Well, I had a firebird early on, it's an odd flyer and had strange tendacies that most other park flyers don't have, so is not my personal reccomendation for something to train on, that's just my opinion, not trying to raise a debate. I don't see any reason to not have more then one type of plane, sometimes depending upon your mood, other times for the weather conditions.

Sim's are also another odd area, sure they teach you the basics, but there is alot to be said about being able to rely upon perifial vision. So, they are easier on one level, ie. you get perfect planes, perfect weather conditions, perfect gravity, etc. yet harder on another level since you are basically looking through binoculers and when the plane gets out of your line of site, it becomes a very tiny spec quite quickly, so something is lost in the computer graphics translation area. The only sim time I really have is on a few demo's and FMS and I'm only using keyboard controls, so don't get as much out of them as you guys with the expensive ones with the TX plug in, and in fact, I'd like it if someday, someone would come up with a keyboard type of radio since I've long since ommitted using a joystick for computer games and playing console games drive me nuts for that reason.