Hi Ziggy,
I love the Avistar, its what I learned on and I liked it so much, I am on my 3rd one! lol. The Avistar is good because it can be real gentle, or mildly aerobatic. I like to mess around with it up high and do tip-stalls, etc. My first Avistar crashed because I was messing around flying inverted while pretty low, I forgot to reverse my thinking and gave it up elevator when it was inverted My second Avistar got destroyed when I forgot to put the screw in the aileron servo horn and lost aileron control shortly after take off. I fly my current Avistar with an OS .46FX and it is pretty fast. After learning on the Avistar, I went on to fly a H9 SuperStick 40 and an H9 Advance 40 and both planes were screamers. I felt totally comfortable stepping up to both planes after flying my Avistar. I am teaching my 7 year old son to fly with my Avistar. Good luck!