I think you'll need to go for a park flyer. I've seen people destroy the durable ones, but you can buy spare parts. Learning how to fly is a small part of it. If you go with the typical .40 sized glow-powered trainer, you'll need a field, you'll need insurance, you'll need to learn how to tune the engine, plus the cost will be $400 to $500. Still, even with the electric park flyer, I've seen people launch and crash, launch and crash, over and over until the plane was no longer flyable.

The only problem with an inexpensive park flyer is I wouldn't exactly say it's the same sport that the rest of us are talking about here.