Zeke,

You've been given some pretty sound advice. It seems, these days, that there are a lot of guys who want to skip the DF step. It's certainly possible, depending on your talent and your help, but there are a lot of very valuable skills that you'll learn from turbine's closest simulation--DF.

Like F900, I don't regard DF operation as a hassle. My experience was quite the contrary. The level of complexity of electrical, fuel and exhaust systems on turbine airplanes is so much more than the most complicated setup on a prop-job, that building and maintaining a DF bird will prepare you for that. Less daunting=more fun.

RCUniverse is a great place to find inexpensive DF planes and accessories, so there's really no reason to think you're throwing your money away to go the DF route. Good luck!