Ok, first off I'm not going to recommend that anyone go out and try to learn to fly on your own unless you meet a couple of basic requirements. First, you should have a lot of basic aviation back ground, ie. private pilot lic. or a&p lic or control line experience and some/lots of flight sim time. It wouldn't hurt to have built several kits before either. You also need to understand the dangers involved and it wouldn't hurt to have a healthy home owners insurance policy, just in case. You must understand that you WILL crash, and that it will cost you money when you do. Next you must choose a plane that can take some abuse, you need one that will bounce instead of breaking. A few months ago I started building the RCM advanced trainer from plans that I blew up on my computer from the magazine article. I basically started from scratch and made every wooden part. Well of course my wife could tell how much time I had into the plane and just before I had it finished she started to ask the dreaded question, "What happens if you crash it?" I would just stare at her and say, "I'm not going to crash. I'll be real careful". But in the back of mind it would eat at me, what if I crash? Well, I thought about it a lot and finally came up with a plan. I decided to buy one of the indestructable trainers to fly for awhile before risking all my hard work. I did some looking around and decided to get the Aircore 40 trainer. It looks more like a real plane than the Dura trainer and that aluminum fuselage looks weak. The Aircore is made out of plastic that looks like cardboard and is real tough stuff. The build up is different than anything I had ever done before but it was pretty easy. The first day I went out to fly I taxied it around for awhile until I got used to how it handled on the ground. Then I made a few short hops into the air and right back down. Then I decided to try to take it up and fly it. I took off just fine and made it half way around a circle. I was so thrilled to have it up that I wasn't paying close enough attention to what I was doing. Of course you all know what happened next, I got the controls crossed up in my head and nose it over and plowed it into the ground. The plane hit the ground on a concrete pad from about 30 feet. The impact broke the muffler off of my MDS .48 and broke the prop. The muffler is toast and the mount for it on the cylinder is broke off too. The motor still runs fine but I can't pressurize the fuel tank now. The plane on the other hand suffered almost no damage at all. It has a couple scuff marks on it and I had to straighten out the landing gear a little. I also had to patch a small area where the wooden dowl for the rubber bands goes through the fuselage. The impact also pushed the motor and power cartridge back into the fuselage about an inch. I only had to drilled new holes for the mounting screws to fix that. Total repair time for the airframe was about 20 minutes. The crash would have shattered any balsa trainer into useless toothpicks. The next time I went out to fly I slammed into the ground a couple of times on landing. I kept it wheels down every time but I put it down real hard twice. Both times with the help of a nasty cross wind gust and the second time to keep it from hitting me when a gust blew it toward me while landing. I have also had one dead stick crash landing and the plane still fly's just fine, this is one tough bird. I now have about a dozen flights on the Aircore. It flys much better than I do but I'm catching up fast. I would recommend this airplane to anyone who wants to learn on their own. I don't think you could break it even in a full speed dive to the dirt. I'm still probably 20 or more flights from risking a flight with my scratch built trainer. And I think I better buy a new motor and muffler first so I don't have that fuel starvation problem when I have to pull up hard and hit the throttle to miss the trees at the edge of my runway when I come in to land and my approach isn't quit right. Teaching yourself to fly isn't easy but at least I don't have anyone standing over my shoulder confusing me, and I am learning to fly, and havin' a blast. I may eventually join a club, but the closest one is 50 miles away. I dont know how I would feel about flying if I had taken my balsa trainer out that first day. I think I would still be cryin' the blues, and I know I would still be working on repairs, or starting over with on a whole new plane.