I recently sold my old Hobbico Nexstar then found out my Dad was comming to visit. I had nothing in my hanger suitable to buddy box a begginner on. I called my LHS and asked if they had any Hobbico Avistar ARF's in as I had flown one of them and enjoyed training a student on it. They did not have one but said we have an H9 Arrow. The Arrow was $15 more than the Avistar so I got it. I assembled it in an afternoon (aproximately 4 hours of relaxed non-rushed work). I put an well used OS .46 FX on the front and filled it with whatever mix of servos I had on hand. Two of the servos where Futaba 3151 digitals so I put one on the ailerons and the other on the rudder/nose wheel. The plane assembles easily and everything has it's place. This concerned me thinking ahead toward balancing the plane but to my suprise the plane balance perfectly without having to move the battery around at all. (Disclamer: do not assume if you get one of these that you will have the same luck, even different amounts of glue and densities of wood used can make a difference between ARFs and what it takes to balance them.)

I maidened the Arrow today. beautiful clear skies and about 13 MPH winds according to weather.com with a few moments of higher wind noticed. For the most part I had a head wind or maybey a 45 degree cross at the most. The plane tracked well for it's take off roll with little to no correction needed. after a few clicks of trim I had it flying the way I like it so I landed to make an adjustment to my engines tuning and took it right back up. I started to do some basic loops and rolls to get a feel for it's responsiveness. Deffinately not a Cap or Katana here but this plane will fly circles around my old Nexstar. The weight of this plane is advertised at 5.5 lbs and the Nexstar was 6.5 lbs. combined with 5 3/4 inch less wing span than the Nexstar and the semisemetrical wing of the Arrow the Nexstar is heavilly out gunned. I had this Arrow performing smooth aerobatics including rolling circles, inverted spins, Cuban 8's, immelmans, hammer heads and the best inverted flight characteristics of any trainer I have flown. But is it suitable for a begginer?

Yes, properly instructed a begginer will love this plane a lot longer than a typical flat bottom wing trainer. I treid to stall this plane and and it simply would not drop a wing or the nose for that matter. I had the elevator fully deflected and the throttle at idle. I could have brought it in harrier style. Now I imagine my head wind helped from keeping the nose from falling but this brings up another good point about this plane. It loves the wind and will make you love it too. It is far more comfortable to fly in wind than any flat bottom wing trainer I have flown. It can land fast or slow however the pilot chooses likewise in flight.

This is just an account of my experience with the plane today. I could easilly be in here next week complaining that the dang thing is falling appart. So I am in no way pushing this plane. I would love to have the oportunity to give the Hobbico Avistar a real shake down and be able to say one is better than the other in my opinion of course. The Avistar is the similar competitor but it weighs a 1/2 pound less and has a 4 inch shorter wing span than the Arrow. So I can only assume it would perform as well maybe better.