I don't too much think I'm stuck in the way "things used to be." I've only been in the hobby a little over 7 years so I'm not exactly an old head who can't understand the new equipment. I'm a pretty casual flyer, making it out to the field every other week usually and working out on the simulator maybe 3 times a week. No, I haven't flown a Champ, but I did have a Slow Stick for a while which isn't all that different. And no, the Champ hasn't become the standard recommended plane to start with. It's not a bad recommendation for someone who just wants to go out to a vacant lot and play with an airplane, but that's about it. What you don't seem to understand is that you're talking to guys who fly serious models and know what skills are required to do so. Most of us have also flown some park flyers and know what skills one will learn with them. So most of us know that these low end tiny park flyers aren't going to help a person build the skills to fly serious models. Since you've never flown the bigger and better performing models, you don't know that, but we do. So as I said earlier, your path will work fine for a person who wants to have half a dozen planes in his closet without spending much money and just wants to go out a fly circuits in a city park. But those who want to move on to the more serious models should go the route that has been proven time and again to be the best route to learning to fly serious models, which is a .40 or .60 size trainer (electric is an option nowadays) with an instructor teaching proper flying technique on a buddy box.