Well,

Let's see.. Started flying this year (July 2003)...

After solo'ing, had no problem for about 2 weeks with my trainer... Then, one day, I had the field to myself, so I decided I would spent the entire day doing touch and go's, as I was still having a problem with 'bouncing' my trainer on landing at times.. Sometimes I would do perfect landings, other times, well, let's just say that if there was a pilot in the trainer, he would have refused to go up with me at the controls again :-) Never damaged the trainer on landing, but man, I would bounce it down the entire length of the field.. My friend often would say to me after my 'bounces', the 6th landing was the one that stuck, the first 5 were bounce and go's..

Anyway, After about the 20th touch and go (And the third tank of fuel), I took it up again, and the plane stopped listening to me.. I panic'd, and just cut the throttle and let it land wherever it was, thinking, Yipes! I've lost radio control, I better kill the engine while I still have some control, and just let it go down instead of either flying away or worse, doing damage to something.. It landed in the field. The damage wasn't tooo bad, because I was still trying to fly it, and as soon as it started coming towards me I regained control (without an engine, and way too low to do anything other than crash land).. The only thing that happened was the firewall popped out.. A simple fix, and I was back.. After I told my friend who taught me how to fly about the incident, he said, yeah, your batteries were probably weak (They were at about 3.9 V when I checked them later), and he said, when that happens, just point the plane back towards you.. The range was low because of the weak batteries...

LESSON #1: Don't fly that much on a single battery charge, and always check your battery before each flight!!!

Next, I had just finished putting together my GP PT-19 with a Saito 120.. My friend took it up for it's maiden flight.. Plane flew great. The next day, I took it up.. The take-off was great!!!! Perfect take off.. I then tried to do a right turn to get into the pattern, it went left. My friend shouts, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? I gave more right, it went more left... I then gave full right, it went full left, did a wonderful straight in on it's nose... The front of the plane up to the second cockpit was gone!!!

LESSON #2: Always check when you plug in your wing that you have your aileron servo's plugged in correctly.. Or, better yet, use a Y harness whenever possible :-)

After that, I had a string of minor crashes for about a month.. Mostly they were ripping tail wheels out of my little mustang as I was learning to land tail draggers... I don't know how many times I re-glued my tail wheel back on that poor little mustang. And, then, one day, I was flying the poor little mustang (GP 40 size) and I was trying to do loops with it, of course, tooo far away from me, and of course, I was only 1 mistake high at best. While I was at the bottom of a loop, it did something strange (I think it snapped), but since it was so far away, I couldn't see it's attitude, so I just gave it an input, which, obviously was the wrong direction, and it went below the tree line, never to be seen again...

LESSON #3, don't fly a plane sooo far away that you cannot always determine what it is doing!!!!


And, finally, just this last sunday, I killed my trainer. But it wasn't a flying accident... I got a 60 size mustang, and I had that one in the car, and also had my little trainer with me in the trunk. To get my flight box out, I have to take out the trainer.. Wasn't planning on flying it, so I just put it down behind my car.. Of course, later, when I decided to go get some lunch, I just closed my trunk, and since I was coming back to the field, asked one of my friends to watch my stuff, and just backed up.. After the second loud crunching sound, I decided to stop! And then I remembered where my trainer was.. OOOPS...

LESSON #4: Don't leave a plane BEHIND your car if you want to keep it for any period of time :-)

All these lessons in my first season of flying.. I'm learning fast :-)