The trouble is, these days you can buy a Yak, whatever size, assemble it and try to fly it cold turkey. The inevitable happens and one more radio and engine hits that bay thingie. A good trainer is needed, not a glider but a full function airplane that has stability so that if you get in trouble, you just let go of the sticks and a couple of zooms later, you regain control. There are many trainers out there that are NOT.

You don't need tons of money and you don't have to crash. Just the right airplane and some tips on that first ever flight. Look up the original, RCM trainer and you'll see what I mean. I should have a picture somewhere that I can digitize and post. I shortened my story for clarity but there was one other plane that I built before the RCM trainer. It was advertised as the ideal trainer. You could build it with a symmetrical airfoil or as a flat bottom, Clark Y. If you did it as a Clark Y, the airfoil came out too thin and that resulted in a fast plane no matter the wing loading or throttle setting. It too HAD to fly fast just to stay in the air. Anything below 7/8ths throttle and it sank like a rock. Some of the magazines gave it glowing reviews.

One of the very best trainers was the Carl Goldberg Eagle. A close second was the Sig Kadet. It comes in second in my opinion only because it was built from sticks. Lots of unfamiliar work for many beginners. The Carl Goldberg plane used Liteply with many cutouts and it came out with a low wing loading just like the Kadet without all the work. Both had sufficient amounts of down and right thrust to alleviate trim changes with throttle setting changes. That's where many trainers fail the test.