Back in the first week of January I decided that after years of wanting to fly RC planes that I was definitely going to finally learn. While looking over the internet for as much information as I could find I found this site called RC Universe. It pointed me in the right direction and I learned an incredible amount before ever owning a plane.

In between deciding on a plane, assembly and getting set up with an instructor I used the Real Flight G3 simulator to get used to controls, orientation and basic flight. My first flight seemed very natural due to the sim and I had more fun than I could have imagined. However the sim could prepare me somewhat for approaches, take offs and landings are quite a bit different. I had a tough time feeling when to flair and because of the sim I had some bad habits (three point landings on a sim with a trainer = a landing on the nose and a bunny hop in real life).

I was extremely patient and never bugged my instructor about "when do I solo?". Due to that, from what he said yesterday, he kept me on the buddy box longer even though I was ready a few weeks ago. Last week, we were doing aerobatic training - snap rolls, tumbles, immelmans, split S's and a few other things.

Yesterday, while waiting on him to get to the field one of the other guys offered to take me up. He asked what I worked on last week and I told him. His response was, "Why aren't you up flying now? You don't need me." Well, I still wanted the go ahead from my instructor. When he got there, his basic statement was - "I'll stand behind you or you can do it all on your own - up to you, but I'm not getting the box out today. You're done." Basically, I was ready but it nerves kept me from believing I was.

So, successful flights solo yesterday with some minor screw ups. After that, we broke out my Tiger 2 which we maidened last weekend but I didn't fly. We passed the transmitter back and forth but no cord. Love that plane. For anyone even thinking about a Tiger - do it! Amazing aircraft He feels that I progressed so far on the trainer already (basically said for weeks now he's just been standing there holding a switch and been bored) that in about 2 weeks I should make the switch.

So, thanks to everyone for the responses to my posts and for all of the knowledge shared here. When you do things the right way, you will succeed at a dream. I'm 31 now and haven't had this much fun in 15 years when I used to race motocross.