I've flown a mode one airplane one time in the distance past. A fellow college student/budding RC pilot had learned to fly on mode one. He had not flown for some time, so he asked me to stand with him to talk it through while in the air.

So he took off and all was good until he got a bad glitch. For those of you that are new, radios in 1973 were not quite the marvels of today. Often they just didn't work very well once in the air regardless how well they operated on the ground.

By the second glitch, suddenly he shoved the transmitter into my hands. My problem was now it's glitches and the fact that every time I attempted to pull up, I throttled down. Adding power made it dive. Thinking about it too long would just freeze me on the controls. Plus we were flying from the parking lot of the football stadium and the airplane kept going into the bowl. Meanwhile I was trying to hold the transmitter position so that the airplane would get the best signal. It was quite a dance.

Finally I realized that as long as I kept both the elevator in neutral and the throttle at half way I could pull back slightly on both and gain altitude. The radio maintain a link just long enough that I eventually got out of the stadium bowl, and away from the seating and close enough to land. I told him to send the radio back for service, but never flew with him again.

Just set your radio up the same as the guys you are going to fly with. Mode one was for the guys that originally flew reed radios that just had half a dozen toggle switches on the front of the transmitter. They had two on the right side for rudder and aileron, and three on the left side for elevator, elevator trim, and throttle. Most of the advanced "10 channel" transmitters only allowed one toggle from each side of the transmitter to be used at the same time. So you could use rudder and elevator together to spin, but not use the throttle or ailerons while doing so.