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Old 08-17-2010 | 12:17 PM
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Charlie P.'s Avatar
Charlie P.
 
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 5,117
Received 9 Likes on 9 Posts
From: Port Crane, NY
Default RE: Beginners - Intermediate - Advanced

ORIGINAL: MinnFlyer

When he has the confidence that WHEN something goes wrong, he KNOWS he can deal with it!

Here's another little test. Which catagory do you fall into?

Beginner: Has someone else maiden his plane

Intermediate: Maidens his own planes

Expert: Maidens other people's planes for them
I like those!

For the earlier comment about knowing how to deal with emergencies - It's not necessarily the knowledge of how to correct a situation so much as the ability to think calmly through the situation fast enough to survive it. Some reactions are reflexive through practice and repitition (learned reflexiveness). A 17 year old has better reaction time than me (now) for sure . . . but I mostly know the proper inputs so I save much more time in doing it correctly the first time. Doesn't help much to quickly make the wrong move.

Mechanical "episodes" can be alarming, also. I recently switched out a 72mHz system for a 2.4gHz system in an Ultimate biplane and, because I am stupid, reversed servo wires on a split elevator servo mixer. They still went up & down as they should, and were neutral as they should be, but one side had 20ยบ more motion than the other. At the first banked turn after liftoff I thought I had lost contact wit hthe model. Then I suspected I had reversed the aileron wires. Finally, after the flight from hell, I landed and no harm was done. She survived because my first rection was to get height until I could figure out the problem. If I had tried to land immediately it probably would have been a short, ugly event.