ORIGINAL: pmerritt
I tell you the BEST therapy I've found. I go through the same low down feeling when one becomes a plow instead of a plane. Here are a few rules first and foremost:
1. NEVER fall in love with your airplane
2. NEVER give it a name
3. NEVER paint, preen, fluff one up
4. NEVER go flying without a decent heavy duty trash bag
ALL planes have an expiration date (just like life, we don't always know when that will be) Buy you some beaters, crash the hell out of them and go buy some more beaters and do that for the first few years. Once you've lost one, bag it up, assess the possibiity of rebuilding. If it's a loss, salvage what you can and get the rest in the trash can as soon as possible (out of sight - out of mind syndrome). THEN...the BEST CURE OF ALL....get on YouTube and type in RC Airplane crashes or anything of that nature and watch some of the big boys smack $2K, $3K, $5,000,. HELL $25,000!!! airplanes! You'll realize that it's NOT a ''personal'' thing when you turn a perfectly good flying airplane into fireplace kindling! These big boys and their big buck toys do the same thing ALL THE TIME!
This doesn't change the fact that you lost one, it changes the concept that you probably lost $100 and change. It like this, flying your beater and calculating that out in dollars, that's equal to an upscale dinner date with the GF or Old Lady! Hell, think of it this way, a freak'n bag of popcorn, two drinks and 2 movie tickets are going to set you back $50.00! You'll get a helluva lot more enjoyment than 120 minutes at a theater and you don't have to shower up and put on foo foo to go flying (though I bet there are some foo foo guys at some fields). Watch some other guys reconfigure their planes on YouTube. It helps somewhat to soften the loss. Works for me. Hell, I probably am half the hits on those sites with as many as I've buried then got on the internet to see who else is a fool other than me. THEY lost 5 house payments on a balsa and plastic airplane. I lost a dinner date.
Understand, but.. its all relative based on what we can each afford. Whats a house payment for you or me is nothing more than disposable income to another. I have a couple in the 2-3K range, and I'm danged careful about how I build and fly them because its at the limit of what I can afford for a hobby, but will full understanding they could immediately depreciate to firewood. [:@] Thats an expense I'm willing to take to be able to fly larger planes. No painting or such? Thats part of the fun of the hobby. Don't discourage the noobs with 'don't do this..' and such, impart the understanding of fly what you can afford and learn to fix it, accept that crashes happen, and don't be afraid to make your plane look different from all the other clones at the field.