Well, the local hobby shops now hire off the street and the clerks are fun to play with, I just love the blank looks I get when I ask for something. Priceless!! I only use one brand and type of glow fuel, Powermaster 15%. There are plenty of others but this one comes up on sale a lot. I never buy it unless it's on sale.
I gave up on kits decades ago and cut my own from plans. It's easy, quick and cheap. The problem new plans builders have is the lack of instructions. Think of buying yourself a nice new kit, opening the box and everything is there except the instructions. If you are good with that then plans building is really easy. Thousands of plans out there. Free or cheap. Some of the new sites with the free plans are great, you just download to disc, take the disc to Kinko's and have the plans printed out. You can change the size if you like or just print at 100%.
Just for the fun of it pull up the airage site, also called M.A.N. plans from Model Airplane News. Take a look at just a few planes you can build.
If you want to try building an easy kit first that will be a match for your engine then look at the Tower Site and the Tower Up-Roar. Cheap kit, easy to build and a fantastic flying machine.