I almost went at it alone but decided to listen to everyone here. I'm glad I did. I could takeoff, fly around and land great on the sim. However, unless you have it setup to be a bit harder with wind etc, the sim is a perfect world....flight controls are rigged perfect, weather is perfect...you get the picture. My plane was dropping nose down bad on it's first flight with an instructor. It took almost full elevator to keep the nose level. It looked like all the flight controls at neutral were fine on the ground but they were not. I would not have been prepared for that. He was able to trim it in the air and with not very much up elevator travel left, he was able to get it on the ground in one piece and show me how to correct the problem. I went back a couple more times with the instructor, but that first lesson taught me the most. Time with an instructor will likely not keep you from ever crashing your plane in the future but it may keep you from crashing it the first time you take it up. I have since smashed mine into a tree flying on my own. It was completely my fault though...I took my eyes off the plane.