If you plane to stay in the hobby an ARf is def. the way to go! I personally like the hobbico trainers(Avistar, Superstar. Not Nexstar) ANy of these would be fine or there is the hobbico hobbistar(Ibelieve) which is a little bigger for a .60-up engine.

If you go with the Avistar,Superstar, or any other .40 sized bird look at the Super Tigre line of engines. If you want the plane a little slow and not as "performance"(relatively speaking) oriented the .45 would be a great engine. However if you do want more perf. then the .51 makes a great choice. It will haul my 5+ pounds Superstar straight up out of sight. If you go with the .60 sized bird the Super Tigre .75 will haul her around just fine!

If you plan on staying with the hobby skip the cheapo 4 channel radio's and fork over for a 6 or 9 channel radio(depending). The 6 channel radio will stick with you for a long time but if you want to get into birds requiring advanced mixing later on the 9 channel is the way to go. I personally like futaba radio's but check out your local club and see what brand radio is used the most. If it happens to be Futaba and you want the 6 channel A 6EXA computer radio is just what the doc. ordered. It comes with 7 channel reciver trans. and reciever batts. 4(maybe 5) S3004 servo's and a switch harness for $170. If you want the 9 channel I can't really help you there as I dont own one but I hear good things about futaba's 9cap.