Last year, I was on the cord until my instructor had a Pattern meet. I wanted to fly but could not wait until someone showed up that could help me. So, I taxied around for a while getting in some much needed taxi practice. No one was there so it was nice. Then on an upwind taxi, I added a little to much throttle and the NexSTAR started to climb so I went to full throttle and continued up. Ok.. now I'm up. So, I flew a few orbits and then said to myself.. time to land. Just then, an alternate instructor showed up and was watching me. I greased in the landing. He came over and congratulated me on my solo!! Yeah!!! felt good.

So, I flew about 10 more flights that day, burned up a lot of fuel, and had a great day.

The next week, I was back at the field, another pilot was there that had also just solo'ed. We both had NexSTAR's both on channel 48 so we alternated flights. It was a windy day with a pretty good crosswind, but we both managed to fly and land without incident all that morning until it really got to windy to fly so we packed up and went home. I found that I needed another plane cuz the trainer was now not doing what I wanted to do.. so to the LHS and bought a Goldberg Tiger 60 which I have been flying since last August or so.

Don't sweat the minor dings. Just fix it and get back. My NexSTAR has lots of patches and repairs to the fuselage, mainly where I crunched the landing gear a few times during training, but it still flys, but I tend to fly the Tiger 60 99% of the time now. It has a brand new Super Tigre .75 and flys like a gem!

Best of luck!!

Dick.