1-35. This was my first personal ship. Serial no. 12. I had several hundred hours in her and enjoyed every damn one of them. First cross country, silver badge, gold distance, first landout, etc. I've owned other ships since then, but I had as much or more fun in the 1-35 as I have had in any of them..
My prior “high performance” experience before the 1-35 was a few hours in a Blanik L13 and Lark IS-28b (learned in a 2-33). The transition to the full flapped ship was totally uneventful. My instructor and I worked up a plan and we took the time to do it right. Home field was 5000' x 150' asphalt, so if I made errors, I had LOTs of room to work it out. I did about 15 patterns (spot landings, crosswind, etc) and got the landing down pat before I ventured out. I see now that it is very difficult for most folks to spend the time to do the groundwork before they start doing the fun stuff.
My first landing was spectacular. It felt like I was standing on my feet in the glider with my nose pointed straight down. It was a bit intimidating. Keeping focused, I sorted out the timing to round out and then sweetly touched down. At altitude I would practice dumping flaps and observe how much the ship dropped. Ground effect was another fun aspect to play with the 80 degree flaps. All good times.
Being a mostly metal ship, I could leave it tied out and fly on the spur of the moment. That was very nice. The next owner kept it on the field and flew it twice as much as I did and enjoyed it even more than I did (if that was possible).
Regarding the prior comments about the difficulty of landing of a flap ship, they are totally unfounded. If you spend the time and become intimate with the landing characteristics, the 1-35 is easy to land and fun to fly.