The AMA website has a club locator that can help. Also, if you do plan on "going it alone", remember that from inside a full scale, left is always left and right is always right. With an RC, most beginners will yaw or pitch the opposite direction of what they want when the airplane is headed toward them. (perspective thing mentioned earlier). The best thing I can recommend is when the plane is coming toward you, move the aileron stick toward the LOW wing to return to level. It's a little easier than trying to figure out if you need to roll left or right when you're trying to recover from a bad attitude.
Actually the best thing is to get an instructor. No offense intended, but by reading though this thread, it sounds like you might want an experianced flyer to go through the plane before you even try to taxi. Connecting rod failure at full throttle can get expensive in a hurry. I'm not familiar with the LT, but I think you have outer pushrod tubes with an inner liner that the actual metal pushrod goes through. The threaded end usually goes toward the control surface and attaches using that little plastic part (clevise) that is screwed unto the rod and clips to the control horn on the appropriate control surface. I also recommend that you put a small piece of fuel tubing around the clevise to be sure it doesn't open accidentally. The smooth end is usually connected at the servo by putting a "Z bend" in the rod and inserting the rod in the appropriate hole in the servo arm.
Reading through the manual in my trainer, they suggest tuurning the clevise onto the pushrod about 14 turns. The rule I use is to screw it on until the rod just starts to come out the back of the threaded part of the clevise. This ensures plenty of room in both directions to adjust the mechanical trim.