Say what you want about the Duraplane and the SPAD trainers. You can buy 2 Duraplanes for the price of an Avistar, SuperStar, Cadet or Rascal. If you're learning on your own, start cheap. Unless they have added something in the last year, I have built every plane on Spadtothebone.com and then some. I've had some pretty horrific "mishaps" and still haven't torn one up bad enough that it couldn't be fixed with 20 minutes and a hot glue gun. Duraplanes aren't meant to be precision aircraft. They were meant to crash ... epoxy the wing back together and back up in the air. They're a bit on the sluggish side ... but then again, they were menat to be a trainer.