Just another personal observation regarding ab-initio flight training.
A lot of people claim it is more intimidating for a student to teach them on a tail wheel airplane than on a nose wheel airplane.
However from my experience in learning and teaching there is no real difference time wise between students learning on tail wheel airplanes versus nose wheel...they just have better airplane handling skills when they finish than those who learned on nose wheels.
When I learned we only had tail wheel trainers, the nose wheel machines did not appear on the scene until the late fifties.
Also we used two stage amber when teaching instrument flight.....no one ever heard of wearing a hood.
Wearing a hood to simulate IMC is like someone else said here a few posts ago it is like wearing a leather condom to have sex.