How Long Does It Take To Learn RC Flying?
The answer, for most people, is "longer than you think." It's harder than it looks.
I remember when I was learning. I was months and months into it, and still making mistakes, and getting pretty discouraged. I went to a club meeting where they were giving out the "solo" awards. There was a youngster there getting his award, and someone asked how long it took. His answer was "4 gallons of fuel and 3 airplanes". I made 4 gallons my goal, and got a U.S. Aircore airplane so I could do it in one airplane.
As it turned out, 4 gallons was just about right. I'm not talking about just "soloing", i.e. being able to take off and land in one piece, but true confidence in being able to land exactly where I want to even with some crosswind, etc.
Since then, I've listened to a lot of people, particularly those who teach for a living, and I think 4 gallons of fuel is a pretty good rule of thumb. That works out to about 50 10-minute flights, or 10 hours of stick time. In my case, the skill grew so slowly, it seemed to me that the plane was flying better, not that I was doing anything different.
If you figure a lot of people only fly once a week, or once every two weeks, and only in good weather, you can see that it could easily take over a year to go through that 4 gallons of fuel.