Same here..my first plane.... first time I took it out, it took me about 10 tries before I could ge it to launch without ccrashing....for me the key was to give it a GENTLE right turn to get it to gain altitude. And this thing is tuff. Some very hard landings and not a scratch...worse I did was come in too low near a baseball park and have it crash head on into the outfield chain link fence. All it did was pop the rubber nose off...fit right back on. Made a trip to Texas this weekend to see family and took it out to the cotton fields to fly...wind was around 8 to 15 mph.....way to high for this plane really but was bored and had LOTS of open space. Plane really flew well...when a big gust would come up it would basically hover in mid air at full throttle. Got some of my best landings along a dirt road that bordered the field...also bought me a parachute bomb attachment...that was fun dropping the parachute and having the kids run around trying to catch it. I did realize I should have gone with the 3 channle to begin with, since youll eventually move up to the 3 and 4 channel planes....but overall am very pleased with the plane. Am in San Angelo TX now...looking for a place to fly it. Unfortunately im not an AMA member yet and have been told I cant fly at the field here unless I am a member.