Getting well of topic here lads, and spoiling the thread. Admins could delete the last dozen posts and no loss.
@ArtieFufkin in the absence of courses, you could do worse than dropping into the local mens shed, altough you still run the risk of running into another bunch of cantankerous opinionated old men.
Other than that,
A) work on your sharpening skills (I can just about get to the 'shaving hair' level if I take sufficient care),
B) maybe it's the wood you're using (I use a lot of cheap soft wood and there's no comparision to quality hard wood)
C) stop screwing about with the setup of the plane, i.e. you should never have to adjust the frog.