ORIGINAL: LGM Graphix

Hi Buck,
You are correct. It's to bad that this bad stuff has to happen, unfortunately, and I'm sure you'll agree with me, the average jet modeler has become very complacent in recent years. When we flew ducted fan, there was a maintenance schedule to go through after each flight, and a bigger one at the end of each day. When turbines first came out, everyone watched their start up area, everyone monitored the engine with a GSU, everyone had an extinguisher right next to them. When the first Chinese ARF's were on the scene, it didn't take threads about crashes to make everyone inspect the jet after each flight or during the build.
Unfortunately, (or fortunately I suppose) today the jets have become so very easy, people take them for granted that they will simply work all the time. To many people do treat them like ''erector sets'' and expect hundreds of trouble free flights. I look at my Kingcat, it is a great airplane, I haven't had any problems, but I do still make sure to check on things after each days flying. I've found bolts that loosened off on my landing gear, I've found bolts loose on my gear struts, I've found servo's that have worn, etc. It's just regular maintenance stuff that should be done, but not everyone does it.
I keep watching at different events I've attended and have noticed that while there is usually a fire extinguisher in the start up area, not many modelers have one right next to them during start up anymore, I've seen many guys who start their engines with all hatches on, not monitoring anything during start up and very unconcerned about what could go wrong. I think sometimes that it's the overall attitude or even maybe laziness on some modelers parts that is just as dangerous as an airplane built incorrectly, some of these crashes perhaps could have been 100% avoidable if the modelers in question (and I am NOT pointing fingers at anyone, just an hypothetical scenario) were still as conscious of the maintenance in their models that they were 7 or 8 years ago.