I replied to the thread in private flying before seeing this..
Aerobat ours regularly, it's a circa 1 year old NZ built alpha, and my main experience of aeros. Control harmonisation wise, I'd consider the ailerons light to very light in comparison to most regular aircraft. Never flown a bulldog to compare. Rudder is fairly heavy, and elevator also requires a pretty firm pull - I believe it was designed that way to make it more difficult to overstress the airframe.
It's a slightly peculiar landing technique that takes a little acclimatisation due to the extra strake on the underside of the tail - fully held off is not really an option, it's sortof pitch for slightly nose up and plonk!
If you want to do much in the way of aeros, I'd personally consider looking for something with a CS prop and inverted systems - managing the fixed prop is an irritation, though minor, and whilst you may not plan on flying around upside down a lot, it's nice to have the engine continue in more unusual attitudes. Ours tends to quit whilst spinning, and on vertical uplines (e.g. stall turn / hammerhead is flown as a glider) - I assume that to be normal for carburated aircraft, it's rare the prop stops, so the noise resumes as soon as the more normal gravity vector is restored.
However, my brief ride in an extra (very different beast I know...) left me yearning for the ease of a CS prop and an engine that continues..
On the plus side, it's a nice tourer too, and the view's pretty good.
I am slightly intrigued (and concerned) by the comment about non-standard spin recovery. According to the flight manual:
Should a spin occur, use the following procedure:
Throttle ............................................................ ..................... idle (pull)
Rudder .........................................full opposite to direction of rotation
Elevator ............................................................ .......forward to neutral
Ailerons ............................................................ ........................neutral
Once the rotation stops, rudder to neutral position and recover within
flight limitations.
Did that seems pretty 'standard' from what I've been taught - am I missing something? I've had one occasion where it took about three heartbeats longer than expected to recover, but I'd put that down to having prolonged the spin a couple of turns more than normal (5 turns I think), and possibly having introduced some out-spin aileron - it certainly got a little more wound up than usual.
Cheers.