I learned to fly on a Stryker, the first couple of weeks involved lots of Loctite 495 CA and a few broken servos. While the pictures above don't look too promising my first stryker has seen alot worse than that and as long as you collect all the foam pcs. and use a good CA to fix it you will be surprized how bad you can break one of these planes and put it back together to fly again. Get a packing tape dispenser as well, you will go thru lots of tape and remember after you beat the crap out of the first one it's only $20 for a new airframe. The stock RX TX are not that good but adequate for beginner's, my stryker now flies with an Optic 6 TX, Electron 6 RX, 2 HS81MG's and a GWS 480 speed control, if you can afford the better TX and RX it is probably the cheaper way to go in the long run i must have bought 10 servo's and 2 RX/ESC's before i gave up on the stock stuff. Good luck.