I apologize for not directing my comments to the question of the thread but bigtim got me thinking. I'm a believer that industry often takes the liberty to define things to promote sales and IMHO the self described trainers such as the Alpha are somewhere between a true trainer and an intermediate. A true trainer yields as much reaction time as possible for an airframe as well as a fair amount of forgiveness and the strongly powered alpha doesn't do that. An intermediate offers fair parity between inverted/upright and the dihedral of the alpha doesn't allow that either... hence why I say it is betwixt the two.

Is this good or bad? IMHO it slows the training process but makes the transition to intermediate easier. Generally I'd observe that it makes for more bunged up trainers but less re-kitted intermediates.