ORIGINAL: dicksoucy
For most beginners (like me), Dual Rate can be a problem. If you forget it's in High Rate, for instance, you may be in for a surprise once you are airborne, then you can't really take your eyes off the plane to find the switch (because you will be in panic mode and forget what switch does what) so you are going to attempt to land it and set the switch back to low rates, which will always raise your heart rate and blood pressure a few numbers.
Leave both low and high rates at 100%, or at the same rate.. so that accidentally switching from low to high means nothing. After you get used to everything, perhaps after you have burned up about 20 gallons of fuel
, you can set your rates so that they are meaningful to you and your flying habits.
Best of luck with that. I lost one a few weeks ago exactly because of dual rates accidentally set at high, wind was obnoxious, the throttle was set to low for the landing condition (obnoxious head wind on landing), and I was in panic mode. A bad combination. Remove one item, dual rates, and perhaps I would still have that Goldberg Skylark 56.
dicksoucy,
Based on your account of this flight, your problem was not with dual rates it was with ignoring the wind and failure to perform a simple preflight of your plane and your radio. A new flyer, which I believe you say you are, should not be flying under the conditions you describe.
I strongly suggest you add a preflight plane and radio check to your standard flight procedures.
I have a preflight that I go through on every flight. It only takes a few seconds but it has saved me from problems countless times. On some occasions when I get sloppy or lazy and forget to do there were problems. Those problems were my fault, not the the complication of switches that caused the problem.
I once crashed a sailplane on a winch launch because I had the wrong profile up on my computer radio. My standard preflight would have shown me that, but I skipped it.
Was it the computer radio that caused the crash? No, it was my failure to meet my responsabilites as pilot. Full scale or model, the pilot is still the one responsible for deciding if the plane and controls are ready for flight and whether the the prevailing conditions are acceptible.
The lesson that should have come out of your incident was that you need to check your plane and your controls before every flight. You need to look at the wind and the weather before every fight. And if you fail to do it, it is your fault if the filght did not go well.
I am sure you will not like this response, but this is something you need to learn.