I disagree with that pretty strongly, at least from the perspective of someone teaching themself. If you've got a guy on the buddy box with you that keeps you from dumb-thumbing it in the air, than you're right. But when you're on your own... it's a whole other ball game.

Not letting the airplane get away from you is one of the challenges. That first flight is your solo and your trim flight for the plane. Great combo. You've got to take off with an airplane that might not want to be flying straight and level, and you've got to have the awareness to quickly trim what needs to be trimmed. Some guys don't have the ability to do that who have been flying for years.

All the while, you've got to learn how to turn without losing orientation and overcontrolling it into the ground. You've got no sense of how high is high enough, or how fast is fast enough. You probably don't have a lot of experience tuning an engine, so that's a crap shoot.

To me, the two most difficult things to do when teaching yourself is to keep the plane close enough to see it, and to keep it in the air. Landing is a snap. Level the wings, slow it down, and let it land. For take off? Throttle up slow, let it pick up speed, and let it climb.