I believe most of the higher-end radios now have a means to connect to a flight-sim of sorts? Granted, it's been some time since I've even looked into it.
Someday I want to get into these as well, my plan was to get a radio I could connect to the PC and do it on the sim before going into the real world. This way, you at least have the basics down (e.g. which stick does what). This won't help learning to deal with "real world" things like wind gusts and the like, but I think it's a hell of a lot better than nothing
Sounds like fun though!
-Phil