John you are spot on in your detective work
Iv done a fair bit of research on the American forums regarding the panther and 90% of them have gone with an 80 size turbine. The flight reports are all very positive so hopefully I will be able to gell with it very quickly. I have made some changes to the airframe construction to help with the higher flying loads as it was originally designed for os91 ducted fan. The mods I have made are adding vertical sheer webs on every rib, extended the wing tubes to pass through 3 ribs instead of 2 and run spruce strip on each side of the wing socket with an epoxy fillet.Reinforcement around the retract mounts and used heavy duty robarts instead of pin hinges.The airframe will be covered in 25g glass cloth with 2 coats of z epoxy.
Dave as for the scheme I will probably go for the blue and yellow of the us navy blue angels display team.As for radio I will use a 9 ch Powersafe with 2 no 4500 life bats, 2s 3700 lipo for the turbine and 2s 2100 lipo for retracts and high torque digital on the surfaces except for the flaps which will have high torque non digital. Iv decided to go this route as the flaps are massive on the panther and was concerned with the current draw if I used digital, when the flaps are fully deployed at 60 degrees.