Thought you might be interested in my R/C beginnings. I started out with a McCoy .35 I bought for $4.95 from a comic book. It flew in a circle flying on wires using a plane called a Voodoo flying wing. Then my first radio. A single channel, single button transmitter made by Orbit. The servo was driven by a wound up rubber band like is used on a dime store rubber band driven plane. If you wanted to go left you pressed the button once. The next press would make it go the rudder go right so if you wanted to go left again, you would press the button twice.
The next radio was a three channel Kraft then a five Channel Kraft. Then Japanese radios hit the market.
I still have a Duelist twin engine kit I never built that would run two .45s
I got into RC a bit later, I was about 6 or 7 years old.. back in 1981/82. My dad had been in RC since the beginning (yep escapements etc) and had done free flight prior to that.. He got me involved in RC. My first plane was a scratch built trainer (dont even remember the name of it) on an OS .40, and a kraft 4 channel. I quickly learned to fly on that thing, and right at the end of the flying season, was doing some.. aggressive (for the time) aerobatics with it, and ripped the wings right off. So, over the winter, my dad and I scratch built a Super Kaos for me to fly.. great plane, and started my love for precision aerobatics.. the next winter we built a Bridi "Dirty Birdy" with retracts, and a tuned pipe, on a supertigre 60 Blue Head! What a beast that thing was! Of course we upgraded to a 5 channel Kraft for me.. and then things just snowballed from there! Now, with a collection of over 30 planes, several helis, and quadrotors, I STILL have the Dirty Birdy! Granted, It probably would not be flyable without a lot of work, but every now and then I look at it and wonder if it would be possible to convert to electric.. Maybe someday I will dig out the plans for it, (which I also still have) make a few mods, and build one for electric....many many fond memories of that plane. Flew it for a LONG time....