Here's a contribution from Jason Beach:

Another kit plane that's an excellent first plane IMO is the Duskstik from Mountain Models.
http://www.mountainmodels.com/duskstik.php

This is a kit made up of balsa, Carbon Fiber, and light ply. It's easy to build, and is an excellent flyer.
With balsa main wing and tail, and a carbon fiber fuse, it is surprisingly light and durable.
It can be built as a standard 42" wing or an extended 49"wing. Weather you want a standard or extended wing, you can build either as a regular dehidral wing, or as a polydehidral wing.
You can build the wing to suit how you want the plane to fly. The standard dehidral wing will give you better wind penetration, and the extended polydehidral wing will give you better low speed characteristics, but is more sensative to light winds.
The Duskstik comes with clear covering. This covering can be painted to suit the pilots wishes with regular spray paint, or model paint such as Testors. Just keep the paint as thin as possible to keep the weight down. If you want colored covering, I suggest using Solite. It's about as light as it gets, and with practice can be fairly easy to work with.

The Duskstik is a very forgiving flyer. Stalls are a non event with the nose mushing down to recover. The plane is very stable, and flies very slowly giving the pilot lots of time to plan turns or react to mistakes. Because of it's light flying weight (7-12oz) the plane resists damage surprisingly well. I have cartwheeled mine several times with little to no damage. If you do nose it in, not to worry. The motor mount is balsa and designed to break and save the motor/gearbox, and most importantly the prop shaft. Extra mounts are provided in the kit, so it's a 5 minute job to get the plane back in the air.

The Duskstik kit includes everything needed to complete the airframe. Pushrods, mounts, landing gear, and covering are all included.
Here's what you'll need to complete the plane.

Transmiter and charger (see first post in thread)

Motor- GWS IPS-A or GWS EPS100C-A work well

ESC- 5amp ESC

Servos- The servo mount was designed to use GWS Picco servos, but some people have modified it to fit Hitec HS-55's. You'll need 2 servos.

Reciever- Just about any small reciever will work on this plane. Berg 4 or 5, GWS 4ch, Hitec 555, etc

Battery- Good batterys for this plane are 7 or 8 cell 720mah nimh or 370mah nimh packs, or you can save weight and increase flight time with a 2cell 700mah Li-poly pack.

The good news is that the Duskstik is also offered in a package with motor, ESC, servos, and batt pack for $125, which is cheaper than buying everything individually. The only thing that's not in the package (other than the transmitter and charger) is a reciever.

Hopups.
This is also a plane that can grow with you, in stock form, you can turn up your elevator and rudder throws for good loops rudder rolls, stall turns, etc. Just don't expect this plane to do 3D. Popular hopups for this plane are motor and battery changes. With a small brushless and Li-poly batts, you can save weight and increase power and flight time.

The Duskstik also makes an excellent platform for photography. Though it will pack a small camera such as a Pencam with a GWS EPS100 powering it, a brushless power system will pack even better.

I have also straightened the wing and added ailerons to it, but this is a time consuming project that involved reinforcement where the wing halves met and some other bracing in high stress parts of the wing.