Of all the real or imagined problem in this hobby or sport, whatever we call it this week, there is one always positive thing. Instructors. Why do we do it? For me it is one of the most rewarding things in the hobby. A good instructor teaches more than flight. Watching a instructor working with the "new" person can be a treat. How that new comer will view this sport from now on will be formed by their instructor. All clubs seem to have one or two of those folks that are just great teachers and ambassadors of the hobby. The beginners forum is the one I enjoy most. I get a charge out of the little debates that go on about self taught and having a instructor. I have said it many times how much I admire those that give up their time to help new people. I have developed a admiration for all of you that try your very best to give good solid advice to the new persons. So much so, I now recommend to new folks visit this forum. Thanks!

Well said Koast

And thats why I prefer to call them Mentors rather than than the evil I word as mentoring is so much more descriptive of what these folks do and accomplish.

John

Yeah, I just don't understand the guys who think it a matter of pride to figure this stuff out on their own when there is a whole community of experienced people willing to help. I understand lots of us are introverts and prefer to work alone, but there is plenty of alone time in the hobby. Get your skills from someone who has already done it and then take the hobby in the direction that you want to.

Jester I am guessing its something that is human nature ingrained in all of us to a degree and maybe its not all bad either.

I do know having spent most of my life in active full scale 'Instructing', there's that (I) word agine, its really no different there either. Where most will do anything to avoid flying with the 'instructor' but of course that is much more closely regulated by the FAA and I sure do not want model aviation to go that direction.

John

I just started doing a bit of instructing last season and I really liked it.

The pride issue is important when someone lacks experience and it really shows the difference between being a character and having character.

A couple years back a new guy showed up with a Revolver and his control of the aircraft did not really seem bad enough to order him to get help, but it never looked like he was really on top of it either. He had a kind of swagger and a way of talking that told you it would be a big argument to tell him he wasn't ready. That wasn't a good reason not to do it, and I think we'd treat it differently if it happened again, but it was a grey area, which made it a tough call. After a few times out he smashed his plane into the trees and never returned. Of course, afterward you reflect that he could have smashed it somewhere a lot worse. In retrospect, it was exactly his attitude that should have been a red flag.

But on the other side, lately we've had some guys who have been in the club a long time but had not flown in a long time, and they wanted buddy box time. Great! I have a lot of respect for people who are not too proud to be realistic about their capability and safety.

I taught myself to fly and I loved doing it, but I had had years of free flight experience and building experience before trying RC. Most people do not have that, and club instruction really works for them, and the camaraderie is great too.

Jim

I'm extremely grateful to the instructors at our club who helped me learn to fly just a couple of years ago. Anyone who gives freely of their time to help and teach a skill to others is worthy of praise and recognition.

I did learn to fly a collective pitch from scratch on my own as my introduction into RC due to necessity of not knowing ANYONE down here who flew helis at the time I moved to Christchurch (didn't even have a sim at the time), I have since joined a local club and started to fly planes.
What that has allowed for is useful input from other (more knowledgeable) members, and helped with moving quickly into my 2nd plane after an earthquake a few years back totaled my old trainer. While I had thumb memory etc from the heli, being able to have someone work through the initial steps of getting to know my plane has been invaluable going forward.

While it may sound like I am playing the devils advocate, I have been on both sides of the solo/'mentor' (instructor) fence debate, and I can say that the 'mentored' way of doing things is a LOT better.
That said, I am also a HUGE advocate for including a GOOD simulator into the mix, those things have saved me thousands in heli repairs over the years!!

You bring up an interesting point, kiwibob72. Instructors can be invaluable in helping a neophyte learn the ropes early on and to develop proper RC etiquette in the field. Where I was there were no trainers. I learned through building FF rubber powered stick models, then CL, then single channel RC, and after multi-channel proportional. I lived in places where the nearest club was practically out of reach.

Instructor besides giving practical stick time can also help the student with proper preparation, preflight, understand the frequency board system, no fly zones over the field, in flight etiquette with other flyers, and continued mentoring, etc. Also, it helps in the learning curve as crashes can be inconvenient and expensive, and sometimes downright dangerous.

That little 6 oz. electric flying at 35 MPH (57 kmh) might not do much damage if it hits something. Take a 5 lb. (2.4 kg) airplane flying at 70+ MPH (115+ kmh) has considerably more momentum and has greater potential for harm.

So, qualified instructors and experienced mentors are a valuable resource.

"mentoring" is my favorite part of this hobby! Would not trade it for anything. When someone looks at me and says, "thats the most fun I have had in years", after a buddy box flight, that makes it all worth while.

The hobby needs more people with that attitude!! - sure it's fun to play with our model/toy aircraft, our fast moving potentially dangerous aircraft. Noob's need to be not just taught to fly, they need to know the etiquette and safe practices that allow us to keep on enjoying the hobby, as without it, we'll all be grounded one day!

After a while in the hobby you learn to spot those guys pretty quickly. Texans tend to be pretty "live and let live" about things, so when one of those guys show up and make it clear that they don't want any help we just sit back and enjoy the show, taking proper precautions in case the crash happens on the wrong side of the flight line. We generally don't go help the guy pick up the pieces either unless we think he isn't going to want any of it and there might be some useful stuff in the wreckage.

