I picked up a Gentle Lady kit a few weeks ago and began assembly. It took me a while to put together. From my experience level the instructions were incredibly vague and I think I spent 50% of my assembly time just trying to understand what the instructions were telling me. Regardless, the model finally got put together. I covered it (much easier than I imagined) and purchased a radio. I put everything in, added some weight to the nose to get the CG right and took off to my local school.

I started just running with it in my hand. Then started letting go and catching it. Kept going faster until one time it flew out of my hand. Starting throwing it and was having flights on the order of 100yds. Absolutely incredible. I couldn't believe the thing flew. It was like the biggest paper airplane ever, and I even had control!

After close to an hour of that I decided it was getting boring and it was time to head to the beach. Went up to Fort Funston but the abundance of people to whack in the head with the aircraft turned me away. On my way home I found another less populated ridge (right near funston) and got the nerve to huck it off the cliff.

It took a few throws (and one walk down the mountain) to relax enough to let the plane really fly. But wow. Gliders are absolutely incredible. Throw it into the wind and as it comes into a little upward moving air it just floats, hardly moving at all. Going downwind it flies incredibly fast, though I only once was ever able to get it upwind enough to come back to me. I had one flight where I was able to make two complete, large circles.

Overall it was an amazing experience. I couldn't believe that something I built actually flew, and flew well! It wasn't quite as graceful as the birds, but it was close enough. I can't wait to get back out there.

So the plane is a gentle lady kit. It is completely un-powered and I don't even have the hook installed for a winch. Just hand launches. The radio is a 3 channel, single stick. They didn't have any 2 channels in the store and I wanted to fly sooner rather than later.