I think it is an excellent airplane and always want one around. I would really recommend it before getting into more expensive stuff. It is a great learning step and has a lot of the tendencies a larger, higher wing loaded airplane has at a fraction of the cost. I think that having flown a small airplane such as this one will make you a better pilot. He is pretty small and can be thrown in the car for some lunch break flying. It can be tamed down for sport flying or it can be flown wildly. It is a very durable airplane and took years of abuse. It does great flat spins as well as knife edge spins. It has enough rudder authority for four point rolls, eight point rolls, slow rolls, and some knife edge. My 14 year old brother went direclty from the Avistar as his primary trainer to this plane and was able to fly it. I tamed the controls down for him and he was having a blast. After a couple of flights I upped the control throw and he was doing rolling circles, low inverted passes with negative snap rolls, cuban eights........just about everything he saw me doing. He also got quite a bit of stick time on G2 which has helped him greatly.

I originally started out with a TT 25 pro on it. It flew the plane OK and it had good performance. I then started flying combat and it had a hard time pulling the streamer. It was a lot slower than the other aircraft. I bought a used OS 40 FP and, holy cow, it livened that plane up. I also fly around density altitudes of 7,000 - 10,000, so I lose a lot of power. For that reason the engines I recommend might be a tad big, but there is always the throttle stick.

I was able to fit a Hayes 6 ounce fuek tank up in the front and that will give you over a 10 minute flight. It also has room for standard radio equipment.

With the 40 it has unlimited vertical and is capable of insane maneuvers. People just can't believe how well it flies.