New to the hobby, could use some advice

[Cupcake]

I'm looking to buy a plane for my father (he used to enjoy the hobby in his youth). I saw in another post that the Firebird Commander was recommended as a beginner plane. Would you recommend this over a basic ARF model? What would you buy?

Also, I wanted to get a radio control that could move with him to his next plane. Nothing fancy, but maybe a little better than a low end model. What radio would you recommend?

I have about $300 total to spend. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[aeropal]

Beginner Parkflyers (http://beginnerparkflyers.nexuswebs.net/index.html)

[CrashParkFlyer]

In all honesty, the answer to your question will depend on who you ask. So, here is my experience: My wife bought me a Firebird Commander for Christmas - totally unexpected present - but I had said I would love to try RC flying. I've never flown before and found the learning curve steep. The Commander does not pretend to be anything it is not. I now know it's standing in the marketplace - thanks to forums just like this one, but it taught me to fly. Sure, it has it's drawbacks and design flaws. You can't swap the radio gear out for example. But the parts that take the brunt of a crash are cheap and easy to replace. In just 3 months of occasional (depends on the wind) weekend flying, I can throw mine around the sky with confidence. It's the best fun I've had with my clothes on! (Guys walking their dogs in the park stop and watch me fly. I know they are thinking, "I wish I had one of those"). The Commander is designed for beginners and is a very forgiving aircraft in flight. It has a natural tendency to right itself if you just let go of the sticks in the event of an earthbound dive. More "advanced" aircraft will not do this, but time for them later. I know I am going to want to move on from the Commander, but it will always be the plane that got me into this great hobby and taught me to fly. My son bought one just today with money he has saved up. This is a great father & son hobby. We are going to have some fun and I am going to teach him to fly. :) So, when you've bought one for your Dad, go and buy one for yourself......... but be careful........ you'll get hooked!!!!! :)

[CrashParkFlyer]

In all honesty, the answer to your question will depend on who you ask. So, here is my experience: My wife bought me a Firebird Commander for Christmas - totally unexpected present - but I had said I would love to try RC flying. I've never flown before and found the learning curve steep. The Commander does not pretend to be anything it is not. I now know it's standing in the marketplace - thanks to forums just like this one, but it taught me to fly. Sure, it has it's drawbacks and design flaws. You can't swap the radio gear out for example. But the parts that take the brunt of a crash are cheap and easy to replace. In just 3 months of occasional (depends on the wind) weekend flying, I can throw mine around the sky with confidence. It's the best fun I've had with my clothes on! (Guys walking their dogs in the park stop and watch me fly. I know they are thinking, "I wish I had one of those"). The Commander is designed for beginners and is a very forgiving aircraft in flight. It has a natural tendency to right itself if you just let go of the sticks in the event of an earthbound dive. More "advanced" aircraft will not do this, but time for them later. I know I am going to want to move on from the Commander, but it will always be the plane that got me into this great hobby and taught me to fly. My son bought one just today with money he has saved up. This is a great father & son hobby. We are going to have some fun and I am going to teach him to fly. :) So, when you've bought one for your Dad, go and buy one for yourself......... but be careful........ you'll get hooked!!!!! :)

[CrashParkFlyer]

In all honesty, the answer to your question will depend on who you ask. So, here is my experience: My wife bought me a Firebird Commander for Christmas - totally unexpected present - but I had said I would love to try RC flying. I've never flown before and found the learning curve steep. The Commander does not pretend to be anything it is not. I now know it's standing in the marketplace - thanks to forums just like this one, but it taught me to fly. Sure, it has it's drawbacks and design flaws. You can't swap the radio gear out for example. But the parts that take the brunt of a crash are cheap and easy to replace. In just 3 months of occasional (depends on the wind) weekend flying, I can throw mine around the sky with confidence. It's the best fun I've had with my clothes on! (Guys walking their dogs in the park stop and watch me fly. I know they are thinking, "I wish I had one of those"). The Commander is designed for beginners and is a very forgiving aircraft in flight. It has a natural tendency to right itself if you just let go of the sticks in the event of an earthbound dive. More "advanced" aircraft will not do this, but time for them later. I know I am going to want to move on from the Commander, but it will always be the plane that got me into this great hobby and taught me to fly. My son bought one just today with money he has saved up. This is a great father & son hobby. We are going to have some fun and I am going to teach him to fly. :) So, when you've bought one for your Dad, go and buy one for yourself......... but be careful........ you'll get hooked!!!!! :)

[CrashParkFlyer]

Sorry about the repeated posts Guys. My computer was glitching and I didn't realise the posts were getting through!

