ORIGINAL: Todd M
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.
all that is bs to speak clearly; 1st, me dad is a flight captain with over 28000h in logged flight time and he can't fly rc planes, and 2nd, it wont help you become a better RCpilot because you've built a couple of kits...[>:]