Sometimes, some useful stuff means the whole airframe!

(Many wrecks often can be rebuilt with less work than from scratch. )

Yeah, that's pretty much how we handled it, or didn't handle it. But you do wonder what a Revolver with a 75 AX and an APC meat cleaver up front might do if it came down in the wrong place, so it kind of kept us on edge when he went up. No sympathy...and no assistance...when his fancy airplane bought the farm.

Sounds like that character was really spooky to deal with. [X(] A .75 sized motor is nothing to sneeze at. I'd understand the meat cleaver aspect. []

G'day

I've been mentoring a couple of blokes lately. Both have recently soloed. Both have planes though I taught them the basics on my elderly Sig Kadet Senior and both love flying the Kadet. Once they were able to fly a tidy circuit and also fly a couple of neat procedure turns I moved on to take offs and then landings. We also did some basic loops etc before this.

Last week I felt that one was ready to attempt landings so we tried some approaches, which he did well, and finally he landed. It was a good landing too. Once he had this under his belt we spent a session doing touch and goes and more landings. At this point I asked if he wanted to go solo. He did and made a perfect job of it. What a great feeling for both of us.

At this point, and only at this point did we move to his plane. We went back to the buddy box but he quickly was in the groove with the VMAR Discovery and its Super Tigre 51. It flies a deal faster than the Kadet but he had no real problems flying it though he did need some extra tuition in landing it but a week later he soloed on his own plane. Even his wife is happy.

I wish I had had a similar experience when I learned to fly. My instructor was only interested in flying fast planes and my first trainer was not really suitable for me. As a result, I ended up teaching myself the finer points and I did not make much headway until I discovered some other instructors and the Sig Kadet Senior several years later. It may not be the greatest aerobatic plane, but it is a really good ab initio trainer. Mine is now about 9 years old and still going strong and has now taught many people the basics before we moved to their own trainers.

Mike in Oz

I'll let you in on another little secret about being an instructor, you don't have to be an expert pilot to start teaching new folks. You do want to be reasonably proficient at flying something more advanced than a trainer before you risk crashing a student's plane. However, assuming you have established good flying habits yourself and have set the proper parameters for timing of any intervention needed, letting students get their planes all out of orientation and then recovering for them is something that will improve your own skill level very quickly!

G'day Hugger. I agree. I was pushed into teaching when my club's resident instructor moved on. A new bloke turned up and he needed some help. I was dropped in it. It taught me a great deal and I am still learning. I am currently trying to push another relatively recent pilot into doing some teaching. If he does, I will mentor him in his teaching.

I test fly all my own planes. I started doing it when some experts crashed a couple of mine. I figured it they were going to crash, I might as well be the one to crash them. I have killed two models on their first flights - both mine. One was an ARF with severely warped ailerons and elevator. I tried to trim it but I got it wrong. It wanted to roll violently AND dive at the same time. The second was probably seriously tail heavy. It was a bi-plane Tiger Moth and came with very poor instructions. I suspect I had the top wing in the wrong place and the CG wrong as well. They were both some years ago. Lately I have been much better at getting the initial trim close to correct. Teaching keeps you learning.

Mike in Oz

Yeah, it's really important to check incidences, CG, and warps before a first flight of a new or restored airplane. A good lesson and a good one for students to learn. You definitely want as little surprise as possible!

Jim

Yesterday I flew with a former student until dark. When he was learning to fly these things he would get to the point of giving up. He was reminded and encouraged by other that he would do this. So he has. Now this we are very close friends. One of the side benefits of teaching. Some student become flying buddies and good friends. There appears to be more to this than just flying.

<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255);"><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; background-color: rgb(251, 252, 255);">"Teaching keeps you learning".</span><br style="font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;" /><br style="font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 12.800000190734863px;" /><span style="font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; background-color: rgb(251, 252, 255);">Mike in Oz</span></span>


I like that qoute Mike, I may steal it.

I actually teach for a living now. I'm an instructor at a technical school and teach industrial maintenance, PLC, robotics, hydraulics, etc. You are absolutely correct. Not only am I constantly learning better ways to teach, I also get taught now and then by some of my students. I have one student that I taught how to tig weld aluminum a little over a year ago and he's better now than I'll ever be, has even taught me a couple new tricks!<br type="_moz" />

G'day Hugger. "Teaching keeps you learning." Yes, you may have it. Use it well.

There is another old saying that I was probably paraphrasing - "The best way to learn a subject is to teach it." Anon.

No one to teach at the field today though I did a bit of radio sorting for one bloke. Radios have now become so easy to use that the manuals have become impossible to read. Have you noticed this?

Back when a radio had four channels, some trims and perhaps, if it was the deluxe version, servo reversing, the manual was about three pages long. Now even a simple radio has complex mixing, assignable switches and suites of settings for particular types of models AND can store the settings for most of your hanger. And the manual is so large that you need a library to keep it in. There is always one thing missing though from these manuals - a proper index so that you can find things quickly.

Cheers

Mike in Oz

Yeah, and we all LOVE reading manuals, don't we?

Heh...

An "expert" is someone who has actually READ the manuals.

I'd think rather an expert is someone who read the manuals and actually heeds the advice applying it with common sense, then is able to pass it on when help is requested.