You have the experts helping you out, so I am not looking to derail your course of action. Dropping 180 bucks on a MAF sensor that you may end up deciding not to use in the future may not be something you want to do, but starting out in translator mode with the intent to switch to speed density later may help the learning curve. This way you can focus on getting everything ironed out, with out also having to work as hard at getting the fueling dialed in.
I use mine in translator mode and do not see a need to switch at my level of performance. I have a volt booster set at 8 psig and the alky starts at 5 psig. So below 5 psig I do not have to touch the tune. Bob's chip with the MAF is spot on. Since I don't have to touch anything below 5 psig, I have reconfigured the low, mid, and high load points to be able to scale the tune above 5 psig (100 MPa is 0psig). I set the low load for 160, mid for 170, and high 240. This lets me scale the upper boost range easily for alky tweaking. I also use the VE map as a maf tunning map instead of a true VE table. It works very well. I am still tweaking for the alky, but have good results controlling fuel with a dual nozzle alkycontrol.
I have learned to live with the LC-1, but it reads significantly different on the PL then the MAFT. 10.5 on MAFT = 9.9 ish on the PL. Just an alert. I have messed with the grounds, the offset in PL to no avail. No biggie, just need to be aware.
Something else you can do if you have a MAF (and don't use the VE table in translator mode like I do) is to use the tunerpro software to log your runs. You can compare the MAF readings to the calculated VE readings, which initially would help dial the speed density calcs.
Just some food for thought.
