Originally Posted by Mark II

Don,

The FSI Viking II that you built from the kit appears to be significantly taller than my just-completed clone. This highlights a dilemma that I faced when I was building mine: do I use the body tube lengths described in the kit instructions (9" for the main BT and 4" for the payload section) or do I use the lengths listed in the addendum that was appended to the plans (12" for the main BT, and 8" for the payload section)?

The first set of numbers yields a model that is much closer to the length stated in all of the FSI catalogs (16"), yet the model you built from the actual kit appears to have used the longer tubes.

Do you think that it's possible that both sets of tube lengths are right, and that they simply represent different versions of the Viking II (such as an "early" and a "late" model, like FSI had for the Orbit and the Sprint, for example), and furthermore, that they changed the dimensions without ever updating either their kit instructions or their catalog copy? (I also think that my version more closely resembles the picture in the '79 catalog, et. al. But that doesn't resolve anything ; after all, yours was built from an actual kit!)

Finally, my clone is actually approx. 17.375" tall (but when you omit the tube fin "sweep" from the measurement, it is indeed about 16" tall). How tall is your model?

Mark