I fly my Estarter, stock, at half throttle. It is fairly spirited at full. Not vertical, but a beginner certainly doesn't need that.

I get 15 minutes of flying off one $18 pack. If you get 2 of them and a Hobbico MK II charger for $50, you'll get a good season of flying out of them I flew about 22 hours on one of my packs before it got too tired to reuse. How many hours of flying can you get from $18 of glow fuel?

But rather than be thinking of costs, both having their own separate costs, a beginner would be better off picking a 'fuel' that suits their flying fields, weather conditions, help they can get, and general aspirations.

Electric equipment is coming down in price. This will be an interesting year as GWS enters the brushless market and sites like CommonSenserc.com offer inexpensive (cheap? we've yet to find out) packs.

Electric isn't any more expensive than glow as long as you stay in the less than or around one pound plane category. It's the bigger and heavier planes that are generally more expensive to run.