After carefully reading the posts in this thread my overall impression is that EVERYONE can learn from reading it.
Start small and practice, practice, practice. Move up a little larger and practice, practice, practice. Move up bigger yet and practice, practice, practice.
We all get that excited, nervous feeling when first flying a new plane but seem to forget to respect its size and flight characteristics. When your knees are knocking and your hands are shaking with that new plane in the sky and it suddenly does something unpredicted; what do we do? We fall back on our previous flight experience that may not save that new model.
I admit, like tkrash, I'm a bank-and-yank kind o' flyer. I am learning that this is NOT the way to fly a large fully aerobatic model! If you don't respect that airframe it will teach you to respect it when you're back in your basement rebuilding or on the phone re-ordering.

As far as recovering from a spin, what I've been doing when all else fails is give a blast of power with down elevator. Getting that nose pointed down and picking up airspeed so the plane can 'fly' is what works for me. When doing manouvers like spins, tumbles, etc. remember that your plane is not flying. It is falling.
Controlling chaos is not always easy!

Best of luck to all,
Jeff