spinner. I know it doesnt look quite right, but I think it's better than before.

There's a couple more pics on the web site.
Maybe I'll actually fly this thing tomorrow.

So have you flown it yet?

I just finished mine and put it in the air with a SP300, 5:1 box, a 9X6 and 8 cells. It flew fast, and was quite stable, even with the fairly large prop, but I did have tip stalling when I attempted to loop.

Has anybody else noticed this? If I traded torque for prop speed do you think the problem would go away? I was thinking of the Wattage cobalt as a replacement.

Yup the maiden flight was on saturday. I wish I had seen the other shrike thread talking about it needing reflex first. The first launch attempt resulted in a broken prop (APC 5x5). So I switched to a MA 5.5x4.5 and got a good launch this time. Very fast. It needed lots of up trim and right aileron. While flying around, trying to get it trimed out, I let it get a litle too far away and got disoriented. I put it in, but not bad. It took the left wing clean off. After 5 minutes in the shop, it's mostly fixed. I'm looking forward to trying it again...with reflex.
I was wondering how the 7.2z 300 would work in direct drive.