I should mention that after my year of flying the Easystar, then moving to an Avistar, then Thunder Tiger Spirit 3d, then my Seagull Harrier 90 with a 60 size Extra and Four Star 60 in various states of build/repair, my instructor is by FAR the best investment I've had in this hobby. Any questions I have are quickly and thoroughly answered, any nervous jitters I get with a new plane are taken care of by him taking the plane up and handing me the transmitter, any engine tuning, prop, throttle control, movement, anything else you can think of is taken care of with "Hey Vic, can I ask you a question?"

He regularly sits with me every weekend for at LEAST 30-60 minutes and goes over the plane, makes suggestions for improvements, tells me what he thinks I am and am not ready for, etc.

Once you hook up with a good instructor, everything falls into place because no matter what goes wrong, questions you have or problems you have, there is always that person there to help you out. Sometimes, it's a VERY simple answer to what you thought was going to take days of repair.

If he's not there, any of the other club members are happy to help.

There is just no reason not to go with a club/instructor, especially starting out with glow planes where the potential for injury is much higher in my opinion. If I had it all to do over again, I certainly would have made joining a club my first priority.