Well - you can't know everything about why - I'd really prefer to go to the local field and join AMA and get help there but one major reason is this-----> I'm a single Dad - I don't do baby sitters, and If my 5 yr old isn't in school or his afterschool program, then he's with me and me alone. Can you immagine me having to keep an eye on a 5yr old and a plane at the same time? - I can tell you how that would result - me crashing my plane because I drop the radio to go grab my kid before he run's up to someone who might be tuning their engine on a stand and before he chops his little red nose off. =) In the field I would go to by my house there's ample room for him to run around and explore without me having to worry about other people spinning up props @ 17,000 RPM and running planes down the runway he just wandered on to...That's really the reason in a big nutshell...As far as my engine dying - sure, that COULD happen, but I'm not stupid - I'm not going to run it in the air until I test a full tank of fuel on the ground...I'll set my mixture and make damned sure it's all functioning tip top, and if it would happen to go dead in the air, then I'll just have to dead stick it in - rest assured if it was heading anywhere near my son I'd be planting the nose in the dirt long before it got anywhere near him. If any of that sounds bad I apologize - I'm just a very sarcastic person. Yeah - I'm a bit stubborn too, but I did learn on my own how to fly heli's and that didn't take me long at all - I've found that when I pick up a radio and start playing with something I just get it to work - yeah I've had my problems - but that's the best way for me to learn. The guy at the LHS told me it took him 3 months to learn how to hover his heli - I was hovering my first heli in 4 days and that was a CP Pro - mind you I had absolutely no experience with anything remotely like it - maybe I'm just the kind of person that beleives I can do something so much that when I try it - I just do it. I read and read and read on all these different forums, I tinker and play with my radio and plane all the time watching the control surfaces move, imagining a take off, a landing, a turn...I guess I just beleive I can do it - and if I do happen to crash it while trying - I'll enjoy fixing it too. I get a lot of pleasure in taking something that's all screwed up and making it like new again - and being the perfectionist that I am, it gives me an extra special feeling when I look at that repair I made and I say to myself - yeah...I did that. Hell - that's been my whole career - it's what I do - I get sent in somewhere that's all screwed up, fix it and make it work right, and then get moved to another place that's all screwed up - and then eventually, I get sent back to the first place I fixed and fix a whole set of new problems.
It's just really hard to bring my son to the field and keep him happy and safe - at my field he looks for bugs and plays explorer - at the air park - he'd get put into a dangerous situation, and I'd look like a real dip**** of a dad.

So I have my reasons - too bad theres not someone around me that would meet up with me at the field I intend to use.