G'day

I recently taught a bloke to fly. He lives about 1000 miles from me so we did it by email. And it worked.

He bought a (Parkzone I think) Super Cub and went out and had a first flight that was short and spectacular and resulted in the usual damaged model. He repaired it and tried again. Same result. After a couple more similar times he started listening to my advice.

1. Buy some fibre reinforced packing tape and split it into thin strips and use it to reinforce the leading and trailing edges and put some length ways down the fuse top, bottom and sides.

2. Buy some sort of electric powered foam glider. The Multiplex Easystar is great but the standard engine is not. A cheap upgrade to brushless and LiPo really helps. My friend used the Parkzone Radian and he is still flying it after many prangs and many repairs.

3. To get your orientation right in an emergency, try this - point the radio in the direction the plane is flying. Sounds strange but it really works for most people. So if the plane is coming at you, point the plane behind you (to one side) and look over your shoulder at the plane. I don't know why this works, but it does.

4. If you are pointing the radio at the plane and it is coming towards you - use the aileron (or rudder for a three channel plane) to point the stick at the low wing. This will bring the plane back to level.

The whole trick is to get into the air and get some "stick time" and a powered glider will help you do this quickly. Set it up so that the rudder is operated by the stick that would normally be the aileron stick (right stick for Mode 2) so that when you get a plane with ailerons, you don't have to learn to turn all over again.

Finally - Have Fun.