Have flown this plane for several months now. I began the hobby with the Wing Dragon and then the Wing Dragon III. Both Wing Dragons are mostly gliders. In other words, the wind moves the airplane around in the air with/without your direction.

This plane, ohhh, how I wish I had started with this plane. It can handle some wind and actually flys rather than floats. It is impossible to turn upside down as the wings immediately force the airplane back to right-side-up flying. As always, spend some time on a R/C simulator before heading out to the field.

I added some LED lights to this plane, but it's a waste of money. The landing gear is junk. Launch by hand and belly land. Be sure to add some clear packing tape to the tips of the wings and the bottom of the fuselage to keep your airplane looking good after landings. I find the original engine is just fine. I knocked it loose in a rough landing, but used an xacto knife to open the hood and glued it back in place. Works fine. I do recommend buying a 9.6V battery with more amps. They are a bit larger, but can fit into the battery bay with no room to spare. On the factory battery I get 9 minutes on a good day. Watch the time closely because this thing has a lot of drag due to the struts and comes in for a landing without much of a warning. In fact, tonight I kept flying after my timer went off, and sure enough the plane nosed in for a landing so rough I broke the wing almost in half. About to order a new wing, and so took the time to help others by writing this.

By the way, this plane is easy to convert to four channel. Everything is ready, you just add the servo. However, I enjoy the hassle and near stress free flying of 3 channel and believe by the time I want to try adding ailerons this airplane will be so beat up I will buy a purpose built 4 channel Cub.

The Bellanca Decathlon has a very nice appearance. I don't recommend as a trainer, soft foam material breaks rather easily requires a skillfull flyer. Better hand launching it, not good on ground control.

Today I flew alone for the first time. The plane flew great. My landings were shaky, but we survived. The landing gear is a little flimsy but it bent back right into shape. The tail wheel need repair but glue and tape fixed that. I am a real novice, but it worked for me.

Ok. When you see rc trainer on anything it doesn't mean any knuckle head who has never flown before can fly it. Find a local club and get someone experienced to help you your plane will last a lot longer. At the very least get a simulator before you even by a plane they will help and can be had very cheap on the internet auction site. The hardest part of flying is take off and landing and especially with a new model that hasn't been trimmed and that is even worse when you are hand launching by yourself. Now for the Belanca. I have owned several of these over the last 2 yrs. Learn from my mistakes. First don't buy the rtf. The radio is on 27 mhz and the first time you go to the local club you are going to get some dirty looks. They like you to use 72 mhz or 2.4ghz. There are 6 channel 2.4ghz systems on the market that can be had for $50.00 with receiver delivered that work great for this plane and others.The motor is brushed and is crap, the servos are not very good but in their defense i am still using the originals but the rudder twitches like crazy. The landing gear is crap don't even bother.Now here is where this plane is a bargain. You can order the fuselage which comes with the pushrods and cowl for less than $14.00, the wing for less than $13.00 and the tail for less than $6.00.so you can get the airframe shipped for less than $40.00. Now you can use a brushless motor and lipo. I use 1350kv motor, 30 amp esc and 2200 mah 3s lipo and can fly for 20 minutes. Standard 9 gram servos will work fine for the control,and if you flatten the wing and add airlerons it will roll nicely and fly inverted. I have lights on mine and use it for night flying and lunch time flying. Its easy to transport. As for landing some clear packing tape on the bottom protects the foam. Its and alright trainer especially with an instructor but more over i think its a great lunch time plane or if you just want a quick flight. Its easy to repair with epoxy and the replacement parts are cheap. Here is a link with a thread on how to do the mods i talk about. http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=794616

It is a good flying aircraft. Easy assembly. Great for a beginner

Do not waste your money. This plane is under powered, landing gear is crap, styrofoam is crap, a beginner will be turned off of the hobby starting with this plane. The parkzone Super Cub is a much better "beginner" 3 channel "beginner" airplane. But, I would recommend the Parkzone T-28 Trojan. I have purchased & flown all 3, the Trojan is best by far. Unfortunately, a RTF version is getting hard to find. I can not speak for Hobby Lobby's other "foamies", but I can not recommend this airplane. Sorry, after a tree claimed my Cub and won't give it back, I bought this plane hoping for another "good" easy flyer to gain some "thumb" time but I have been disappointed.

Spontaneous activity comes from the servos and ESC. It will be one hundred feet or so away from me when it will cut out and spiral out of the sky uncontrollably

I've had this for over a year with very little success. It is too lightly built, and made of common Styrofoam. I end up with damage after every flight. The slightest breeze is a challenge. You would be better off trying something else. The frustration isn't worth it. You get what you pay for in this case, and I paid less than what they cost now.

it has been years since i flew RC. so I started with this one, one i have flown in real life. of course i crashed. but support from Hobby Lobby is good and cheap. repairing the plane was also easy.

After nearly 35 years out of RC flying I purchased the Decathlon as a tool to re-learn RC the right way, from scratch. This was my first electric powered plane and the first foam plane. The box arrived from Hobby Lobby packaged better than expected and immediately began reading the instruction booklet to better understand the construction and electric power package which I understood very little about.
The instruction booklet was written for beginners and provided me with enough information to get started and fly this plane and the encouragement to learn more. The plane was simple to assemble and soon after charging the batteries I walked to a vacant lot near my home to begin flight training.
With the plane balanced per the book and the controls checked as indicated I was ready to fly. The field was pretty rough so I attempted a hand launch which was exciting as I attempted to transition from launcher to pilot, fortunately the electric power supplied is quite enough to get altitude as I acquired the stick. My first impression was the speed this plane moved under electric power. I pulled the throttle back and what seemed to be a long time, was able to gain control of the plane before it departed the airspace as I began flying circles around the 5 acre field and trying to fly level.
As the battery ran out I found myself flying a glider and was very surprised at how stable it was and actually easier to control without power, landing was spectacular but level, leaving the only damage contained to the landing gear and battery access door assembly.
Because I wanted to continue flying at this field I decided not to use the landing gear and this proved to prevent further damage to this area of the plane. As a note, it is with the reattachment of the plastic hatch that I learned which CA glue to use on foam, be careful.
In conclusion, the Decathlon sustained some type of damage on every flight either by my inexperience or the rough terrain. I found foam construction very easy to repair and learned valuable information from every flight both at the pilot level and with construction techniques. After about 10 flights I added the ailerons and took this fantastic trainer to another level.
I have recommended this plane to many newcomers to RC flying and will keep it around just as a fun plane to fly even with all the scars.

