It depends on what you want to spend. I have been using the tower hobbies .40 trainer and it's a pretty tough plane. You can get one with a 4ch radio ready to go for $250. It comes with a tower radio made by futaba, and a tower engine which I believe is a GMS.

Should you crash and destroy the entire plane it's only $70 to buy another one assuming that the radio and engine survive.

I would say it's the cheapest way to get into a decent 4 channel glow setup.

One thing I would say to someone starting out (stuff I learned, and am still learning, the hard way) is that flying is not the hard part. The hard part is getting a plane together that has everything setup and balanced correctly. If your center of gravity is off, or your control surfaces are not aligned, or your control surfaces do not have the correct amount of travel or your engine isn't tuned correctly, your going to have at best a real handful.

You will see many on this forum recommned an instructor. While it is posssible to learn on your own, you must have all of the above figured out the first time or you will crash. Having someone that has some know how look over your plane first is the best way to insure a good first flight.

schu