I've been flying a NexStar about twice a week for 6 months now. It appears to be very well constructed, using good materials and clearly there is a lot of thought that went into the design. Assembly is quite simple. (I have just built an Ultra Stick 60 ARF and found it took much, much more skill and time by comparison.) The plane shows no bad flight charistics - important in a trainer. Overall, I'm quite pleased.

The flight trainer, while relatively simple, proved invaluable. Basically I had to work to bet the controls sorted out seeing the plane in various orientations. I probably crashed well over a hundred times on the simulator but now find that my responses have become pretty much automatic. Having said that, the plane on the simulator doesn't act quite like the real one. Still it served its purpose. I also found myself using the simulator to practice cross wind flying and would mix up the trim tabs to practice trim adjustment. All of this was quite useful as it is important to be able to learn without risking the plane.

What problems have I had? (1) In terms of the flight characteristics the only problems that I had were with the nose wheel and the rudder. I found the standard set-up way too sensitive. My instructor also picked up on the sensitivity of the nose wheel and suggested that I reset the servo linkage. Otherwise most students will over control and be all over, or off, the runway during takeoff. In readjusting this, I think that the rudder also needs to be reset or the plane will tend to vere when the rudder takes over. Actually, I've never gotten the rudder sorted out. I've practiced taking the plane 3 mistakes high and trying to do figure eights at part throttle using rudder instead of aileron but find that the plane tends to nose down and rapidly lose altitude when rudder is applied. I don't think this is entirely an overcontrol problem; I've reached a point where I've been confortable setting the elevator and ailerons to be more responsive. (2) the trim has peeled off, particularly on the starboard side. It would seem that the oil in the exhaust acts as a solvent. I should add that I do make it a practice to clean the model throughly after flying, so that's not the problem. I suppose that this is ok as it's given me some experience with recovering which I'm sure I can use later. Still, it's a pain.