So many great planes over the past 50 years, so many great posts here - I, personally, think the Stik series (all of them) are probably truly at the top for sport flying. I remember my Enya-powered Big Stik with a Kraft 4-ch tooling all over the skies with fond memories. But, being one the the many $$$-challenged types out here in the sticks, I'm going to 2nd the Falcon-56 vote with one of my own - my 1974-built Goldberg Sr. Falcon with a 20-year old Fox-.45 and 5-year old Futaba computer 4-ch radio.

From the pics below you can see some of the mod's I did (various factors dictating them). When I first built her I was flying an original SIG Kadet with Enya-.35 that's now running in a Great Planes kit-built J-3 Cub-40. Being self-taught with the Kadet, I wanted something that I could learn easy aerobatics with but would still fly (and survive) easily. At that time, the best plane available to me was the Sr. Falcon. I built her with nearly NO dihedral (which has turned out for the best over the years) and she was the first plane to have that Kraft 4-ch radio.

She's never had a MAJOR crash, although you can see the effects of the minor ones (mostly just plain bad landings) in the complete lack of nose ahead of the firewall. Also, being what was then considered an advanced trainer, she didn't roll all that great when new so about 20 years ago I replaced the original ailerons with new ones that are 50% larger - she's a drill in the air now.

Sport flying is supposed to be easy and fun, preferably with survivable aircraft. My Sr. Falcon is all that, and more.

Dave