mjgdesigns,

I will give you the advice you will hear the most from many reliable flyers.

Get a slow stick. It has great handling, repairability, steady flight, and it can be flown 3 or 4 channels. It flies so well, it can lift many things. Many people have attached camera's to their slow sticks. It's slow enough to be flown anywhere! You can get the plane at gwsexpert.com and everything else, you will be paying around 200 dollars, for a 4 channel transmitter and everything. You need to construct the slow stick, but trust me, it's worth it.

If, you really are not into building, then you could go with a sky scooter pro 2 from http://www.servocity.com . It is rtf, but, there is no real throttle control, so you have to fly it until the battery dies. If you wan't to go this way, read the huge post on it in the park flyer forum.

You could, also, get the graupner mini piper from hobby-lobby.com . It is a rtf, and flies very steady. I have heard no bad reviews about this plane either

Also, make sure you look at the good first planes post on the top of this forum. If you look around, i seriously doubt you will find any bad reviews about the slow stick, and if there was one, it may be a technical malfunction that could happen to any plane. You can advance with your equipment too. If you would like to stay in the hobby, consider getting a better radio, maybe 5 channels, like at servocity.com . It would come with the servos. You would need to customize the hitec flash 5 radio so it has 2 hs-55 servo's and the super slim 8 channel receiver. Then, at gwsexper.com, you would buy the plane, the esc, (an 8 amp 300) and a battery and charger. That would come to about 270, but all the equipment you need for a while would come with it. Some people have never graduated from the slow stick they like it so much.

The most important thing, of course, is to have fun.

Happy flying!

Al