Good post Roger....clear, understandable, and rings true. JeffC and I began flying in the mid eighties with .25, .40, and .049-sized planes. We might have gone through several hundred kits in the first few years (no joke), but that experience has been invaluable. Understanding flight characteristics of all sorts of planes, handling weather conditions, no-thinking reflex/reaction to save planes from death, etc.....these all come from flying experience as you say (and not from sims).

It wasn't until last year that we migrated towards 1/4 scale ships....and ARFs. ARF manufacturing, as we all know, has matured dramatically over the past few years and that has allowed us access to decent flying and easy building planes. If a Yellow or H9 1/4 scale CAP is now the 3rd plane of choice, great...just don't fly near the pits (ha!).

For a CAP 232 crash debris field video, check this out:
http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia...bris_crash.mov

Jeff was doing knife-edge loops....and on the beginning of the second loop, the plane lost airspeed and snapped....twice (because we were in 3D rates)...and with only 40' to recover...forget it! [Note: the video is big, 10mbs and is a little blocky because of the compression....]

Keep on flying Dan - it happens to all of us!

-Juhan