These ratings are subjective, based on the best setup that I can achieve for my personal flying style.

Ratings: 10 is best, all others are relative. The best plane automatically gets a 10. Apply your own weighting to the ranking depending on what you consider most important.

Which plane do I choose? For fun flying when the lift is good, the Escape and Cobra come out to travel around the sky without limit. The Pike was best, but I sold it. When lift is weak, the Aegea 136 or the Icon are fun to fly. For TD contests the Aegea 136 is the best when the wind is light, and the Icon for when the wind is over 20 kph.

A few comments about the winners in each category:

Launch height - The Supra has a lot of wing area to pull hard, but the zoom is huge due to the light weight of the model. Getting consistent zooms is hard because they happen so fast. Plus you have to trust your pullout since the plane can be going over 90 mph in the bucket.

Launch speed - The F3B planes are just going to be able to launch faster being clean and smaller. The Cobra is the plane I learned the most about speed on climb. I quickly determined that there is no point pulsing the winch with any plane that can take the load. Any perceived gain in height from line shortening is lost in the zoom.

Landing speed - with droop on the flaps and ailerons, the Supra comes in slow enough to hand catch at a 60 degree approach. It is impossible to bury the nose unless the flaps are retracted, so timing the landing is easily adjusted using a steeper approach without excessive speed buildup.

Landing steerability - The Supra has a huge fin and rudder, lots of travel in the full flying stab, and light wingtips for roll. My one complaint about the Icon is the rudder is too small. V-tail europlanes are unsteerable on final at crawl speeds, maybe that's why the dork is so common. For instance, the Escape better be lined up with 50 feet to go or forget it. The Supra can make a handlaunch approach, spiralling in at the last moment. For fun, you can pull a half loop to inverted over the spot, hit the flaps and bring it down like a parachute.

Thermal Stability - The R/E planes are set up with the correct EDA at thermalling Cl's and will fly hands off in a thermal for minutes. Compare that to the Cobra and Pike where constant adjustment is required to top aileron and leading rudder to get a good thermal turn.

Circle diameter - This is really a function of weight and stall Cl. Lighter planes are better.

Top end - Coming upwind after a thermal ride is the test of the judgment of the pilot to squeeze the maximum effective L/D out of the plane. Pitch neutral planes are easier to fly when looking at them head on. This is where the Cobra cleans up, out penetrating anything I have flown or seen. Pike comes close and would probably be as good at the same span loading.

Minimum Sink - The R/E planes lack camber changing so they had better be light. All of the newer F3J airfoils are designed around this requirement which gives a much more versatile sailplane. The Icon is outstanding in the wing's tolerance to be abused with excessive angle of attack. The sink rate is very good even at speeds and attitudes away from the optimum, making the model extremely easy to extract the most performance. Beginners look better flying the Icon.

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