I'll second that maybe your problem was the ESC. My first FT Bushwacker build, I was flying it and about 100' up, I tilted it to make a turn and it just rolled over, nosed down, and dove like a lawn dart. I tried to get left stick to spin it flat, and then elevator to nose up and get it level, but it didn't respond to nose up until about 3' from the ground - at which point, it was already going too fast to recover. Landing gear hit, ripped off the bottom of the plane, and the prop smacked the ground and broke.
Several of the guys at the field were suspicious, saying it was the OrangeRX receiver I was using, and because it was cheap, that's what caused the failure.
Nope.
It was actually my own hand that caused the fault. I soldered up an XT60 connector for either the first or second time eve, and I diddn't get a solid solder on it. It made good connection for a while, but vibration cracked the solder, and it was only intermittently making connection, which is what allowed me to "sort of" pull up out of the way at the last minute.
I have since cut and re-soldered a good HOT solder, making a solid connection, and no shorting.
I will also throw in m $0.02 on the radio, for what it's worth, although there are a lot of people here that feel it's a waste. I myself fly with a Spektrum DX6. I paid $200 for it, and I did so for a couple of reasons:
1) The quality of the gimbals felt much smoother than other, cheaper radios.
2) The radio felt good to hold, and ergonomically, I could hit all of the switches without a problem.
3) My radio has the ability to talk to me and tell me that I have 30 seconds left, or even do a countdown from 10 sec. to zero on my battery timer. That's a BIG thing for me vs. just hearing beeping.
4) There were a lot of other people at my field who fly with Spektrum. This meant that I had a bunch of people around me that had gone through setup trials and tribulations on that same radio, so if I had a question on how to set up a specific configuration, odds are that someone else there at the field had come across it and done it.
Now, you may find that you don't need the voice talking to you, and you may feel like you can go it your own with reading the manual; that's fine. But the first two things are things to pay attention to when you're wanting to fly smoothly and precisely. If you have a radio that sucks to hold, or it's a REALLY heavy radio, you're going to hate holding it. And yes, a neck strap will help hold the radio, but heavy radios will weigh down on your neck, so pay attention to that as well. Don't go cheap if you're going to end up with hand cramps from trying to flip the throttle kill switch!!!
And I say that whether you go Graupner, Futaba, Spektrum, Flysky, Turnigy (I wouldn't, but that's because I have a beef with HobbyKing), Frsky, etc. Don't buy the cheapest JUST because it's the cheapest you can get. I mean, you can get a Spektrum DXe for $59, and then OrangeRX receivers for anywhere from $10-$25, depending on how many channels you need...I wouldn't personally recommend the DXe if you plan on flying multiple planes, because you have to reprogram it every time you change to a new plane; that's one of the costs of going cheap (at least, with that option). But, it is a cheap option...I would say to look at what options you get with each radio, and get the one that's the best for YOU.