Nice looking rig and quite large. That extra meter in height makes a lot of difference.
Sailed against some Finns the other day but could not match them upwind in a 5 knot breeze. Struggled to find height compared to when sailing a full rig Laser but it was my first time sailing upwind with this rig and playing around with settings. Off wind it had a lot of power as to be expected.
Seems to like a lot of vang and more downhaul than you would use on a full rig. It does not feel dissimilar to a normal Laser rig when actually sailing though. Very easy to sheet block to block and feels like a Radial in that respect.
Battens are tapered and same length as a large Laser batten.
As a fellow 8.1 sailor (from the UK though) I can confirm you need an awful lot more vang/kicker than the std rig. You then control the leech using the cunningham (sound wierd but it does work).
Also I found in anything over 15kts the Std rig is faster.
Have you seen the tuning guide that Steve wrote for it?