Generally speaking, any plane that resembles a scale plane is going to have higher wing loadings and other tricky flight characteristics. I would not recommend this for your first balsa low winger. As chad also pointed out it is going to fly faster, both top end and landing. I would suggest one more plane as a low wing trainer. A Goldberg Tiger II in either 40 or 60 size would be excellent and both come as kit or ARF I believe. These planes fly equally well fast or slow and are very aerobatic if desired and landings are slow and predictable. I have flown a couple of VMAR planes of this general type and they can be touchy in the hands of a novice.

BTW Chad - you say you have flown both. I assume you mean coroplast and balsa because to the best of my knowledge your only low wing plane remains unflown. Since you don't have any personal experience on how ANY low wing plane flies, how can you give such advice? You continue to give advice on how to build and you can't. You continue to give advice on how and what to fly and you can't. What gives?