And in addition to the pucker factor mentioned by MinnFlyer there's also the potential of stage fright! It's not easy to stand in front of possibly as many as 50 people on a Sunday (simpathetic as they may be) and potentially look like an idiot. To be honest, after about five sessions with an instructor I was soloing and after that I preferred to be flying on "off" days when there'd only be a couple of other guys at the field. I finally found true peace and the joy of flying on that day that I was the ONLY person at the field (warning: this can be dangerous so extra caution is needed). Only after I started feeling comfortable flying without a crowd did I start coming out and flying on Sundays. Oh yeah, and in the Sim there aren't three other guys up in the air with you all with trainers that look just like yours!

The first time I flew my second plane (a Seagull Spacewalker II) on a Sunday in front of full house of club members (to whom I was the newbie Gaijin from American to boot and therefore, in some small way, representing all American flyers) my hands were shaking so badly that I could hardly control the plane -- and was lucky not to have dropped the Tx. But after a couple of solo trips to the field during the week, I've calmed down some.

On the bright side, yes, training on RF will definitely shorted your learning curve. I found my RCM trainer did in fact fly very much like the PT40 in RF. And I wasn't fighting the sticks. What's different though is that you are now in a REAL 3-D world and things like depth perception and altitude estimates really do matter. I ended up landing my plane on the downslope of the hill at the head of the runway at least twice because I just hadn't realized the plane was really that low.