Welcome to the great sport of RC airplanes I started out with JR only because when I asked at the field I started up with that was what the majority of the guys were flying and the LHS had more JR's to choose from them all others. My brother started out with Futaba and so we get to compare and like the guys said, it's more of a personal choice. Both offer the same options, just a little difference in the programing screens and methods. I would suggest a radio that you can store mulitple planes in and program. I just switched over to the Spectrum DX-7 due to some heavy interference we experienced this summer due to an FM station somehow being re-broadcast across a bunch of the 72Mhz channels. But that's another discussion. If your just starting out I think you would like the 2.4 GHz system as well. I think before to long it'll be the standard, and once again all of the majors will be coming out with their version of it.

By the way, great choice of planes. This will be a really nice plane to learn on[8D]