Troy,

While learning with an instructor is definately the better option, in your case it seems extremely difficult to get any decent amount of stick time in. RCPilet is an idiot and a poltroon. I taught myself to fly and I have never owned or flown a kit plane, ARF or RTF. Everything has been built from scratch and everything has flown.

Now don't get me wrong. The first attempt was crude and would have been trashed eventually anyway because it was not right, but I had a remote area to fly in so I wasn't worried about hurting anyone but myself. Remote areas sound like your forte`!

You have to resign yourself to the fact that you WILL crash! I went through 4 incarnation of the same plane before I logged my first (wheels on the bottom) landing. As long as the radio gear and engine survive, it does not cost $500.00 to build a plane. More like US $75.00-100.00 depending on the complesity of the plan and covering scheme. I have the plans for the very basic high wing trainer that I have been using. It's a .40 sized aircraft that I scaled up to .60. Bigger is definately better.

Probably the best thing you can do is buy and fly the hell out of an RC simulator. I have RealFlight by Great Planes. It made all the difference. It is not perfectly realistic, but it is good enough. I put about 30 hours on it and went out to fly my plane. Aside from hyperventilating a bit and getting sweaty palms, everything went extremely well and worked just like the program did. The problem with the simulator is that in order to keep oriented on the field, you have to fly low enought to see the ground. You have no other periferal vision and no sense of where you are in the pattern. Fortunately, flying low sharpens your reflexes... hehehe.

Anyone who says you can't learn to fly without an instructor is full of a bucolic endproduct fabled in song and story. The first guy to fly RC did it, with much cruder equipment than we have now... What they are saying is THEY couldn't have learned to fly without help. As I said, it is cheaper and safer, if you live in an urbanized area, to have an instructor. It is always easier to have someone give you hints and tips than it is to figure everything out by yourself. You wind up re-inventing to wheel and sometimes do not learn of things others know. On the other hand, if you have a bad instructor, well no one seems to want to talk about them. I guess they just don't exist...

Do your thing and if you are able to accept the fact that you will have some midair collisions with the ground, go for it! Nothing gives you a sense of satisfaction than doing it yourself, especially when everyone tells you it can't be done...

Post you progress and let us know how you're doing.

Cheers!

Ed