ORIGINAL: slagburn
OK, so I take a different route home from work today and check out a new (to me) field where the bigger planes are known to fly. Bingo, there's a 33% Composite ARF Extra getting put together, with a DA100. The biggest plane I have seen in person so far. Sweet, I'm ready to see some acrobatics!
So the guy gets it put together and in the air. Now I'm assuming this must be pattern flying he's doing. Down the field, upline, stall turn, back inverted over the field, consecutive loops and so on.
It was like watching paint dry! I know it must be tough for the pilot to have 3 consecutive rolls at exactly the same blah blah with no wind deviation blah blah but who cares. I don't think he got lower than 150 feet, just back and forth, back and forth. And he must be a competitor, his T-shirt said so.
At least this confirmed for me that 3-D is what I want to do. I got bored and left after about 5 minutes.
To each his own of course.. (yawn)
I used to think this too... I flew only freestyle (basically, I just hacked up the sky and pissed everyone one off around me!) after years of doing anything I wanted, I felt "confined" at first. While trying to fly the patterns, I quickly became frustrated that my plane was not trimmed well enough and so the biggest challenge with pattern is building a ship that will fly accurate enough to perform the manoevers well. Pilot skill is of course, important, but a well trimmed plane is more important.
With a 3D plane, you build, you fly, you eventually crash. Don't argue here either - there is no 3D pilot around that has planes that are YEARS old. I've even seen TOC pilots slap the ground on numerous occasions. With pattern, your planes last a lot longer, and you truly (over time) learn every in and out about aircraft performance, how simple changes effect stability and handling, and in general, how to be a better pilot.
Pattern flying is like golf.. it really is a game against yourself... if you play golf once, you likely will hate it as it is difficult to play and takes a lot of time. Same thing with pattern flying - but once you get into it, you can really find yourself improving your flying skills.
While 3D is cool, anyone with enough money and patience can learn to fly most of the 3D basic manoevers - I say that because really to get good at 3D, crashing is very likely. You don't need to crash a lot to get good at pattern as your path is much higher.
If you go to any field you will find scores of weekend warriors hacking up the sky like I used to, and same with 3D'rs, but to see someone flying pattern who is truly talented, well - its like watching the real thing...
I enjoy and fly both - and I'm no expert at either, but when I see a really good 3D pilot going at or a really good pattern pilot going through the advanced patterns - I'd rather watch the pattern flyer!!
DP