If you feel like the Firebird Freedom is a little too fast and a little too much for you to handle at this point, I think it would be a good idea to buy a $30 Air Hogs Aero Ace from Target or Toys R Us and just have a blast flying that thing around for a while. It goes slow, takes very little space to fly and can be crashed repeatedly with no damage to the plane or whatever it hits. Control is 2-channel. It is just a tiny 9 inch foam plane that weighs about 2 ounces. Once you get the hang of flying that, you should be able to fly the Freedom much more easily. And if it saves you just one bad crash on the Freedom, that would pay for it.