Thanks for the advice, guys. One day, I will shift my focus to becoming a good builder. Today, however, I'm focusing on becoming a good flyer with what little time I have. Traditionally, you had to learn to build first and then fly. I've heard the same story over and over how someone spend months building a plane only to crash it the first day. Many of these are no longer in the hobby. With RTFs and ARFs, we now have more options for new flyers like me. My philosphy, after observing the hobbiests for about a year, is that I want to learn to fly really well first so I don't have to "learn the hard way" - by crashing my hard work before their time.

I began with an electric 3 channel RTF. I know it's heresy, but it got me hooked on flying which never would have happened if I had to build one first. Then I built a foam ARF aileron trainer. Then I bought a used balsa stick plane with glow engine (sounding more traditional now). Now I'm graduating to an introductory pattern plane. My goal this year is to place (if not win) a Sportsman pattern contest. Why? Because that forces you to fly well. Interestingly enough, half the guys at my field that have been flying for 20-40 years can't fly the basic pattern. In fact, I beat half of them in a contest last year and I had only soloed 6 weeks earlier - and I had the only non-pattern plane out there! But they are great builders... I'm learning to build as I maintain, repair, and upgrade my planes. That makes it easy to swallow - just one new thing to learn at a time. Remember, my father isn't teaching me to do this - its just me and advice from other flyers.

Yes, this is totally backwards from the traditional way, but it seems to make a lot of sense. We all learned to drive a car before fixing them, right? And driving them well is more important, right? Once you get good at driving cars, then you can think about tinkering. Why not do that with model airplanes?

Besides, flying is my "release" and enjoyment. Isn't that the purpose of a hobby anyway?