RD,

I have owned and flown both the GP AT-6 and the H9 T-34 Mentor. By far the GP AT-6 is a nicer looking better flying plane. The only thing it doesn't do well is knife edge flight. GP didn't do a great job with the construction of the kit in comparison to top shelf ARF's of today. It does take some time to put the kit together clean. Never-the-less, if you have built ARF's before you shouldn't have any problems. I put a remote glow starter on mine and a fuel dot which took some time to line up with the cowl. Measure twice cut once! The firewall is recessed on the plane and with an inverted engine placement I have to take the cowl off and loosen the engine mount to replace the glow plug. Also a reason why I put on a remote glow starter.

Out of the box the kit doesn't look like much, but once you get it all together, paint the canopy, and get the decals on it's one sweet looking 40 size ARF. It is really easy to see in the air and it's slow flight characteristics are unreal. You can slow it down to a crawl. Take offs in a cross wind are a challenge and I royally screwed up a take off in those conditions one time. Criticisms of the Kyosho ARF are: if you don't get the two wing halves dihedral perfectly identical it has a nasty tip stalling tendency and just about everyone says the Kyosho AT-6 is tail heavy. Our GP AT-6 with a Saito .72 needed no additional weight to balance with a 2700Mah battery pack under the rear of the canopy. I know that's one heavy pack and overkill on capacity for this plane. The Saito .72 is plenty of power for this plane and flies it nicely.

Get the hobbico .40 size retracts. They are all metal and fit well. The hardest part of the build was bending the retract wire to fit into the wheel wells. They require multiple bends, but once you get them bent your in good shape. I didn't have a vice to bend mine with. That was fun. The hobbico wire is very sturdy. I have had H9 retracts, GP retracts, and the hobbico's are by far the best out of the bunch. The only difference is the GP and H9 have smaller mounting brackets than the hobbico and are lighter. The H9 retracts are crap in my opinion.

Out of all the ARF's my brother and I have built and flown we like the GP AT-6 the most so far.

Give a hollar if you need any help. Good luck.

-Blue