Bob Harris

The Bellanca Decathlon 480 is a good beginners airplane and has a nice appearance. The transmitter controls are nicely arranged and the airplane is easy to fly. Construction of the plane is very easy for beginners. It would be nice to see stronger foam in the fuselage so the plane would hold up better in crashes-especially since beginners are still learning about flying.

The Bellanca Decathalon 480 RTF suited me for the use of the product. The Decathalon is a good product for a beginner flyer. The only thing that might be a problem is the foam. The foam in this plane is not very strong, and when I brought it down for a landing the wing tipped over and was the first thing to hit the ground. Then the nose hit the ground hard. The Rubber Bands that held the wing on ripped through the foam on the wing, and there is now a crack about 2 inches in. Also, the nose of the plane almost cracked off, and the spot where the wind shield meets the nose was cracked all the way through. Also, the battery in the plane has to be moved around a lot to balance the plane. The Plane is good for a beginner that really concentrates when they fly, and they know that the plane is not a toy.

This aircraft looks great and flies pretty well for the price. It could however use a little better durability. It is a good size for transporting in small cars and is big enough to handle a decent breeze.

Its a fun little plane but its a bit under powered. The battery life is marginal at best. I'm trying to put two battery packs in parallel to increase the flying time, its just too short. Another complaint is the durability. The landing can make or break this thing...literally. Even with a moderate landing the motor mount came loose from the foam and the prop was cocked sideways. I highly recommend taking off the landing gear when flying at a grass field. The gear was ripped right out of the Styrofoam the 2nd time i flew it and it didn't even land hard. It's a good model for the price but the durability is a bit lacking. I got this model for my brother as his first RC plane (wish i got him an easy star) and it was shipped with a dead rudder servo. Fortunately Hobby Lobby came though and sent me a replacement servo with no questions asked! They didn't even ask for the old one back, what service! You can't beat that.

Despite anyone's minor or major mishaps with this plane, it as proven itself to worthy to be called a trainer. However, there really is just 1 small problem: the landing gear. I don't mean it doesn't work from stock, but I do want to say it's pretty flimsy at times, especially when lading in minutely tall grass. If you prefer grass over pavement at times then bending the landing gear slightly forward may help.

The prop comes pretty tough from stock. Having 2 of them is a great upper hand if ever needed. When taking off from ground, a slight bit of right rudder is recommended for a straight and true take-off. In the air, this bird requires little or no trimming depending how careful you assemble the elevator and rudder. Take your time! Getting back to i-the-air, the Decathlon is perfectly balanced with the battery installed. From 20' off the ground, full throttle, an level flying, the Decathlon can perform a well rounded loop on a fresh battery. It can fly ok inverted but requires some up elevator. With enough altitude, it will do a not-so-prefect but nonetheless roll. I recommend practicing figure 8's and landing flight patterns in an area with enough landing room for the first few flights if you are new or not familiar with the plane. If you are new, a rule of thumb is always use little control movements when flying if you didn't already know that.

Landing was smooth, level, and slowed down and stopped within 30'. The landing gear tended to be flimsy and make the airplane sway, but worked. You will notice in the Hobby-Lobby video that the plane landed dipping it's right wing. It's a little common when you fly it yourself.

Overall, this bird is a 5/5!

I personally think that this plane is better suited for somebody who has a little experience with R/C planes. With the propeller in the front of the plane and the landing gear, there is a lot that can go wrong with a first time flyer, trust me. I had a difficult time getting the plane trimmed out correctly so whenever I was not touching any controls, the plane wanted to climb, stall, and roll out of control and then it was a nose dive straight down with a broken plane as a result. This could be a result of my inexperience with building and setting up the plane or it could be my lack of skills with regards to recovering after the plane goes out of control.

Overall, the package is easy to get ready to fly and I think its a great plane....just for someone who already has a bit of flying experience.

Great trainer and easy to fly. Battery seems to last about 10 minutes. After that, controls will start to get a little erratic. One negative thing about the plane is the landing gear. It's very flimsy and won't take much of a beating at all.

Jeff

I got this plane a few months ago as my very very very first plane! Having never flown before this plane seemed like the perfect one! The night before my first day flying, I went to a hobby store to see if they had an extra battery for this plane. He asked, "Do you have the red one or the yellow one?" I responded with saying I got the red one. With my luck he responded by telling me how bad this plane is and that it will never fly! That totally ruined my day! Well the next day I went to fly it with my friend who has been flying for 10 years and he got it up in the air for me and then I took over the controls. This plane flies so easily!!!!!!!! I would highly recommend this plane to anyone who is looking to get into this hobby! I cannot emphasize on how easy this plane is to fly! Don't listen to people who say that this plane is impossible to fly. Take it from me, it's a breeze to fly and you'll always want to bring it out for a nice relaxing fly!

I bought this second from Hobby Lobby. This is a great trainer. Nice three channel plane . I have had some really funny crashes , but with a little glue and tape still flying.. Dave!!!!!!!!