dus10lee:

I will second the SPAD idea of an "almost" indestructable airplane. If you are a bit handy at building you can have yourself a trainer spad in a couple of days (depending on how fast you build) without spending alot of $$$. The debonair or spadet are both great trainers and will get you on your way to your first solo flight.

[link=http://www.spadtothebone.com/]Spad Website[/link] <-- visit here for all the spad info you could ask for

[link=http://www.spadtothebone.com/freeplans.htm]SPAD Plans[/link] <-- look under the trainer tab for the debonair and spadet plans

I went flying today and took along my old balsa trainer just for some lazy afternoon fun and my spadstick for a little hot rodding. Yes it's a spad and you would hardly be able to tell the difference in the air as it flys great and didn't cost me more than $10 to build.

Here's a couple pics of my spadstick:



And a couple of my other spad's...first one is a more of a sport plane and the second is a spadet converted to taildragger:





With coroplast you can build some pretty amazing stuff that actually looks like it's balsa counterparts......give it a shot.

Madd_Maxx