simulators are good for training muscle memory. Getting you used to the appearance of the controls reversing when you are flying towards you and away. But they lack the 3D visual experience and the realistic ding in your pocket book when you crash. Plus, I'm a wizard on the Simulator and can do rolling circles in Helicopter mode but nobody will let me demonstrate on their ship at the field. So I tire of the simulator fairly quick. Still, you will teach your eye/hand co-ordination muscles what to do when a plane is doing something you don't want to. You only need to calibrate your eyes to the real world.
This IS the flite test forum. I suggest buying two sets of gear and building a couple of of FT Flyers, just one of the swappable designs here, and then taking those out to the field on a calm day and flying them. Follow the swappables and swap to a Nutbar, then a Delta wing and then a Bloody Wonder and by then, you're ready for just about anything really. The fact that it will only cost you, probably, 5-10 bucks of Dollar foam board with maybe some extra props, servos, etc. will take the fear factor out of training. Getting an experienced pilot to buddy box you doesn't hurt either. And for basic control, if you don't mind spending the bucks, a Nite Vapor is an excellent flying, easy flying, absolutely no wind slow flying plane that pretty much just flys out of the box. I handed one to my nephew last week, in the dark, and he was flying it around they're back yard.
I hope the original poster is well into flying by now after a full and fun summer. But to you newbies, get out the hot glue gun, get to dollar for supplies and start building some cheap planes that you have no emotional attachment to, get out there and wreck em.
I always found by the way that NOTHING trains a just capable pilot into a fully confident pilot like Combat. Nothing trains a pilot to know EXACTLY what does what like Pattern. And NOTHING is as much fun as getting out with your buddies and just flying, BSing and maybe having a touchngo grudge match.
Actually, there is nothing quite like group flying CL planes with 3 or more people, but alas unless you've got a bunch of buds who want to give that a go you'll never know. It's like flying RC but everybody is walking around a central point, guiding lines and planes over each other, all over the place. It looks like a unrehearsed ballet and it is wonderous fun. Been in a circle of 15 before. Kind of like a cage match really.
My thoughts exactly
Get some thing you are not afraid to crash. some thing cheap. Maybe build it out of foam board. I have a back up beater plane that I am flying right now.. because of turning a funbat into a lawn dart.. but the point is, my beater has, and will again, be crashed into two pieces, and glued and taped back together. So get some thing that you can afford to crash, mentally and financially that is. Speaking of, I may go fly it out my back window over the woods.. I can affored to loose this plane.