RE: which do you prefer tail dragger or a trike style
I started with trike gear planes, but mostly fly taildraggers now. What kind of taildragger is important. An Edge 540 or Extra or Yak is an easy plane to handle since they have monster control authority. But a Cub or Taylorcraft is another matter entirely. Cubs will eat you for lunch: high center of gravity, narrow track landing gear, wicked adverse yaw, little tiny rudder, all are a recipe for dragging wingtips, cartwheeling, groundloops, and some direction changes in takeoff roll. A scale warbird or PT-17 is similarly terrifying. I leave those sort of planes to the real pros.