There is something about these forums that you cannot get anywhere else, it's that collective experience and people willing to give valuable input that has really helped me in the past as well. I had to teach myself how to fly, I have a LHS, where the owner is an expert pilot and he told me early on that he'd be willing to show me the ropes, but when ever I brought a plane down there, he made one excuse after another to not help me learn to fly. I have another, again, another expert pilot was one of their staff members that I'd see on the field from time to time, same scenereo, even though I explained to these guys, if they wreck it, I'm not going to be upset, I'm a builder by nature, so I can always fix it, just to eliminate them having to worry about that element and take the pressure off.

I ended up wrecking several planes in the process, rebuilt them countless times and reached a point where I'm now a very capable pilot, no thanks to them at all. I pushed my skills forward even further by building and flying, "sometimes just a sad attempt" planes that were clearly beyond my skill level, yet after coming up with a certain philosophy about the proper mindset, I'll share later in this post, I really pushed my flying ability forward very quickly. Now, I'm at the point where I prefer prototypes because I don't know how they are going to react in the air, it keeps me on my toes and adds to the excitement. I rarely get nervous when flying a new plane, even the faster ones because I'm confident I can counter most problems and keep them aloft one way or the other, that or I know when it's time to simply land them and make some revisions if they are too far out of whack for the transmitter trim to make up for.

Nobody has mentioned the sim's yet, those are the single most invaluable tool we have at our disposal, and I will not take someone new to this out on the field unless they have alot of sim time under their belt, this really is a huge time and plane saver and should be mandatory for any instructor to enforce the student to use, FMS is free if their is a budget element.

Another thing I developed is a drill type of approach where I hand them the transmitter and give them verbal instructions, taking note as to how they are handling the controls, I'll tell them, up, down, left, right, more throttle, less throttle and run through several random variations in real time, if not faster then what they are going to encounter in the sky. If they stumble through them, make the wrong course corrections, we drill until the point they do not make those mistakes. This is a good system and will give you a good indication as to the pilot's ability to handle the sticks. The last guy I took out to the field made too many mistakes on the ground with them and ended up being upset since I wouldn't let him take control of the controls, but I'd rather the plane "mine" not be turned into packing material due to his arrogance "he's a real pilot, so obviously these rc planes are much easier is his underlying theme", I'll let him buy his own and turn into packing material in that case, he's got to learn the hard way. The one before, the kid was 12 years old, he solo'ed a perfect flight on his very first flight and was thrilled to be able to keep it airborn, all I did was bark control instructions, and technically he didn't even have to look at the plane, but was thrilled with the fact, his plane was flying under his controls.

Along the mindset, they must get it in their head, they are in charge and control of the plane, if it wants to veer off, make sudden turns due to the wind or other factors, they are the ones that must force it to react to their controls, kind of like "no you don't, I command you to go here!!!" type of mentality. It's building that confidence in the ability to control the plane that is paramount, if they simply are there to steer it around, hoping the plane reacts the way it's supposed to, chances are, they are flying behind it and are going to get in trouble since their reactions are going to be delayed.