While it's a great way to fly inside when the weather won't let you fly outside, any half-good RC Sim will teach beginners two fundamental things: Visual Orientation and Instinctive Control.
Visual Orientation is something even experienced "real airplane" pilots will struggle with -- When I'm outside the plane looking up, with just a glance, which direction is it going? Is it flying level? It's surprising how hard this can be, but when it's far away, against a bright sky, some models can be impossible to tell at a glance. Worse, you'll loose it at the worst moments -- when you need it to recover a plane bound for a crash! Even when you're using a tiny flat computer monitor, you can start to learn how to keep track of orientation and the subtle visual cues and control tricks you can do to regain it, all without risking a real airframe!
Instinctive control is knowing how to move the sticks without thinking about it. Yes, the rudder moves the nose left/right, and the elevator moves the nose up/down -- not hard to learn, but once you've got orientation and it's flying straight at you which way do I move the rudder/aileron sticks to make it pass to my left? Flying away, which way to make it turn back around to the left? Also not hard to think it through, but that's time you don't have if it's rocketing toward the trees at the end of the field. A sim will help you learn not just left/right/up/down control from the plane's perspective, but from your perspective on the ground, and well enough you don't have to waste time thinking about it any more.
If you're sold on RF (there are less expensive options, although I'll admit they're not as pretty), looking at their packages, I'd recommend getting a different radio, then picking up the interface version. I've got no real problems with Tactic radios (don't use them, myself, but they make good radios), but that radio is so basic you *will* quickly outgrow it. Yes it's a six channel, but it has almost no programming features, and the ones it has can't be tuned. That's fine for store-bought TxR airplanes tuned to that radio, but you'll really want flexibility if you start scratch building.
My current recommendations for a beginer radio are:
- Turnigy 9xr (with module of choice) or 9x (if you're willing to solder and reflash -- good for the DIY'er)
- Specktrum DX6i or DX7s (though nothing wrong with the DX8 or 9 except price)
- Orange T-6
- Frsky Taranis (hard to find, but a great value -- might be hard for a beginner to setup the first time, though)
If you *just* want a sim and RF looks cool but the only one you want, there are other options, if you're interested.