[rtfguy]

I started into the hobby about a year ago with a commander. I have had a similar experience to that of crashparkflyer. The commander is not anything fancy but it is reletivily easy to fly and it does have that nice feature of righting itself when you release the sticks. After buying the commander, I flew it for about 3 months then decided that I wanted to learn how to fly with elevator so i bought an parkzone J-3 cub. I proved to be a good plane as well, and within a week or two I learned to keep it in the air. Then a few months later, I purchased a Slo-V. and have been flying it quite a bit lately. If I had it to do over again I think I would have gotten the slo-V as the second plane rather than the cub. it is just way easier to fly and much more aerobatic (loops, inverted flight,...) for a beginner who has never flown at all the slo-V may be a little difficult to learn on but it's dual rates allow you to use a begginer mode that make the flight charicteristics really tame. someone who has spent lots of time in front of the computer or has spent some time running RC cars may be able to pick up the slo-V and learn pretty quickly but if you havn't done those things I would recomend getting a 2 channel like the commander and learning to fly so that you can have success right out of the box rather than repair and disapointment.

[Vato Loco]

I'm to going to get a plane for someone, My 8yr old Son. Ryan has been racing his modified Traxxas rusty at the track and doing great so his eye and hand skills are great! He got more trophys than I do!:D He has been after me to get him a plane :eek:His B day is in april and hope to have him something by then. I know alot about RC stadium trucks but know squat on planes! I've read a lot of peoples comments on what planes to buy I've seen them all..........But which one? Every one has their picks on what to fly just like the RC truck side of the hobby. When we got our trucks I heard every bad comment about them and we never had a problem with them. We Love them! Ryan and I were reading Tower Hobbies catalog and came to three choices.The Hobbico/flyzone Park pilot,The Multiplex Easy Star, and the Hot bodys Sky wave. I've seen the last two mentioned on this site and the comments about them, but has anyone tryed the park pilot? We haven't made our minds up yet! our budget is no more than $200.00 for the whole ball of wax, also which begginer plane can be hopped up!

[sircrashalot]

I can't comment on the tower hobby planes as I have no experience with them. If you scroll through these posts and read about the Firebird commander (good history of my first flights & impressions) you'll see that everyone has the same experience. I started with mine in December with R/C car experience from years ago, have moved on to the F-27 Stryker which is faster and more aerobatic but MUCH less forgiving...yet I am glad that spring is coming in NJ because I can't wait to get the commander out and grab thermals with it. Like the others, I can't imagine a better first plane...and for your budget you can grab the plane, a couple spare batteries, a spare prop and even a spare tail or main wing (more likely to need the tail). I am sure that Tower's planes are similar in characteristics and quality but I too can personally vouch for the Firebird Commander as an AWESOME first plane that is forgiving, fun, and pretty close to indestructible.

[CrashParkFlyer]

I just folded my first wing! Doing death spirals first one way then quickly the other. With careful use of throttle this can sometimes trick the Commander into doing a loop. :cool: It can also fold your wing! :eek: To be honest, I wasn't that high, but the poor old girl spiralled to the ground from about 30 foot. I had a spare wing in the car. I put it on and sent her right back up again. No problems, flew great - but no more of that spiral stuff for me until I do the wing re-enforcement mod. BTW, keeping with the thread topic, my son put the maiden on his Commander just last weekend. He did very well. Had a little trouble getting to grips with hand launching, but his flying was very good. I made him practice his landings on the second battery by doing circuits. I must say he did very well at that too. :) (He is 11 yrs old). In a few weeks, I think he will be competent enough to fly without me looking over his shoulder. Then we can have both planes up at the same time. :D