Yes, it makes allot of sense, far to many in training pilots have been wowed by the whole 3D thing, and once they get through the very basics of flying a trainer, the next thing you know, they are out there with some 3D type of airplane, lots of power and relatively very low wing loading. That is just fine except for one thing, they have never finished their training process yet. There is a great deal of pilot stuff to be learned between a beginning flyer and a well rounded 3D, pattern, IMAC, or warbird pilot. I have read someplace in this thread about how 3D pilots can fly 3D airplane but put a war bird in their hands and that is another story, well in many cases that is very true because far to many of those guys went from A straight to Z missing the dance and never learned to manage energy or the inertia from a heavier airframe. I have seen IMAC guys and I don't mean in the basic class that learned to fly a trainer and went right into competing; and here is the best part… If it was not in the aresti pattern, then they can’t fly it, what I mean is, they never learned to just sport fly. I have seen IMAC guys is the upper classes that could not negotiate a cross wind landing and crashed trying to do so , hell I even watched a guy in the advanced class for no good reason crash into a tree on final one time, and the only tree was a log way off. Anyway, if you want to cross the threshold between just a pilot and a really great pilot then you need to set up goals that push your comfort limits while flying. You will also need to discipline yourself practicing those maneuvers that only you decide are important for you to master. You know, I learned to fly by myself along time ago, but I guess I flew close to 30 years as a sport pilot flying every type thing I could get my hands on before I ever flew any pattern or 3D. I remember a phase I went through about maybe 20 years ago that I wanted to fly an R/C airplane with landing gear both on top and bottom and learned to land and take off inverted. So I would up building, flying, and destroying maybe 5 of the eight or so Sig Fazer’s I built learning to take off and land inverted as well as right side up, also from left to right and vice versa also away from me and straight towards me. I did this for a couple of years and had a blast doing it, now I have not done any of this for many years now but the motor skills are still there from learning that stuff. So my first post in this thread was Practice, practice, practice. All that really meant was, and from my own point of view; you must do diligence and burn gas…

Bob