We had a new guy at our field tonight. Young kid. He got his alpha 40 by mail order. Set it up by himself as per the instructions. Tuned his motor by himself. Spent a couple of nights on the simulator then came out to the field. I wasn't there but his first flight was this past Wednesday and only a couple people were there. He maidened it himself. The kid is a natural, loop rolls, feeling when it is about to stall, good speed on approach and nice smooth landings (a little bouncing, but never killed the motor).

But he came close to hitting a guy twice tonight (the same guy). I was cowering under a table for most of his flights. The kid was treating it like a video game; just banging the sticks around, flying low and inverted, tight loops right off the deck, not sticking to the pattern, flying right toward the pits, almost stalling right over the pits a few times. He would take his eyes off his plane and turn his head to say something to his dad. At one point while his plane was in the air, he walked away from the line and sat next to his dad at the tables. His landing angles were all wrong. He cut his turn for landing too early every time and by the time he got to our end of the field he had his plane coming right for us. He could have cut the motor, and let it go into the safety fence, or just nosed it in, but no.. he hit the throttle for a go around and almost took someone's head off.

My point of all this is to tell all of you new guys who think you are good enough to solo on your own that you just might be, but there is more to flying than just not crashing. Clubs have rules. Rules are there for safety. No one would have said a word to this kid if he had kept his maneuvers at a respectable altitude, on the other side of the runway, and in the pattern. Also, he needed to have known how far over to have gone before turning for a landing approach. In fact I'm sure he would have had a LOT of compliments for his natural ability. As it was, the guy that almost got hit (twice) went down there and ripped him a new one. The president of the club was present and did give him a warning. I did see one of the club members talking to him some more so hopefully he was learning something.