Originally Posted by
JollyPopper
Yeah, Gene, the reason this became a topic for me is that one of the best fliers at our field wanted to fly the Spirit I had at the time. He even asked what channel the rudder was on and I told him it was on the left stick, same as all my other planes. Even knowing that, he immediately lost the plane, looped back over our heads and crashed into the right rear tire of my truck. It totally destroyed the plane and the prop adapter on the plane poked a neat bullet size hole in the tire of my truck that only had 15,000 miles on it. Cost of the flight? About $250.00. So we have talked about it a lot.
I ALWAYS set up a three channel plane so that both sticks will operate the rudder. Very few flyers truly know how to use their left thumb and when you do it can get you in trouble not having it there. When we started doing slow stick combat i crashed once because i didn't have the rudder on the left stick. The plane was in a attitude that a little rudder would have easily saved it and i slammed into the ground with the left stick hard over. DUH moment..