Longshot 4 is a fairly expensive model when you compare it to a foam model, but it is infact an entrance level DLG. It has a good flight performance and is a good choice as a first DLG. Though it cannot compete against high end DLGs, you can certainly participate in F3K competitions with this.
My reason to buy a Longshot was exactly that, I wanted a "real" DLG for an affordable price. Longshots are manufactured in the Czech republic, but I'v heard of people in the US fly them too. The airframe cost about 250€ with a shipping to Finland, so it's not exactly cheap as I had to invest another 120€ on servos too. This was my most expensive model so far so I didn't want to skimp on servo quality! High precision servos guarantee good flight performance on this kind of model.
My building process can be found on the forums in my build thread. As a summary, my build went suprisingly well. This was my firsts high quality model and I succeeded fairly well. I only had one major problem with my tailboom gluing and I had to replace the fuselage pod. Fortunately the manufacturer, Horejsi, has a great customer service and I was able to order a spare fuselage from them.
This plane is not exactly for a beginner pilot, but if you have flown some kind of glider in the past I say try this! The build though is not easy and some parts of the instructions are written in bad english, but other than that the manual covers the whole build very nicely. After you have build one plane like this I think building the next one will be much, much easier.
I think it is a very beautiful model. I really like flying it, but as you can see in the video my throwing technique needs a lot of refining ;)
If you ever wish to get into DLGs, I suggest you get a longshot. One other similar plane that I know of is the Top sky, they are both about the same price and performance. Something like an Alula is nice to start with too, but in my opinion it really doesnt give you the same performance as a proper DLG.
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