In the past I've always been nice when it comes to this subject. But I think that I'll dust off my soapbox for a bit.

First off, I know that this is America and anybody is free to sell a product for whatever they want. But I also think that the makers of the nexstar are preying on people and over exaggerating the "ease" with which somebody can fly. The have taken an otherwise ordinary trainer, thrown on some gadgets, raised the price, and advertised a product that make it easy to learn to fly. While the gadgets on this plane may be some help (more on that in a bit), I don't think they are worth the added price of this trainer (higher price when compared to similar trainers).

Second, the learning aids on this plane actually hurt the student and make it harder to learn to fly. Some of the newer flyers out there may be scratching their heads at that statement, but take a second to think about it. This plane has all of these learning aids that help them learn to fly and they use all of these aids when learning to fly. What happens when they move up to a second plane that doesn't have those aids? Now they have to learn skills that they should have learned on the trainer, but since the trainer made it "easy" to learn they didn't learn those skills. As I have said elsewhere, I'm an instructor and I currently have a student that came out with a Nexstar. Before I agreed to teach him I had him take all that "stuff" off the plane. I want the student to learn to handle the plane and how to fly it. They need to learn how to recover the plane themselves, and not rely on some piece of electronics to do it for them. This isn't helping the student, this is hurting them in the long run. When I am teaching a student I advance them along as I teach them. For instance, as the students skills advance I will wait longer before I will take control of an airplane that is in trouble. I do this so that the student will develop the skills needed to save his plane on his own without help. If I am constantly recovering the plane for the student they don't learn anything, and the same thing applies to the learning aids on the Nexstar.

I'm sure that there are odd circumstances where somebody can't find an instructor, live 50 miles north of nowhere, and have to teach themselves to fly. And for those people this plane may be a help for them. But for the other 99% of people I would recommend to save their money and buy less expensive trainer without all the gadgets. Oh, yeah, what about the guarantee if the student crashes? Tower Hobbies has the same deal on their trainers. If you crash your plane while working with an instructor Tower will replace the plane for free.

Ok, I'll climb off of my soapbox now.