I've probably flown 7-8 of these by now, it's the most popular trainer in my club (we've had 4 of them in the air at once!). We love them, and recommend them.

Some notes:

- Yes, the engine can kick and throw the prop. It's fairly common, and usually due to over priming as mentioned above. The limiter in the needle might play a part here because it's often a bit rich and allows more fuel in to the engine than you need to start. The engines are run once, but not "broken in" when you get them. As you get a few hours on the engine, the compression will drop a hair, and this tendancy will go down quite a bit. Once in a while we get one at the field that's really tight. That's great, it's going to be a bit more powerful than average, but it's also going to toss more props than average as well when new. It also helps to be "agressive" with the electric starter. Guys who are afraid of applying pressure with the starter throw more props because the starter isn't getting enough grip to push the engine through compression fast enough, and the engine backfires. Working on your starter technique will reduce thrown props a lot.

- Do yourself a favor and remove the bolts that hold on the nose strut one at a time, and put on some locktite. It's not a question of "IF" they will fall out and leave you with a dangling nose wheel, it's only a question of "when". I must have seen this happen 4-5 times on different Alpha 60s

- Most of them have balanced right on, but 1 or 2 have, in fact, balanced so nose heavy that they were hard to flair for landings. That 3-blade prop really "throws out the anchor" on final, the Alpha 60 "breaks" harder than any other trainer I've flown, which is nice. But when you combine that dropping airspeed with nose-heavy and trainer-level elevator throws, you get a plane that is almost impossible to put on the mains. Adding a little tail weight fixes it right up, making the plane one of the easiest to land there is. The most I've added to a student's plane was about 1oz.

- I agree that glueing the wing halves together is the way to go, however most of the 60's at my field were put together guy newbies following the directions, and I've never seen a problem with the tape, even with guys who opted for the rubber bands. It really does work, even if I'd still do epoxy myself

- The limiters on the high and low speed mixture are usually close enough, but it's pretty common for us to have to remove or adjust the limit on the low end to get a smooth transition from idle to full power. I suspect it has something to do with the "normal" temp/altitude/humidity/fuel used around here vs what they use when they set the engines. The high speed is usually not as big of a deal, but we've still had a couple of Alpha 60s and 40s that really needed the mixture set outside of the range of the limiter. I have a used Evolution .45 from an ex-students Alpha 40, and I pulled the limiters off. They are easy to remove, and make the engine easier to set up once you know how to adjust your mixture.