I am also a relative newbie to the hobby, ive only been flying for a year or a little more. I taught myself to fly RC, despite strong recommendations against this by everyone online. It is possible. Thats not to say I recommend it, but it is possible.

One of my uncles gave me an old hangar 9 alpha trainer last summer (glow engine, 4ch, 40 size trainer). Of course, I wanted to fly it. There are a few clubs in my area, and if they had been just a little bit closer I probably would have went to one of them.

But I didnt fly the alpha trainer right away. First, I bought a plane called a Parkzone Ember 2, to practice on. This plane is a tiny 3ch micro size plane that can be had for around $100 RTF. It can be flown indoors, or around your front yard on a (perfectly) calm day, without an instructor. It is nearly indestructable. It is so lightweight, and flys so slow, that it just doesn't take any damage in crashes, even if flown into a wall at full throttle. I used the Ember to learn the basics. Granted, there is a world of difference between the Ember and the Alpha trainer. The Alpha is at least an order of magnitude bigger, faster, and heavier. But you can still learn the basics of RC flight.

The best example of this that I can think of is the reversal of controls when the plane is coming at you. In case you don't know, the rudder/aelierons are "reversed" when the plane is coming toward you. The Ember may be far smaller and slower than the Alpha trainer, but it can still teach you stuff like this. I flew the Ember until this "control reversal" was second nature to me. I am sure this alone saved me a crash or two on the alpha trainer. There are other little things like this that you can learn from flying a small, indestructable plane like the Ember, that will transfer to a larger plane, and probably save you a crash or two on the larger plane.

When I got to the point where I had taken the Ember to its limits, flying loops, limited inverted flight, and spot landings, I decided it was time to try the alpha trainer. But first, I wanted to see what it flew like. So I found a computer simulator, and flew a few flights, and practiced landings. Note that I didn't spend much time doing this. I didn't own the simulator, I just had access to it at school (long story).

Then I prepared the alpha for flight, using the instruction manual and online tutorials to balance it, set the control throws, tune the engine, etc. Then I spent several days practicing taxing it around the yard, which is harder then you might think. In particular, it took a while before I could keep it going in a straight line at high speeds, which is obviously necessary for the takeoff roll.

And then I flew. Man was I nervous that first flight of the alpha trainer, with no one buddy boxing me to take over if I got in trouble. A big glow engine plane, when all I had flown was tiny electrics and a few hours on a simulator. But I managed to not crash. My landings were not very smooth at first, but quickly got better. Speed and energy management was something I had to learn. Unlike the Ember, it is not trivial to get it slowed down for landing. I got a lot of good flights and had a lot of fun with it the rest of the summer. Eventually I broke the front landing gear off in a hard landing, and was never able to repair it well enough to hold up to another landing. I had to fix it after every landing after that, but it was still fun.

I did eventually destroy the plane, but it took a surprisingly long time. Im sure I had at least 20 or 25 flights on it before the fatal crash. The reciever battery died in flight, and it went into a spiral dive. I had charged the battery overnight, but didn't have a voltmeter to check it. It was an ancient battery, at least 5 years old. Actually the whole plane was at least that old. This probably could have been avoided had I been at a club, with an instructor to tell me to get a voltmeter.

Now I have purchased a hangar 9 P51 Mustang PTS MkII, a plane I decided on with the help of people on this forum, to replace my crashed alpha trainer for this summer, and I can't wait. This time, I think I will make the drive to a club, to get an instructor to buddy box me, at least for the maiden flight. Its an expensive plane.

So if you want to know if its possible to teach yourself to fly RC, thats my (sort of) success story. My story may not necessarily be typical however. It is definitely possible to fly a tiny electric like the Ember without an instructor, since it really doesn't matter if you crash it. For a larger, faster plane, like my glow powered alpha trainer, or your big electric cessna 182, its not so easy, but it can be done if you are smart about it.

That said, note that I have been an aviation enthusiast all my life and I am also finishing up a degree in aerospace engineering. So although I hadn't had any experience with RC prior to flying the Ember and Alpha trainer, I did have a very strong understanding of how airplanes fly, which may have helped.

Hope this helps.