First plane was a Hobbistar, OS .61 FX, Futaba 6EXA. Got my AMA, joined the club, assembled the plane, went to the field six days in a row and nobody showed up. Decided to fire that mother up and taxi around a bit. Got a little too fast, and up she went. No instructor, no sim time, nothing. Talk about panic! Got her back down without a scratch.

Next day, back at the field, someone volunteers to "help", if that's what you call it. Ended up with splinters.

Got another Hobbistar, built it with no dihedral, dual aileron servos, and a bolt-on wing. Found a real instructor, but the plane was simply too hot for basic training. Very frustrating.

Stopped by the LHS and bought a used Topflite Sierra. What a beautiful trainer! Excellent flier. Four flights on the buddy box and I was greasing those landings. After about 20 flights, flying figure-eights and the plane just quit responding to the sticks. Nothing. Nada. She just continued rolling left and lawn darted at half throttle. Wasn't pretty.

Brought the modified Hobbistar back out and it was still scarey, so I bought a Nexstar Select. Excellent flyer, terribly engineered, it fell apart in the sky (3 times), constantly deadsticked from bubbles in the fuel, and a host of problems from poor engineering and manufacturing. Once all the defects were taken care off, it was good for 5 or 6 gallons of fuel before I tried to take off with the trims pushed all the way up, down, and over. She rolled on takeoff, drug a wingtip, cartwheeled, and broke the horizontal stabilizer. Many hours on the sim, too.

Brought the modified Hobbistar back out and learned some basic aerobatics. That was a fun plane. After 5-6 gallons of fuel, died to another loss of response to the radio. I was broke from medical bills at the time and darn near gave up RC. Over the next couple weeks I watched three other planes on my channel go in. I finally changed to a different channel and haven't had a radio problem since.

Started building HORS with u-channel and conventional tail. Added a .25 engine and landing gear. I started pushing my ability in patterns and aerobatics. Crashed many times, but kept rebuilding and flying those HORS. Switched to fully symmetric wings. Flew those HORS every chance I got, in whatever conditions were. Went back to balsa this spring with an Avistar and a Skyraider Mach II. How many people do you know who can do touch-and-goes with an Avistar with a 20mph wind directly across the runway? Who else is stupid enought to even try?

So, if you ask what plane I learned to fly on, it was the Sierra. If you ask what plane I learned to fly, it was a half dozen HORs.