I am currently flying an Avistar which I soloed on a couple months ago. I will soon finish building my second plane which is a SIG Mid-Star. I am not really sure how much more capable this plane is than the Avistar, I really bought it for a first kit build rather than a second plane.

Anyhow, when I finish the Mid-Star I was wanting to start on another plane and had two choices in mind. I was hoping for some comments to help me decide between the two. I can comfortably do loops and rolls with my Avistar and nervously do inverted flight for a single turn but soon get nervous and roll it back to normal.

The two kits I am looking at are the
1. Carl Goldberg Tiger 60 deluxe and
2. Great Planes .40 Cap232

Thanks for the comments.

The CAP 232 snaps at the drop of a hat, hence the nick name "Snap Cap". I just finished assembling a Yellow aircraft 232 for a friend and it is a handfull for even a very experienced pilot. I would opt for the Tiger if that were my only two choices.

For a third plane I suggest looking around for a good sport plane. Something like the Sig Something Extra.

Kangke 40 size extra300/ys63, awesome little plane, built very well & flies on rails. www.kangkeusa.com

It all depends on how well you fly actually.How well do u fly your first plane.Can you do all the basic stuff(fly inverted,loops and rolls?)If can then go ahead .
You can get a CAP 232 if you can and have handled tail draggers before. It snaps easily but it isnt as bad as people say...i fly a Kyosho CAP 232 and its fantastic.Will take some time to learn its charateristics but once you master it it's fun to fly it.
Needs speed but is not as bad like you have to fly full throtle all the time, just above the average slow fly-bys u do with your trainer.Because of the shape of the wings..it needs a little bit more speed than your trainer.
Not too sure about the TIger 60...
Not too sure about

It sounds to me that you really need more stick time on your trainer before moving to a hotter plane. The inverted flight comment is what caught my attention. Basically, your trainer can do about everything that a hotter plane can do. The trainer just does it slower, or not as well. A hotter plane will not improve your flying if you haven't mastered the trainer. Before moving to a hot aerobatic like the Cap (or even the mid-star for that matter), you need to master with your trainer inverted flight, spin recovery, stall recovery, be able to land on a dime, etc.

On Caps, they really aren't snap happy. I have never understood why some give Caps a bad name. Caps are actually some of the most fun planes to fly. Caps are short coupled and tumble well which is a plus in my book. Short coupling adds to making the plane less stable, but the more unstable the plane, the better it performs aerobatics. Caps are less stable than a general sport planes, but they are by no means unflyable and an average pilot can easily fly a Cap. I've had four Caps. Yes, they can snap uncommanded if stalled... but then again, every aerobatic plane will snap uncommanded if stalled.

Cheers

Yeah i agree..
Before i got the CAP everyone told me to stay away from it...
Nah i just loved the way it looked and went on with it.
I'm still flying it and it flies well.
Its just goes where u point it and love the way it rolls.It spins like a top actually if you have high aileron throws.
SO TO ALL THOSE NONE CAPers....fly one then comment.

I agree it sounds like you may need more stick time on your trainer but if you are going to get one of the two planes you mentioned go with the Tiger it has a lot better chance of surving at this point.

Dan

Gain some altitude and move the sticks in any direction you want and see what happen, try to do lomcevacks, cuban 8's, hammer head, spins, just go crazy with the sticks and remember to have enough altitude to recover.

You always going to get nervous with some maneuvers, you just can't allowed the nervousness make you lose your sticks if you know what I mean.

the only problem with that idea is you could enter something nasty like an inverted spin, and if you don't know how to recover, you are not in good shape

You can not get in that situation with a trainer, perhaps with a different model but not with a trainer. He has to get more confident with his skills and confidence is factor.

i don't argue that point at all. my duraplane will spin inverted

How about a Sig 4*. I've had two the last ten years. They fly great, and are an easy build. I fly mine year round. When it snows, I put skis on mine. It's a blast. They also fly well on windy days, plus are very aerobatic with a hot motor, yet are gentle to land with the large wing area. My 2 cents worth.

Doug

So does my Superstar but with a trainer if you release the sticks and then apply a little up elevator it will get out of the spin by it self. With a different model you probably need to apply power and then down elevator to get it out of the spin.

