I was recently in Central Hobbies (South St. Paul, MN) and they had two sailplane-like .15 trainers, one with engine. The owner said he learned on them after crashing everything else. They fly slow, are easy to control and as a bonus, you can even catch a thermal with it!

Other than that, try spadtothebone.com for great planes you can quickly build from corrugated plastic. I bought some 4'x4' sheets at your local AxMan Surplus in Fridley (Hwy 65 just north of 694) for $3.95, a scandalously low price. You could build two planes with one sheet! I had a SPAD (Simple Plastic Airplane Design) as they're called, and nothing is more indestructible. spadtothebone.com has FREE easy to follow plans on their web site, with dozens of planes listed. Mine was a SPAD Dart, with an improbable looking wing which had bends on the top of the wing instead of a curve for the airfoil. With a cheap but great Evolution .46 it would fly at 5 mph or 100, and was wildly aerobatic. I crashed it into a line of trees at about 35 mph and the only damage was that the hinge line was torn three inches. (You make hinges from the corrugated plastic by cutting one of the two plastic layers away). I crashed it once in a loop that was too low to the ground, resulting in the plane slamming hard against the bottom of the fuselage, and the only damage was a broken prop and a break in the metal(!) engine mount. The plane was fine. Unfortunately, my flying field has a swamp behind it, and I lost the plane in the swamp when the elevator servo linkage broke or came loose.

One word about the engine: You can get an Evolution .40 new for under $70 locally, and they're as good as an O.S. in my opinion. Just as powerful, smooth starting and running, ball bearings, plus they're already broken in! I have literally just taken them out of the box and ran them hard with no bad effects. They also make .46 and .61 engines.