That's a pretty broad characterization of the issue. It happens. Period. I did it. What happened to me was somewhat different but it still happened.

You see, I was flying all day with my 2.4GHz system and on what turned out to be my last flight of the day, I flew an electric converted Little Something Extra. It was on 72 MHz. I put the plane up and shortly after it was airborne, it headed directly away from me, at altutude, and went into the woods. I managed to cut the throttle when I noticed something was wrong but did not notice that my antenna was not extended until later when someone pointed it out to me. Crap, was all I could say.

I managed to find it, and what surprised me was that I only had a broken prop. The plane somehow managed to find it's way to the ground, with the exception of the prop, without as much as a scratch.

I trained under one of the strictest and most thorough instructors around. If any of you do Pattern, you might know the name Dave Lockhart. Dave's dad, Ron, was my instructor. And he was thorough, including a very thorough pre-flight, which, incidentally, is done on the plane. The radio was a simple four channel radio with no model memory so there was no selecting done on the radio. The plane range checked fine, which, you might recall, is done with the antenna DOWN, and all else looked just fine so I flew it. So, no one is more consciencious about preflight than I am.. with one possible exception. As I said, it happens.

Of course, I was somewhat embarassed when,as I said, someone had to point out to me that my antenna was not extended. Live and learn. Unfortunately, for the person that is the subject of this thread, he didn't learn fast enough.

So, don't condemn people for making mistakes, guys.