Hello everyone. I'm a 62 year old guy who recently jumped into RC flying. My wife bought me all the gear including a simulator (Phoenix 4) and a plane (Apprentice) with DX6i radio system for my birthday. I accepted common wisdom and made contact with an instructor for assistance and training. That's when the problems started. I live in a rural area where instructors are scarce and we could never seem to match up our schedules and/or the wind conditions. Because of this I spent two weeks working on the simulator, which has the Apprentice programmed in, for at least an hour a day. Often more. Being retired has advantages. The sim gave me the chance to learn stick movements until they became second nature. In my younger days I flew full scale aircraft and I can tell you that two sticks under my thumbs while standing on the ground doesn't have much in common with sitting in a plane with the yoke in left hand, throttle in right, and feet on rudder pedals. Having been through flight school did give me the advantage of knowing the principles of flight such as thrust vs drag and lift vs gravity. I already knew how the various controls affect the flight of the plane. Beyond that I was as much a newbie as anyone.

I had a decision to make. I could keep waiting until the instructor and I could meet or I could go fly the plane. I had been taking full advantage of the simulator by increasing wind conditions and directions and also increasing the difficulty of the plane itself. I decided to go fly. There will be those who tell you that simulators are useless and nothing can replace an instructor and buddy box. If you have an instructor then I agree that would be the way to go. But I taught myself to fly using a sim so it can be done. If you have been hanging back on trying RC because you don't have a club or instructor available you might consider giving the following points a try.

1. Learn the basic principles of flight. It's available on the internet.

2. Get a GOOD simulator. There are some good ones out there and some that are pretty pitiful. You need to be able to alter weather conditions and being able to increase the sensitivity of the plane itself is good as well. I suggest using the same transmitter you will be doing your flying with. That way the "feel" of the sticks will always be the same.

3. Start your sim experience with dead calm conditions and one of the trainer planes. Warbirds may be sexy but leave them for later.

4. Imagine that you are sitting in that plane and fly accordingly. Make your climbs and turns smooth and gentle. Just like flying a full scale plane, the landings are the hardest part. Practice those. A LOT. Remember that every flight will end in a landing the only question is whether you will still have a flyable plane afterward.

5. Are you bored yet? Tough. Keep things nice and easy anyway. Keep going until all the stick motions have become second nature. It's called "muscle memory". Plane flying toward you or away from you, your reactions should be instinctive. Remember that if the plane is coming toward you and appears to be banking left it's actually going to the right so you would apply left aileron to correct. I deal with this by thinking right wing vs left wing but this may not work for everybody.

6. When you feel completely confident in calm conditions, add some wind. When that gets easy add more wind. Keep adding wind until the plane can't fly in it. Now back off the wind speed but add gusts. Landings suddenly get a lot more interesting! I'd swear the simulator would wait until I would flare the plane for landing before giving me a good gust to pick the plane up and try to stall it. Okay, comfortable with gusts? Back off on those and add in a little crosswind. Then more crosswind. Then gusty crosswinds. Keep making things harder until you know where the limits are, what you and your plane can handle. Sure, you will crash but now is the time to crash. The simulator gives you a nice new Apprentice every time you do. That's more than I can say for the guy who cartwheeled his P-51 Mustang the other day when he misjudged the crosswinds on landing. All I could think was "That's gonna hurt...his wallet".

7. You have been flying easy gentle climbs, turns, etc until you are sick of it. Right? Okay, back off on the wind conditions and take the plane up. Loop it. Roll it. Spin it. Stall it. The plane will do things you don't expect. Can you return to straight and level flight? Every time? If not go back to Step 5 for a while. If you can handle it then increase the wind conditions and practice the same maneuvers.

8. BE PATIENT! Remember, if you are crashing the simulator you will crash your much more expensive model. Take however long needed. Did I really need 40 hours on the sim before I flew my Apprentice? Maybe not. But I approached the whole thing in a structured manner just like the instructor did when I went to flight school. I think it's important that you do the same.

9. Today is the day. It's time to fly. You picked a day when the winds are mild. Check and re-check everything. My radio required reversing the aileron servos between the simulated Apprentice and the real model. I was glad I found that out before I tried to take off! Line the plane up facing any wind. Slowly advance the throttle. Be ready with a little right rudder to counter the tendency to veer to the left (P-Factor). Let her lift off. Keep your climb and turn gentle just like you did in the beginning on the sim. Now, one last time, I'm going to ask you to be patient. You are flying! You will want to stay up forever. Instead, fly the pattern and bring the plane in for a landing. It's much better to make your first landings when you have plenty of battery power (or fuel) for an abort and go around. Landing really is the hardest part of flying. You can always take off again. Keep track of your flight time. A dead stick landing is the last thing you want to tackle right now.

Before I begin to hear the screams and guys calling for a rope, let me stress that I'm NOT claiming a simulator is better than an instructor or even as good. I think the best of all possible worlds is an instructor and a simulator. I would certainly have progressed much more quickly and would have flown my plane the first day. That's the route I would have taken if it had been a reasonable option. All I'm saying is that if you are stuck in an area where instructors are few and far between, all is not lost. If you are patient and employ a structured lesson plan you CAN teach yourself to fly. Of course, you can skip the whole patience bit and just go fly with no training at all. Eventually you will learn provided you have enough money to repair crashed planes or buy new ones.

So what's my record to date? I don't keep exact records like I did when flying full scale but I have at least 20 flights on the Apprentice and a number more on my ultra-micro J-3 Cub and Champ. I have had one crash with the Apprentice. It was my own dumb fault. I was shooting landings. I hadn't kept track of flight time but I knew the battery had to be getting low. Instead of landing the plane I decided I could make one more go-around. I was wrong. The wind was somewhat gusty and as I lifted the nose to climb away everything went wrong at once. The motor started to power down and a gust pointed the nose straight up. The plane fell over on its back at about 6' above the ground. Just to complete the mess I pulled back on the stick instead of pushing forward. Had I pushed forward I might have avoided a total crash. By pulling back while inverted I literally dove the plane in. The result was a broken motor mount, cowling, and spinner. I had it back in the air two days later. I've also broken two prop shafts on the J-3 Cub. Memo to the manufacturer, that prop shaft is very thin and breakable. The one on the Champ is at least twice as think and hasn't broken once. I fly from a grass field and the dime sized wheels on the ultra micros dictate that landings amount to having the wheels meet grass and the plane noses over. The Cub doesn't handle it well.