I learned to fly in the 1970's with the old method of handing the transmitter to the instructor when you were in trouble. You got a landing a week and no one got good at it. I broke a lot of balsa. Then I relearned in 2000. I did most of the learning on the simulator and it is key. If there is a problem on the landing on the simulator, you will have the same broken sound from the real plane. You can learn to fly very expensive planes in wind. You can learn to do aerobatics that no one thought possible prior to simulators. You can also figure out if you like a plane or will ever be able to fly it. The simulator is essential.

When I relearned in 2000, I couldn't get enough instruction time at my club so I went to Hobbies Aloft in Monterey http://www.redshift.com/~rccfi/ . Sure enough I got my 120 landings in two hours just as advertised. Wow! It was hard to get back to Monterey for another day but I knew how to land after a day. I got my blue card and then used the simulator and a trainer to take off and land until I was really good at it. My trainer needed a new nose gear once, and a new engine mount once, but it still flies today and my kids are learning on it. Every day I would go flying I would spend 30 minutes on the simulator prior to flying at the field. The first flight on the simulator was shaky, the first flight on the RC plane was fine.

I teach a different approach to landing than I was taught at Hobbies Aloft. But when I teach, I use the skills I learned in one day at a paid RC flight school. I also insist students get a simulator. I won't instruct students that don't have a simulator.

Paying someone for their time is part of life. If your time is valuable and their time is valuable and the plane is valuable, pay for the time. I strongly recommend people use paid RC flight instructors, if they are in a hurry. I have thought about taking paid flight instruction for Jet training or Helicopter training. I pay for all kinds of courses for my profession, why shouldn't I pay for high quality instruction in RC? I am learning to be a private pilot and it costs $200 an hour for plane and instructor (instructor is $65 an hour). Why should RC flight instruction be free?

If time is valuable, people pay for instruction. That is reality. That being said, I don't charge for the instruction I give, and I have now taught a number of students, but I am less available than a paid instructor.