I have been flying my LT 40 at my uncle's for the past month. Its an hour and a half drive there. I have been flying it there with the utmost confidence, specially the last couple of weekends. I am not expert, but the fear is gone. I am not afraid to try anything with it (as long as there is decent space between the plane and the ground of course). I have been landing very smoothly. All and all, I am very comfortable with it. I fly it there yesterday and had a blast!


Well, today I went to a field about 15 mins from my house. I have permission and all because I was flying my electic plane there this summer.

It was the wierdest thing, I got it in the air and it felt as if it was the first time I ever flown it. I was extremely nervous. Basically I flew in circles for about 10 mins and landed it and went home. I was very very uncomfortable with it.

Is this normal, or am I just wierd. What is the difference between flying it there or at my uncles? And I have been flying at my uncle's even when he's not home, by myself. It was weird.

Any one else ever experience this?


Wings,

Sometimes a new flying location will do that to you. You were comfortable with the surroundings where you were and now everything looks different. This will eventually go away as you gain more experience. The first time you fly in front of a crowd you'll get the jitters too.

Yep. It has to do with the background I think.

I haven't flown at one of the club fields in a couple of months, but have been flying at the other one a couple times a week. Today I went to the filed I haven't been using and was way off. I had a real bad bounce on one of my landings, so bad I'm surprised it didn't rip the gear out. Really caught me by surprise, but the different approach just threw me.

Part of the problem; the field I've been flying at has a long, level runway with clear approaches from either direction. The field today slopes down from right to left, and the right hand end of the field has high brush and grass right up to the runway. (The runway is also about 1/4 as long as the other.)

Anyway, surroundings can affect your perspective.
Dennis-

It's fairly normal. Most guys use a lot of the background to judge the location of the airplane, and set up their approaches. I've even heard guys at my field say things like "turn at the power pole...".

However, once you've flown for a while, you'll find you can adjust to a different look faster. I fly a lot of competitions, so I've flown at about 12 differnt fields in the last 2 years. Apparently, I've gotten used to judging the plane with out the surroundings most of the time, because it doesn't bother me at most fields. However, the first landing at a new field can still get me if it's different enough.