Jucava: You can get into situations that are hard to recover from in a trainer if you don't know what you are doing. That is one reason why I'm not a supporter of stick banging. Stick banging gets pilots into a lot of trouble. Everything one might learn is from the school of hard Knox. Slamming sticks into corners may offer some fun, but there isn't a single maneuver that is done that way. Not even snaps, tumbles, spins, etc are banged. Everything is precisely controlled. If you ever watch an experienced pilot tumble, snap or spin, you'll notice that everything is very precisely controlled. I guess it all depends upon what yer after. If you just want to bore holes in the sky, bang away. If you actually want to learn a maneuver, don't bang.

On a side note: A trainer will not Lomcevak nor will the 40 sized CAP. In fact even my 35% really doesn't have enough gyroscopic precession to Lomcevak well, but it's close. Lomcevaks require precession caused by the rotational inertia of the prop. Models have such a small prop inertia that the precession does not occur, hence they don't Lomcevak. Technically, there are five types of Lomcevaks. The most common involves entering inverted with three end over end tumbles with each tumble rotated 45 degrees due to precession. In other words, a Lomcevak is a precision maneuver... anything else is just stick banging.

It is best to learn spins, tumbles, well anything for that matter from an experienced pilot. You ALWAYS need to know how to recover from a maneuver BEFORE you try the maneuver. Now you probably don't need a buddy system or anything like that. Just have an experienced flyer coach durning the maneuver or perhaps hand over the TX and have the experienced pilot fly the maneuver on your plane a few times explaining what they are doing at each step. I guarantee you'll learn twice as fast with an experienced pilot compared to stick banging... not to mention your plane has a better chance of surviving.

I've seen many spin trainers into the ground. While it is true that most trainers will exit spins if you release stick, you can get a semi-stable flat spin in trainers that don't exit quickly if you release the sticks. To make matters worse, if the pilot doesn't know the proper recovery, they can yank wrong side elevator, or forget to release rudder, and in they go. Many panic and forget to release the stick... this is where an experienced spotter will help as they can belt out "RELEASE THE STICKS!"

I recently saw a young pilot at my field that refuses help and likes to stick bang. He pulled too much elevator in a turn, stalled and entered a spin. I could see him panic, slapping sticks all over the place. At one point he actually reversed spin direction and eventually flipped from right side up to an inverted spin which was really kinda cool, but unfortunally the plane crashed inverted. After crahsing, he announced his TX or RX wasn't working... ha, yeah right. Sad part is that even after the crash he learned nothing.

Cheers

Thanks for all the comments. Sounds like most people think I should take it a bit slower so I will probably go with the Tiger 60. Who knows, it will be a month or more before I am ready for the next project and I will probably change my mind several times between now and then.

I am a bit anxious to fly the Mid-Star so I hope that won't be too much. I really don't think so. As far a learning new maneuvers and becoming comfortable with them, I find my Avistar doesn't like to be inverted and takes a bit of down elevator as well as working to keep it from rolling back to level. It is like flying right side up with the plane out of trim. Not impossible to do, just not as fun / relaxing.

The reason I picked the CAP232 is I just liked the way it flys on G2. I like how there is no coupling even at the highest throws and if I orient the plane in a particular direction it stays that way. Seems easier to learn what is needed to do a maneuver this way than to struggle to make a maneuver look smooth on a less capable plane. I do seem to always have a single bounce on the landings though.

Thanks again for all the comments and keep them coming.

Interesting discussion. I'm about 1 1/2 seasons into my Avistar flying and have been flying the crap out of it. Now I've been doing good, just had a few crackups along the way. I can hold inverted doing figure eights over the field, shoot touch and goes, loops, having a blast with it. I just shouldn't have tried the low tight figure eights over the field. Lost lift and flew it into the ground. Crash was almost bad enough to just not bother to fix, but I'm having too much fun and it has taught me so much, I'm in the process of fixing it. It will fly again.

So learn and fly the heck out of your Avistar, it can teach you a lot.
Happy flying.

Tom

What field do you fly at tnspruitt?

The Goldberg Tigers are a great all round sport aerobatic aircraft that are very capable in the right hands yet docile enough for the less experienced. My vote is the Tiger.

Impulse,

I am a member of Sun Valley Fliers. The field is located at Jomax and Cave Creek Roads in NorthEast Phoenix. What field do you fly at?

Az model aviators (super stition field). Here is a LINK to their site. But i was looking at flying at that field.