I feel obligated to share my first year (this year) story. After entering three contests as a sportsman I am happy about my airplane choice because the airplane really doesn't matter in sportsman. What I did was buy a 2M (ARF) Sword from E-Bay for about $200 NIB and convert it to electric because I decided to fly electric from the get go instead of learning to run big glow. The new improved Sword goes by another name and sells for $300 dollars now days, http://texasrcplanes.com/forcpaai.html , I will guarantee it will do anything in the Sportsman pattern. As a newbie, the precision of the airplane has been the least of my worries. I've been beaten by Aviastar trainers. Just because I have flown Sportsman in a couple contests doesn't make me a pattern pilot. Sportsman is about learning to fly a straight and level line, which I thought was easy until I stood in front of judges and called takeoff. Buy a Sword or whatever else or just use whatever you have, go fly some straight lines with turn arounds. It was a lot harder than I ever imagined.