I'll agree with larry on the 821s for the ailerons. They work. on a DEPS set up they'd be fine on the elevator as well. Too heavy for 2 servos in the stabs.

The rudder is the beast so all you can afford there.

Throttle: small but not micro. I have seen a lot of people use micros on the throttle and have seen more than a few fail. A mini doesn't fail and it lasts pretty much the life of the plane.

As for the plane itself: Well ok I'm biased but hear me out. Like you I started with a 40 sized plane, but realized before I ever went to my first contest that I wanted to 'do pattern". It wasn't an experiment, I wanted to do it and I knew it. So I scracth built a 2 meter wood Typhoon 2000, pretty huge and cutting edge plane at the time. I NEVER regretted it.

I hate to spend money twice. if pattern is something you know you want to do, go ahead and gear up for a good reliable 2 meter plane. Wood planes are awfully hard to beat especially for someone flying a lot and mving up through the classes. they will take years of abuse and are much easier to repair. Nowadays there are a couple of designs that give up NOTHING to the top of the line 2 meter composite imports. Except time and patience to build them. or a deep wallet to pay someone else to build it....

Where do you start to feel the need for a better plane? It's personal. I felt it in sportsman, but it wasn't so much my skills as just that I knew what I wanted. For most people you can have a good measure of success with anything that flies and rolls straight up until somehwere in advanced. if you become a well accomplished advanced pilot, you'll start to see and feel the shortcomings of a plane if it has them. You will know. It will hit you like a ton of bricks some day that you're fighting the plane. in most cases you can learn your set up better and address it that way as long as the design is solid. but if you're flying an older glitchy plane, and you're trying to crack the top of the advanced class, you'll feel it then.

in order to get a great plane you have to have either one of 2 things: time or money. There is no substitute for one or the other. You can get a fantastic plane right out of the box, but you better be ready to spend a few thousand dollars to get it. or you can get a kit, or even a scracth build, and save a good bit of money, especially in the long term, but it is a lot of work and you have to enjoy it.

Hope that helped, lots of good advice already.

-Mike