How about a personal review of the Aerobird from a new RCer, me. I looked at the Firebird II, XL, Fighterbird and the Aerobird. With three channels you can do a lot more, so I went with the Aerobird.

I was not interested in building. If I spent a month building and then wrecked it, I would be crushed. I wanted a RTF that could take some punishment.

I am a first timer. However I am also one of these guys that goes into intense
research when I get interested in something. After several months of research,
talking to people, flyers and non, I bought an Aerobird. It is a super value
but there are other good starters. Here are the plusses and minuses in my mind
of the Aerobird.

Very inexpensive and rugged for a three channel starter - $150-$170
The plane comes complete and fully assembled. Charge the flight battery, put
on the wing, put the batteries in the transmitter and up you go! Even the
batteries for the transmitter are included.

New flyers like me are going to crash, so you don't want something costly to
start with. There is a full line of parts available at reasonable cost. You
can replace the whole main fuselage for $49 including the motor and all the
flight electronics. A wing is $15 and the tail is $7. So, if you crash badly
you can get everything for under $75 and you are back in the with a three
channel plane.

Batteries and charger:

The battery will run for a full 5-6 minutes at full throttle and 12-15 minutes+
at half throttle. Many planes in this class run 4-6
minutes. And unlike many of the 2 channel starters, it comes with a peak
charger that you can use in your car. If you pick up two spare batteries you
can stay in the air all day. A full charge takes about 40 minutes.

Another plane I liked was the Sky Scooter Pro, now the Pro II. You can get it as a base plane and motor and add your own electronics or get it ready to fly with a 72 MHZ Hittec 3 channel radio for about $150. This was my second choice to the Aerobird. I like it a lot!

The Aerobird also has an X-Pak hop up kit available for $30. It includes a 7
cell battery (the basic is 6) and a larger tail. This makes the plane faster
and more maneuverable. So, once you get good you can soup it up! I bought the
X-Pak when I bought mine. I will use the 7 cell as my second battery and save the tail for later.

WIND

All new flyers should start in winds under 5 MPH so that you are learning to fly the plane rather than fighting the wind. I didn't do that and crashed a lot because of the wind. However, now I am very comfortable flying this plane in 10-12 MPH winds. Handles it very well.

27 MHZ vs 72 MHZ Radio

The Aerobird uses a 27 MHZ radio which is assigned to general use for planes,
cars and boats; mostly low end stuff. There are only 6 available channels. So,
if you have a kid with a RC car in the same area where you are flying, and he
is on the same channel you are on, and he is close enough, when he switches on
his transmitter, you will lose control of the plane and probably crash. Even
with 72 MHZ radio systems, this will happen if you get two flyers on the same
channel, but 72 MHZ is dedicated to airplanes. High end RC cars are on 75 MHZ
so they won't interfere.

The flight control is a single stick radio with rudder and elevator on the
stick. Throttle is on a slide on the left top. It is similar to a Futaba or
Hitec single stick arrangement. I find it very comfortable to use and other flyers who have tried it say they find it easy as well.

If you are going to join a club, check with them. Some clubs will not admit 27
MHZ based planes because they can't be flown with a buddy box, a training
system, like a dual controlled car, that is used for pilot training. After
long consideration I bought the Aerobird, but these are things I took into consideration. My club, www.lisf.org has many firebird pilots, so the Aerobird was welcome The Sky Scooter Pro, mentioned above, is on the 72 MHZ band set-up so you don't have any of these considerations.

Downed Plane Locator:

If you fly near woods, swamp, tall grass or places where the plane could go out of sight, get some kind of plane locator. It is amazing how hard it can be to see a plane in the woods or tall grass that is 10 feet from you.

Here is a review of an Emergency Locator Beacon that illustrates its value
(this site is somewhat unreliable)
http://webhome.idirect.com/~arrowmfg...s/elb-revi.htm
Sounds like a good idea to me. Every plane I ever own will have some kind of
locator.

Here are three examples of locators:
http://www.customelectronics.co.uk/lma.htm
http://www.hobbico.com/accys/hcap0335.html
http://www.rcelectronics.bravepages.com/Locator.html

These won't work on my Aerobird. I am using one of these:
http://www.keyringer.com

They look like a small clicker for your car door locks. They work by sound.
You click one of a pair which sends out a chirp that the second one hears and
answers. I place it on top of the wing under the rubber bands that hold
the wing. Itbalances nicely, and I can easily move it from plane to
plane..

Resources Aerobird, Sky Scooter Pro

Here is an internet site that sells the Aerobird. They also have a
link for a video of the plane flying:
http://www.parkflyers.com/html/aerobird.html

Here is a link to a review of the Aerobird:
http://www1.wildhobbies.com/news/de...w&articleid=853

As I said, my alternative plane was the Sky Scooter Pro. It had been about
$260 RTF, but they recently released the Sky Scooter Pro 2 at about $160 so
you might want to give it serious consideration.
http://www.servocity.com/ServoCity/...._airplane.html

Videos
http://www.hitecrcd.com/Funtec/videos.htm

So, that's my evaluation of the Aerobird and why I purchased it. I fly as often as I can. I have about 20 flights on my plane since the end of March. I am fully self taught. At this point I am just loving it. My friend has a Wingo and says he likes flying my Aerobird so much he plans to get one too.