Nice! Any idea of the scale (wingspan)? Scale sailplanes are somewhat rare and a special nitch -- being able to slim and remove the cockpit area for electronics and ballast makes for more efficient birds, but the scale lines of a real cockpit can be worth that loss
The low wingloading from the bigger area has it's benefits, but floatier airframes don't generally handle the wind as well. On a calm day they can float on just about anything, but most will get blown downwind on a windy day and can't press back to the flying field without loosing a lot of altitude in the exchange.
Both your BoT and Oly 650 were on the heavier side for their day (the Oly 650 was a clipped-wing version of the Oly II, which was a nice floater, but the 650 had about 2/3 the area so it flew a lot heavier), but both had good airfoils to take advantage of it. The BoT is in the 3m class (long wing), and the Oly 650 is in the 2m class. Both benefit from adding spoilers to shorten the landing, but it's almost necessary on the BoT. Either build simply and both take well to electrification (adding an electric motor and prop to the front for launching). They'll both need to stay in lift to stay aloft (that's true of every sailplane -- if it isn't in lift, it's falling) but they can run through sink faster to get to the next patch of lift . . .
. . . but for now, that's stuff to file away. learning to put your plane where you want it is what a trainer airframe will teach you. How to safely launch, maintain orientation, fight the wind and land safely is first. Knowing where to put your airframe to stay in lift, how long to stay, when to go and how to find the next bit of nice air is the hard part
If you're running short on cash and in the US, seriously look at either the powered version of the
FT Simple Soarer or the
Experimental Airlines Photon. Neither are stellar airframes, but they're both capable of thermalling, friendly to fly and they're cheap and easy to build -- assuming you have access to inexpensive foamboard for wings and airframe. The motor on them should still be used mostly for launch, but a short burst should get you to a reasonable altitude to fly around on -- I agree with Teach, towing and high-starts with these would be disappointing after the first few launches.
A Radian is a nice airframe -- if you can get a used one cheap, it's hard to beat -- but for the purpose of training you could build the FTSS or Photon for 1/3 of a "new" Radian -- $20 for motor/ESC/prop, 2-4x$3 servos, and 3-4 sheets of foamboard, with the radio gear you already have. Only thing you might want to splurge on is a decent battery with a nice charger ($30 for the charger, $5-10 for each battery). I recommend this path more because if you build it, you can always re-build it. You will crash, so making the repairs cheap and easy is the best way to reduce your bench time and increase your flight time.
