The most smokin' hot deal on a great beginners' plane right now is the Thunder Tiger Pegasus Super Combo through eHobbies.com:

http://www.ehobbies.com/ttr4556-f12.html

$219.99 gets you a beautiful sport trainer with a 70" wingspan almost completely pre-built and ready to fly. It comes with a high quality 4-channel Hitec radio system pre-installed and a Thunder Tiger GP-42 2-stroke glow engine with glow plug, propeller, and spinner installed as well.



The engine is reasonably powerful and easy to tune. It would fly a wide range of sport planes very well. The radio system is a hobby quality 72Mhz system with standard servos. The Pegasus .40 airframe flies nicely and has a semi-symmetrical wing so it can fly inverted and do aerobatics more easily than most flat-bottomed trainers.

With the deal that eHobbies.com has on these, it's like buying the airframe and radio at a discount, and then getting the assembly and the engine for free!