I started mining this forum around 24 hours ago. It took around 14 hours or so until I received my first coins in a lump sum of 50. About an hour after that, I received 19 more. From that point, I got about 2 or 3 coins every 30 minutes until I was fully paid for my work. The timing of the payouts is odd (well in excess of 120 confirms for a block participated in) but there is no scamming involved as far as I can tell.

I just chalk it up to the quirks that come with mining on a brand new pool. Viper is often available in the chat on his pool site, and he responds to PM here on this forum. Seems legit to me, and very promising once the bugs are ironed out. Anyways, if you want to mine FC right now, what are your alternatives? On the official Feathercoin topic on this forum, I see links to one site that inst allowing new registration, one that gave me 9200 accepted shares and 1150 stales, one that doesn't allow you to keep track of your rewards by not even having registration, and a couple of brand new pools that have single digit M/h rates right now. Not trying to shit on other pools (that's why I didn't mention them by name) but Viper's pool is the best IMO right now, warts and all. Give it a chance.

Viper also PMed me to say that he is going to fix the auto payout problem, and he's already mentioned in this thread and on his site about migrating servers to speed up the frontend of the site.

I know I am brand new (this is my first post outside of the newbie section) so I know I have zero clout, but for whatever it's worth I recommend Viper's pool.