Luke, like you I'm a Spit freak, & I can understand your desire to have one. The trick is to keep it. Some pretty experienced pilots have pranged Spits, so I suggest that you keep it on the shelf & look at it for a year or so while your skills mature. Failing that, have an experienced warbird pilot fly it, with you on a buddy box.

If it is anything close to scale, it will be a ba$tard to take-off & land for a beginner . It can also snap pretty violently in flight if the elevator throw is not correctly set up.

Maybe it's a sport scale Spit -- that will be a lot easier.