How long does it take before you NEVER do something stupid. Gosh. Peolpe don't live that long. I "dumb thumbed" my favorite plane to death last October. As mentioned earlier: mistakes are sometimes a sign you are expanding your abilities. Just occasionally the parameter meets the paradigm and balsa shatters. As Teddy Roosevelt said: "Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checked by failure...than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”

Eventually you'll learn to blame computer glitches, electrical interference, other pilots or sunspots like the experienced modelers do.

My mentor (back before simulators) told me to sit in my living room and hold the transmitter (turned off) without looking at it and imagine a model in flight and what I had to do for various maneuvers. Practice touching every trim without looking . . . just basically get the feel of where everything is. I think it helped.

I was spotting for the same man (who has been on the cover of Model Avaition more than once) last fall and he taxied out and attempted to extend his antenna. Caught the sleeve of his coat in the throttle and suddenly had a powerful biplane airborne and screaming before he was ready. He recovered quickly, but it could easily have been a re-kit.