at my club, there is a little bit of ego. it is a good thing because if you have a problem, people will swarm around your plane and if you ask them what is wrong they will say, here...let me show you and they do all the work. i happen to be one of them. one of the guests we once had went out and bought an rtf. they assumed that it really was ready to fly. rtfs never really are. i have seen about 10 rtfs with the wing dowels not glued in and when i mention it, the response is "ohh. really? they didn't say anything about that" same with the screw on stabs. same response. so this guy's came to our club and had a guiy at our field fly it first. it was really tailheavy and had no up elevator. so when this guy went to land the thing, ( at our field we have to kind of make a sharp diving turn to land into the wind) it wouldn't pull up. i will bet you are already guessing what happened next. actually, no. that didn't happen. instead, the instructor managed to crash land it with a broken prop and landing gear. we took it back and after all the trim, full up elevator was about 1/16th inch down. that was FULL UP ELEVATOR. before the flight, the instructor had asked if he had gone over it and checked everything the guy at the shop said. he said yes. JEEZ! myself and about 4 other members went out to adjust the servo and stuff. the control tods were too short, they were hitting something inside the fuselage, the servos were in the wrong place with the wires bent wildly to fix it, (couldn't they have jsut moved the servos? duh.) the servo arms were too chort and in the wrong place, and the control horns on the stabs were twisted. this plane was a wreck. that was rtf people. also, guess what was not glued in. the wing dowel. after a while, we got it fixed. they pilot and his dad (the pilot was a litle younger than i. i am 13. he was probably 11 or 12) were getting a bit bored, and were listening to the radio in their car. they came out and we gave them a little summary of what was wrong and how rtf is never really ready to fly and why. the dad was a little spooky. thruought the whole time, he was sitting there nodding and saying ohh... uh uh.... right... i see... all in a string in a very irritating nasaly voice. several times, my mind strayed and i thought about adjusting his tone control. anyway, they went out and flew. they ended up having a good day, but that is why you have an instructor. our field is situated on top on a hill, with only feet between the sides of it and the runway. also, our next door neighbor is the lovely, busy, 118 freeway. we were here first, but they tell us we can't fly over it anway. that guy surely would have put the club out of it had he tried it alone (even though you have to have an instructor at our club if you are first starting out). our field is like an aircraft carrier. he surely would have missed the runway if he even dared to try and landed in the "water". in our case at the time, the "water" was an overgrown hillside of brush and bushes. any plane that went down good wasn't found until the simi-valley fires swept accross our field. except, then, it was all melted. anyway, that is a good reason to have an instructor.