After solo'ing, when I put something new together, I really had the jitters about maiding the darned thing. So, I asked my trusty Instructor if he would mind doing it for me. He gladly accepted, saying that it was always a thrill for him to maiden any model, his, mine, anyone's. Especially someone else's.. Perhaps he realized that if it crashed, HE wasn't out the bucks, I was. []

Anyway, after a couple of those, I thought about it a bit and said to myself, "Why should he have all the fun". So, I set everything to minimum, applied quite a bit of expo to the controls, checked that all deflections went in the right direction... [X(] and started the thing up. Once I taxied it out and straightened it preparing for take-off, it seemed that all thoughts of maiding a new plane went away and all I was doing was flying another plane.. well, almost.

I took off carefully and carefully climbed to altitude. The first order of business is trim. So, I set the throttle at a comfortable point and carefully set the trims. I flew a few orbits and quickly landed it and checked to see how much of the trim could be dialed out mechanically to re-center the sticks and did that.

Then, after about 20 to 30 minutes of messing around with the trims, I re-checked everything to make sure I didn't accidentally reversed something, and put it in the air again and re-checked the trim.

Then the fun began. Loops, Rolls, Inverted, Hammerheads, Reverse Cuban 8's, and so on..

But, I must admit, even though I said that the jitters went away when I lined it up, they were really there, I just focused on the task at hand, and that was to safely maiden the plane. After about three tanks the jitters were pretty much gone and I really was learning the handling characteristics of that new plane.

Needless to say, they, the jitters, never really go away, but we learn to deal with them as best we can. The folks that I see crashing a lot are those that simply take things for granted and fly with over-confidence and ignore that little voice in the back of there minds that are saying "you really should not do that..". How do I know? I've done it. How many times have you said, Oh, hell, just one more time.. and, well, brought things home in a basket? My opinion only here. I'm sure that some will object to that observation.

Aaaanyway, I thought I'd add that.

CGr.