OOPS, how'd I miss that? I flew a guy's plane with one (no take-off or landing) and have played with the programming sequences to see how it differed from my 9C, and I even turned it over to look at the back, I didn't see the jack for the cord. My bad.

I learned without benefit of the buddy box, but learned from a guy who was not only a good r/c pilot and instructor, but had been both fixed wing and rotary wing instructor in the Army, a no-nonsense approach that when he said "gimme the radio", he got it. My ego was no bigger than my wallet, I didn't have a problem letting him save my arse.

As for those fledgling pilots who refuse to give the Tx back, you just can't protect some people from themselves, and the learning curve for them needs to be steep and severe. A few crashed planes can shrink an ego down to size fairly quickly, as well as a wallet.