When you bought your first full-size airplane and started off all alone to teach yourself to fly it you had the advantage of keeping the ground in sight and being in the aircraft. Or didn't it happen quite that way?

Models are quite the opposite of full size for technique and reaction. You seldom fly a real aircraft at yourself to land.

Seriously - having someone with knowledge and experience teach you is worth much more than any three models you might buy and crunch on your own. Join a club or at least seek out an instructor. Having someone do the first trim flight for you will be helpful if nothing else. Full size models seldom come from the factory with the ailerons reversed. That's very common with models because the transmitter determines it - not the receiver.