G'day again

I learned to fly (the basics) at one club then had an eight year layoff. Then I started again at a second and learned a bit more. And then we moved again and I joined my third club. My first two clubs flew Mode 1 and so that was what I had learned but my current club is really mostly Mode 2 so when I built new planes there was no one to test them other them but me. Si decided that if anyone was going to crash my planes, it might as well be me.

Since then I have test flown about 30 planes; mostly my own but a few others. I crashed two of mine. One was just WAY out of trim thanks to warped wood and the other was, I suspect, tail heavy but the instructions were so poor I really don't know. The rest were fine and these days I am pretty relaxed about it but being too relaxed leads to trouble. Like the time I forgot to pull the antenna up on my beautiful Four Star 60. It went about 100 metres then suddenly rolled right. I realised what the problem was, ripped the antenna up, rolled back level and applied full up and almost missed the ground. As the angle of attack was pretty fine, the damage was light.

So I guess that it means that when you feel confident all the time, and never feel nervous - WATCH OUT. That is when things go wrong. That's when you don't check things properly.

Mike in Oz