Norm or not, it's more common than you think. How many of us can afford to lose a GP PT40 and a LT40 in the course of learning to solo? I'm not saying it makes everybody shake in their boots, but it sure as heck takes the fun out of learning and flying. My story is very similar to Sassy's. I can't say I was all that scared of crashing the plane, because it was crashing into people that always made me nervous. But what really was taking the fun out of learning was the good chance that I'd be spending an hour or two repairing my plane after a flying session, with the ever-present possibility that I wouldn't be able to fix it and would have to spend another 40 to 80 hours building another one (there weren't too many affordable ARF's when I started).

Finally, I came in a little too low for a landing. Not even a crash, really, just a hard landing. When I got to the plane, I found that the tail feathers were completely broken off. That was it. I just said, I have had it. I know everybody on rec.models.rc.air is constantly trashing durable planes, but I'm getting one. I bought the U.S. Aircore, and never had so much fun flying in my life. By the time I outgrew it, I just couldn't bear going back to a wood plane, since I still had a lot to learn, and lazy ovals weren't really my style. About that time, Tattoo published beautiful, incredibly detailed plans for the DPS. For about $50 I built 4 of them in a space of a week, and I'm still flying them. The winter before last, I built a very pretty OMP 540 Profile, but I still have only flown it a couple of times to trim it out. It just seems too beautiful to have it destroyed with some dumb thumb mistake.

Huh? I don't understand what you're saying. Her fear (and mine) was totally realistic and founded in fact. She destroyed two expensive planes, I would guess making very common mistakes that everybody makes.