You’ll find many forum members willing to provide the benefit of their experience to help you with your builds & flying. I used the FLT 1053 foam board to build my 1st kit because it was all that was available from Flite Test at the time. The new builder foam board is white, which has its advantages for paint & decorations. If you’re like I was in the beginning, & to some extent I still am inclined to wreck the models I build, you may not need to worry about finish issues. I still use tape to decorate & provide contrasting colors for orientation, I don’t worry about much else, the foam board is rebuildable or replaceable. After you build your first project you might decide to try scratch building with Dollar Tree Foam Board (DTFB). DTFB is not what I use for its potential life span, but in my case because it’s cheap & light weight. I made my 1st build an easy one by using a Flite Test kit with a swappable Power Pod. I bought the ‘B’ Power Pod package & I still use those original components on models I’m currently building. Probably the best advice I got was to seek out help from more experienced flyers to do my first flights (Buddy boxing) for flying a more advanced kit than the ‘ready to fly’ mini I started with. I’m planning on building a Simple Cub in the future & I might even do it from a kit, but I do love scratch building & modifying the plans to my own ideas. Good luck with building & flying & enjoy the adventure.