First off I'm not a skilled flyer but I've owned four planes and crashed them all. No clubs out where I used to live but now I live in Spokane so I'm going to get back into RC and learn to fly. But I've built two planes and owned two ARF's. The ARF's were some kinda plastic yellow cub, stalled while someone else was flying it on it's second flight and a tower .40 trainer ARF, ok but to heavy, then I built a GP some kinda symetrical wing plan, almost learned to fly it at a club then moved and crashed it later by myself, finally built a lazy bee, squirrely little bastrd, crash! My view on ARF's is that I don't really like them because the ones I've owned were to heavy and flew poorly. I just want to tell you that you don't need to invest much more than 40 hours or so in building a trainer. Build it straight but don't worry if it's a work of art, will probably take some lumps, Covering is easy if you cover with the idea that your going to bang it up and it will still look good. I like building planes and will be building a real trainer soon. LT-25 is what I'm thinking of.