And a 3rd perspective on the firebird scout. I picked up one for my girlfriends son, he solo'd on his thrust vector, yellow bee I picked up from Harbor Freight, nice little 30.00 plane and felt he was ready for something that gives more control. The air, being as humid as it is here is more difficult to launch these smaller birds so you need alot more room in order to get some of these off of the ground. After launching it stock several times and it not having enough park for it to gain altitude, I yanked the landing gear and repositioned the battery pack into the cockpit instead of having it in it's normal slot to get it to actually get airborn from level ground. I was dissapointed with it since it by nature is supposed to be a very easy to fly, first plane, when in fact, it's not when you keep the noob factor in mind, ie. they tend to bury the controls, which is acceptable in a thrust vector plane, but with these, once they reach a point of imbalance, they do a very fast death spiral. Needless to say, I let him take it up, he got around 50 feet in the air, death spiraled it into the ground and it of course broke the fuselage, or that carbon fiber rod exactly where the pull wires come out of. It wasn't flyable at that point obviously, can't find replacement wings for it locally, can't actually find any parts for it here, so I Jerry rigged it together to collect dust until he's better at the thrust vector 2 channel planes. I also was out at the field yesterday with someon with an aerobird, the guy was doing really well with it, unfortunately, he had to learn the lessen I've learned the hard way several times. The radios on these trainers leave much to be desired, once they get out of range, someone has a CB, pager, etc. they are off in the wild blue yonder, never to be seen again, they really should make a pannick button, or something that determins if it's no longer being controlled by the radio to shut down the motor and/or pop out a parachute or something to get it out of the air so it can be recovered.

Overall, these are not fliers that will teach you how to fly a true 3 channel plane, their flying characteristics are unique unto themselves.