Ok, here's the deal. About 9 years ago i was 15 and my uncle got me into model airplanes. He is a very experienced modeler however he was not an AMA member because he disagreed with a rule they have about only flying his planes at the club. Which is understandable because he lived on a farm and had pleanty of his own land in the country to fly. He learned to fly himself through trial and error and didn't seem to have too hard of a time. Back then i had flown planes with him many times however I have never actualy landed an airplane. I built 3 ARF's when I was a teenager (which I never flew by myself) and then i dropped out of the hobby until now because of my limited funding as a teenager. I recently purchased a Tower Trainer .40 RTF and I am about to start on my first kit (an 8' Senior Telemaster). Here's where my problam comes in incase you all were wondering if this is going anywhere. I have been in the navy for 5 years and am stationed far away from home in the "armpit" of California (Lemoore). My uncle isn't around to help me with my planes and the closest AMA club is 35 miles away. It just doesn't seem practical for me to drive that far to fly my planes when there are pleanty of open fields in the area i'm in. So what i realy want to know is what exactly is so hard about landing a model airplane that it requires hours of time with an instructor? Why can't I just try it myself? Trainers are supposed to be easy to fly and it's not like I haven't seen someone else land them 100 times. I felt prety confident that i could do it before I joined this site, but with everything I've read I'm having doubts. What are my chances of successfully landing this thing and how exactly do I do it. I guess that's all I'm really after is some advice on how to land. I'll take any flying advice that i can get. Thanks