Hi fellas, this is my first post in these forums. I have a Sky Fly as well, owned it for about a month now, and flown it semi religiosly every few days as the weather has permitted. I notice all the forums I've read on the SkyFly say it's range is limited to 500 feet. While this may be the specs, I suspect either it's inaccurate or I've just got a really good radio/reciever set in my plane. I went out this morning with my girlfriend before class and paced off 350 yards before I lost signal. We live in Boise ID, and our area is not laden with radio signals, so this may be an affecting factor. I have to say that at 350 yards the plane is so tiny you would not be able to really tell if it were coming or going very well. I can say that I routinely fly it out to about 200 yards (600 feet) and have not yet had a single loss of signal. Also at this range you are pushing your limits on visual ability since the plane is not very big. I have taken it sailing on thermals off in the desert and gotten it higher than I'm comfortable taking it without wanting to and had to put her in a dive to bring her down... even that was quite a challenge in a good strong thermal because of the lack of motion in the elevon.

Overall I would say this plane is an excellent trainer for basic flight. I have put her in loops using a bit of a dive to get the speed up to make it happen, and once you get it going you can make it look like it's riding on a half pipe. While it's a little tricky, the plane does it well from about 80 feet without loosing much altitude.

The one thing I will say about wind is that this plane doesn't like it much. It sails ok in it, and it can fly in it, but it's just too light to really do well. I saw the suggestion of adding a second battery pack just for weight, and I haven't tried that yet, but I will when the breezes start picking up but don't get too big.

The landing gear I've heard is good, but I can't taxi well, or land well on it. It settles in just fine into the grass w/o landing gear, and the bottom of the body is durable enough that even dirt/rough dirt landings don't beat it up.

Beginners should avoid flying anywhere near trees as I can just about guarantee you will hit them till you get better. I have flown my plane into about 6 trees, a light post, and dove it into the ground from a seriously stupid low loop. I have yet to break anything from doing this. I took it out yesterday evening just after the sun went down and after practicing landings I brought it down a little too rough and dipped a wing the wrong way and snapped it. Good thing it's only 12 bucks to replace the wing!

I bought a second battery pack for 18 bucks at hobbytown, it's a 1000maH 7.2 that powers the motor the same as the original 900 maH battery, but it lasts about 5 minutes longer. Flight times vary because different situations call for different prop speeds, but I average 20 - 35 minutes per battery back. They call for 10 minutes of flight time at full throttle, and that may be true, but I have never had a need to run it full throttle for for than a few seconds at a time or during launch to get some altitude.

Overall I'm very pleased with this little $99 treasure. Sure the range may not be what seems like a whole lot, but considering the planes size, it's plenty. It will teach you the basics of flight, take off and landing, and still have room for a little play time. You can not get this plane inverted because of the wing design, it would flip back over on it's own if you managed to get it there. The wings have plenty of lift and it's not bad for sailing in thermals once you figure out how to caress them once you've found them. I've flown only a little over a month and I'm feeling confident in moving up to a trainer with ailerons. I've considered going gas, but it's pretty spendy.

My ideas on upgrading are the Hanger 9 P-51 PTS. Which has everything needed but fuel and a glow plug warmer.
And for electric I havn't yet found a plane that really catches my eye as special. There are a few biplanes , and a P-3, but I really want to go 4 channel and a little larger in size so I can go higher and still see it, and still have full functionality. Any suggestions? I like the idea of electric over gas just because it's cheaper on power, and less mechanical know how required.