OK, the first thing to do is to check out that rc airfield. When you are driving by and see some folks out there, stop by, introduce yourself and start by asking about their instructor program.

In most cases, the old boys there will have told each other their favorite stories so many times that they will be bored to tears and lookng for someone new to talk to. In other words, these guys aren't going to run off visitors and potential members (at least not in our club).

Who ever is doing the instructing will be glad to help you with setting up your plane, giving it a test flight to trim everything out and then start you on your learning curve via a "buddy box" system.

This won't gurantt that you will learn without crashing, but will remove a lot of chances for an accident. The trick is not to let the fear of crashing get to you and mess up your learning curve.

You say this plane was new in 1985, there may be a problem with the radio system. Before 1991 radios used a wider bandwidth and we only had 7 channels. Today we have 50 channels but the radios are required to be narrow banded. This is something that the folks at the local club can help you sort out.

Hope that this has been helpful and if you have any questions, just keep asking away here cause folks are more than willing to help.