Bob, I am like you a fast learner who moved on quickly.

Only thing is would disagree with is that a trainer is easier to land guy. Scale planes have stall tendencies that trainers do not. You can practically stop a trainer and it wont stall, an extra 330 will stall in a heartbeat and roll 500' if you let it, that can be unnecessary overlaod for a trainee to deal with when all he is really trying to do initially is get the plane down in one piece, not grease in a perfect landing on his 1st try.. With a scale plane you have to have a better understanding of descent rates and approach speeds AND stall tendencies, trainers dont ever really stall, the others will in a heartbeat... A scale aerobat as you said requires more touch to ensure a good landing.. It is easy ONCE YOU GET THE HANG OF IT. But a trainer is much simpler to get the hang of because it likes to fly up right where a scale plane like to fly in any attitude and wont right itself. Now granted a sharp fast learning guy who catches on fast can learn no problem,, I have taught quite a few guys to fly of ALL ages and there has not been one of them that could have handled my Edge on one of their 1st 10 flights on the buddy box without getting in severe trouble.

Also as far as teaching methods it comes down to whatever works to get a guy to competantly solo. There are a lot of tricks to help a trainee get his orientation straight especially on incoming or inverted planes. Whatever works. Point is as you know that after a few hundred or THOUSAND flights control becomes intuitive, you dont even think about what your hands are doing on the sticks. Like driving a car. At least I dont. I just look at the plane and my brain moves the sticks without me even thinking about it.

One of the most difficult things to do is learn to fly the rudder when the planes is inverted or straight over your head... A friend in pattern told me a trick about envisioning my left thumb in the inside wingtip and just push that wingtip forward and back with my rudder thumb,,, and it WORKED! But now that my brain has it,, once again I dont think, I just do it. I can control the rudder no matter where the plane is in space without even thinking about it. Frankly it surprises me, sometimes a new guy will ask me, "what are you looking at to correct for rudder in X situation?", I cannot remember what I do and I have to really think about it to remember what I did. It just happens eventually if you practice enough. The trick is to find any way you can to get them to the point where there intuition can take over.

Mike