FHHerber, As one who built and learned to fly in the "old" days, The Kadet senior would have most likely been flown with a "29-30" displacement engine and it would have had a home built radio with three miniature vacumn tubes, a sigma 4F relay, and two pen cells for a filament battery, a 45 volt "B" battery and two more pen cells for the escapement. It would have been hand launched with a run and a heave and gently steered around as it climbed overhead to an altitude where some aerobatics could be done. Loops, snap rolls, wingovers, stalls and spins were all possible with the rudder only escapement control. Since there was no throttle, the flight continued until the engine ran out of fuel then a dead stick landing was made hopefully somewhere near the point of departure. It was not unusual to lose radio control and a cross country chase followed to recover the errant machine.

I have no nostalgia for those days and really appreciate the modern equipment, but if a first plane is a slow, underpowered, aircraft (the 1/2A powered "Butterfly" comes to mind) I believe someone could learn without an instructor as well as we did in those days, and progressing to faster more demanding craft could be done in stages. By all means get an instructor if one can be found, but if you have to go it alone, it can be done if you don't start with a typical 40 powered trainer but something slower and more forgiving.