ORIGINAL: GBLynden
Tell me what makes you think I only have four months of experience in this hobby? Some of the videos I posted were of me flying ultra micro planes that are as you said ''more difficult to fly than their bigger counterparts''.
Your profile is about 4 months old, and the advice you gave sounds like the perspective of someone who's new to the hobby and still in that excited, buy a new plane every other week phase. If you've actually been at it longer than that, feel free to correct me on that point.
And even though I respect and appreciate all of your responses, I still believe in the path that I layed out above for many of those new to RC planes. If you can master a Champ and then a four-channel Ultra Micro T-28, then you are golden.
If the goal is to fly park flyers and toy grade airplanes forever, you're right. But if the goal is to move on to bigger, higher performance planes (more wing loading, less forgiving stall characteristics, more speed), you'll actually learn some bad habits that will cause you to have crashes that you wouldn't have had had you learned to do things the right way the first time from a qualified instructor.
I wouldn't have done it any other way. It wouldn't have been fun learning from someone telling me what to do at every turn. Learning things on your own is one of the fun and exciting things about this hobby.
There's the root of why so many guys never learn to fly or never move beyond toy grade planes. They want it to be immediately fun, whereas actually learning proper flying skills is mostly work. I see guys who have been in the hobby for 2-3 years who still can't do a straight takeoff or a smooth landing, or can't do an accurate turn or straight pass. The reason is that it's not fun to work on those fairly pedestrian skills, so they don't bother. An instructor knows what you need to know and will hold you to learning those things until you really have them right. It takes some pretty incredible self-discipline to hold yourself to learning all the flying skills you need when you could be up burning holes in the sky instead. Of course, if the plan is to stick to toy grade airplanes, I suppose it's not important to learn how to do those things.