Thanks for the welcome here.

It is hard to believe how cheap Radio Gear has got now that I'm back in the hobby. I can remember way back in 1974 I bought my first 3 channel proportional gear, and that cost 75 pounds, (pay in those days weren't much, so I had to loan the money off my dad) . To add the forth channel to the transmitter, cost an extra 30 pounds, wow eh???. It must be cos in those days electronics were through hole, plus proportional was pretty new then. Today its all surface mount tech, so the pcb boards had less componants on them, so it's cheaper to built them.

Anyway, here's what happened to my first r/c plane

My 52 inch plane that had the 3 channel in it, crashed on its first flight. As soon as my instructor got it in the air and trimed it, he lost all control, no throttle, rudder, eleve Nothing worked. it did a nosedive right into a park 150ft down below (maybe on full throttle) where there was lots of people (the park was in a valley, I was above the park, it's hilly). only the wing made it cos it was made from foam, and coverd with some kind of light thin wood (the wing left the plane on impact). The rest of the plane was smashed to bits (unrepairable) as it did make a hole in the ground. Something went wrong with the receiver and the model shop couldn't find out what went wrong, so they gave me a new receiver, as my gear was still under warranty. I was able to buy another ready made plane (the same one) and it flew great with the new receiver. I fitted a bigger engine a 45 WOW did it go, my instructor was doing loops rolls ect. he said it was a nice little flyer...