RE: Looking for a good first sailplane
Yep. Slopeflyer33 (here and on RCGroups) has had one for a year or so, and it flew great. The only caveat is: the wing is weak if youre winch launching it. High starts dont seem to bother them, and I would suspect that most of us are high start users anyway. There are some tutorials online that show how more experienced fliers have taken the center section covering off, reinforced the wing, and recovered it.
Also, it doesnt hurt to hang around with your local glider flying group. Lots of these guys, like me and probably everone here, has the "too many gliders syndrome". You might catch one of them on a moment of weakness (or clarity depending on how you look at it) and pick up a clean used, prebuilt plane.