Many schools of thought there.
Joining the club will get you a lot of advantages.
Get the trainer program now, it will teach you a LOT and its just darn fun to play with. If you want you can get the cheaper one without all the combat and stuff but the expensive one is very impressive.
Radios? Its up to you. personally I like to keep things simple. Walking out to the field with a brand new plane first time out I would want the most basic high quality 4 channel system I could find(more things to go wrong will go wrong). Joining the club will probably find you somebody with a radio system you could borrow or buy cheap(there is nothing wrong with 72MHz).
From there the sky is the limit. Some good friends of mine in the business are heaping praise on the Hitec Aurora 9 radio system.