That's an old free flight kit. Some of them sell for $100 or so, though I don't know about that particular model. Its designer, Sal Taibi, was famous. He just died last year I think.

That model would not be a good beginning plane for learning to fly R/C. Planes like that were designed to climb very steeply on a short engine run, then glide as long as possible. That's a completely different style of flying from what you'd want in an R/C trainer. There's a sticky on trainers in this forum. Some of us do compete in events that use planes like this, with R/C added. The events are pretty much like the free flight events except that having R/C makes it easier to get your plane back.