ORIGINAL: DJFOURSON
Glow teaches you to tune, experiment with fuel, plugs, pipes, and the engine is relatively tougher for those bumpy landings as you learn to land. If you go EP, get some shafts for that delicate motor ahead of time. Glow eliminates the urge to cut corners on safe places to fly. Also, you learn to use rudder more with a glow powered plane than a park flyer that doesn't require a runway. Combat guys rarely get to taxi planes either.
It's a 1 minute clean up chore on a glow mode and while I'm at it, I check it over for the next flying day, or find an excuse to upgrade some hardware.
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What is the life expectancy of an electric set up? I have glow engines older than me that still run.
Extra motor shafts? Never heard that one before. 9 years of flying electric and have never replaced a motor shaft.
Life expectancy of an electric set-up? Hard to say. Will have to get back to you if I ever have to replace a motor.
Iwill say that the cheapbrushed motors (still used in some low endplanes) dotend to lose performance over a couple hundred flights as the brushes wear out.Ihave yet to replace one due to wear. Howeverreplacement cost, $5 to $10,is about the price of a glow plug.I am sure those long lived glow engines have gone through more than a few glow plugs over their life.
There arebetter brushed motors that havereplaceable brushes, but the cost ismuch higher. Ihave never seen one that I recall, butI have read about them. I doubt they are much used anymore.
Most of the electric flying hobby has gone tobrushless motors. Basically they never wear out, are incredibly reliable and very powerful.
Regardless of whether you go glow or electric, there will be things that break and things that wear out. So it doesn't really matter, especially when you are talking about your first trainer.
SIZE MATTERS
I will note that electric flying tends to be toward the smaller end of the weight range. Many can be hand launched with no need for a groomed runway, or can be launched off a short section of dirt, blacktop or even short grass. Most electrics are under 10 pounds and I would guessthat more than halfof the electric planes sold are probably under6 pounds, which would be right around the .40 glow class of planes.
If you have any interest in selflaunched gliders, quad copters or things like that, they are almost all electric.
Glow planes tend to be larger. Probably the vast majority are over 5 pounds. From what I have seen,most are flown from some kind of groomed runway. If you are attracted to larger planes or even giant scale, they can certainly be electric, but this is where glow and gas really shine. And of course some people really love the scream and smoke of a glow engine.
While these things really don't enter into your choice of trainer the will enter into where you go after you learn. If you want to go big and loud, go glow.
If you want to go smaller, quiet, maybe fly in your living room, go electric.