ORIGINAL: felixone
My first attempt was over 15 years ago with my father. We decided we wanted to learn to fly so we went to the local hobby shop. The "nice" gentleman there helped us pick out planes and all the accessories we would need to build, cover, and fly them. I walked out of there with either a Mustang or Corsair (I can't remember which), and my father had purchased a huge scale Cub. Thankfully we also picked up a couple of RC mags. It wasn't until we read through those that we realized how different classes of planes flew, and that we would never successfully fly the planes we bought.
I can relate to this. About 40 years ago dad bought a control line plane w/Cox engine. That was the first plane he had ever bought. I was only about 8 at the time but I clearly remember the experience. He had no prior experience flying small planes but he was a flight instructor for the Navy. Maybe that gave him a false sense of his abilities to fly the CL plane. Anyway, I remember him starting it up and taking off. The plane was fast. He was able to fly for about 8 - 10 circles then nosed her in. He never got back into the hobby and I think that is why it took me about 37 years to 'discover' RC planes. If he was successful then we would have spent more father/son time together flying. I truly feel that if he had a LHS that was supportive and provided guidance for a 'newby' then I would have been flying RC for a long time now.