ORIGINAL: Limey
Just a couple of thoughts. Teaching R C to some can be difficult and quite stressful. A responsibility for the aircraft is sometimes a hard thing to assume. It's not for everyone. The second thing is that where I learnedto fly tremendous pressure to fly safely was put on everyone, and trust was hard to come by. One screw up and the field could be lost to everyone. The regulars treated all the newbies with trepidation. This was really not their fault, just a sign of our lawsuit happy times.And by the way, the guys who can't fly but tell you how- we call them the "Bench of Wisdom" and every club comes equipped with them.
I can see that. Certainly safety should be the number 1 priority about getting your wings. Just going through other threads I've seen it come up from an issue of whether to restrict the age at which you can fly to 18, to whether instructors are a necessary part of a club. As for the 1st point I think that's utterly ridiculous. Maybe setting it at 16 would be ok. That way the student can get to and from the field. If the parents are supportive though I see no problem with say a 14 year old learning.When it comes toinstructors, I think every club should ATLEAST offer the service to teach. A club without an instructor is just unfair & pointless. A student may end up having to drive twice as far to another club because the closest club won't take time to show them how. That's just not right. Our club now has approximately 120 members and 3 are considered instructors. They are all great, more than helpful guys. I do think that a mere 3 out of 120 is a rather poor number though. Imyself will beteaching a pastor how to fly this summer.