One new guy at my club had a duraplane... it flew fine. Personally, I soloed on an Avistar, and crashed it 6 flights later, then went to SPADs (similar construction as Duraplanes). I did a whole lot more learning on my rugged SPADs and have since switch to balsa/ply ARFs. I say get something rugged and easy to fix to learn on... after you get lots of experience with that, go with the nicer flying balsa/ply ARFs.