Obviously, there are many reasons a person does not want to use the services of an instructor or can't use the services of an instructor. One hit my irritation bone, the 'condescending instructor'. We have one or two in our club but for the most part, everyone knows to steer clear of those characters, and newbe's usually get the word from one of the members as a suggestion, who to ask for help. It becomes obvious pretty quickly who is willing to help and who is not.

As for myself, I had an instructor, one of our club's best pilots. He is an older guy, retired Air Force Major, air traffic controller by training, and has a very stern nature about him, however, he is very good in that he shows/demonstrates rather than coming down on the student when the mistake is made. He says, "I've got the aircraft" and that's all he needs to say to show that I made a mistake and that was that. This is usually followed by a slow motion demonstration with him saying 'watch my hands then watch the aircraft'. On every outing, he had me practice some form of emergency procedure. This has paid off on numerous times because as a novice, I often did not get that mixture quite right and went dead-stick on several flights, each of them ending up in a perfect approach and landing. You cannot get that sort of experience by yourself because, for most of us, there is no way to figure out what to do in such a case if no-one has told us how to do it or what to do in that circumstance.

Anyway, I am happy to see so many replies and so many people with great outlooks toward beginning RC flying.

Best of luck no matter what direction you go in with your RC flying. And always remember one thing that took me some time to get through my thick skull..... when in doubt, go around!! It ain't worth it to smack a nice aircraft because of ego. Just go around if you have any doubt about your approach.

DS.