Hey you guys, You don't need that much room. Rusty, what it sounds like is that you've got a real case of the nerves there. What you all need to do is to go over to Flitetest.com and start building some of their itty bitty Dollar Tree Foam Board electric airplanes. DTFlyer (Blue Dart) and the like are simple, easy to fly airplanes that don't take any time to build and you can build several airframes and use that swappable pod to change between airframe to airframe. Then just get out and put some time on the darn things. It'll pretty much fly hands off but start challanging yourself with obstacle courses, touch n go's and the likes. Then move up on airframes so you're flying 4 channel and flying reliably. They have some pretty cool little planes. You can buy quick build kits if you don't like to measure and build those or use them as templates to cut your own.
You'll be building motor skills and confidence and when you don't get it right, it's no big deal. And they don't take hardly any room to fly because they're small planes. But the skills transfer to 40 size airplanes and bigger. When you go join a club they'll probably make you tether to prove you can fly and heck, you can have them back you up on a newer, bigger airplane. But if you can fly any of the 4 channel Flite test planes around you won't have any problems flying a 40 size trainer. It'll get you over the hump. And that's what it's all about.