One thing about the bigger planes is people have more of a healthy respect or fear of crashing them. I notice that many people who fly foamies never bother to learn basic maneuvers. The importance of glide slope, flaring, setting up an approach, knowing your climb out rate, these things aren't as important to a pilot that can bounce his plane off a tree and keep flying. When you have 3D power and can climb straight up, learning to fly in a controlled manner and get off the runway appropriately while conserving enough speed not to stall is not a priority.
The "older generation" typically values flight skills highly. Not many park flyers have to pass a test to fly on their field. Then again most park flyers don't have to worry about taking out cars or people if they get out of whack. I wouldn't look down your nose at the club flyers with their big expensive models any more than you want them to look down their noses at you. Sounds like you have a pretty good club if they are welcoming you into their area. We've had a few threads here where people experienced the opposite. If it's like the field I fly at when I visit my brother, you have to prove that you are a competent and safe pilot before they let you fly there without a trainer box. I wasn't offended by this. As I looked around the field, I saw a lot of people, cars, and very expensive models that took a lot of time to build. I wouldn't want to have some jerk get crazy and lose it and hit my stuff. These rules are helping everyone.
Sorry, rant mode off.
Anyway, if you haven't flown balsa, there's a lot more at stake since you can't usually glue the pieces back together and keep flying. Getting a big wood trainer and learning the basic principles to a better degree is not a bad idea. I can tell you I fly my nitro wood planes a lot different than I do my foamies. And on that note, it's been a couple years of slowly rebuilding my one nitro balsa plane a little at a time when I get time. Compare that to my worst foam crash ever and I had it back flying in a couple hours. I definitely learned all the above mentioned techniques a lot better when I started flying wood planes.
Rant really over this time I swear.