at the moment most of my flying planes are lightweight funflys, the Cougar is ok because you can cope with the gusts, and here at our club that means rotors comming off the 400 foot cliffs at the end of the field, these can turn you upsidedown in a second, or change your attitude by 20 feet in a heartbeat.
Our small funfighters handle it well, over powered with 37's the 110 speeds can cope with any wind and the higher wing loading means they dont blow around. our Magnums are also good because of the wing loading, yes you could say thin wings are better.
Planes to look out for would be 30-40 size patternships like the chili breeze. or fun scale fighters that are slightly over powered and over weight.
As for gliding, i took my 1m Vagrant out a while ago in 50mph gusts, it made it lighter than normal with mini sevos for sloping in sea breezes, with the wings making cracking noises ( joiner ) i threw it out, with the nose pointing down it was just moving forwards, but what fun!