That's definately a horrible experience and sounds like a horrible club. If I were in your position, here's what I would do.

First do as DBCherry suggested and get a simulator!!! G2 is great, because it's realistic enough to learn to fly, comes with a controller, and is going very cheap right now because G3 is out (which I don't like, but others have had success with it). Aerofly Pro, or Aerofly Pro Deluxe are both pretty good (physics on deluxe are much better) but either is better in my opinion than G2... Aerofly Pro is pretty cheap (about $100 now), and deluxe is around $170... Neither have a "controller" though.. But since you already have a transmitter, you'll be fine... They do also make a version of deluxe that comes with a controller (around $200 i think)... Reflex is also an alternative, but it's expensive and in my opinion no better than AFPD...
Here's the important part though... DON'T TREAT IT AS A GAME!.. Use it as a tool! In other words, there's no reason to load up a plane, goose the throttle, throw it violently around the sky barely under control, and then crash into a tree and do it over and over again... WORK on your flying skills.. Start with take off... Start down the runway advancing the throttle somewhat slowly... work on using the rudder to keep the plane going in a nice straight line down the runway. When you lift off, keep a nice shallow climb rate, don't let it "jump" into the air, keep the wings level till you get about 20 to 30 feet off the ground, and then hit the space bar.... (resets)... Do it again and again until it looks pretty..... AND IS CONSISTANT... One pretty one doesn't count.. you have to be able to do it over and over again...
Once you've got that, now start the next phase... You initial turn... roll the wings to about a 30 degree angle so the plane turns AWAY from where your standing... On a trainer (like the PT40) you'll need to back off the ailerons, but still hold just a small amount to keep the angle consistant.... At the same time, as the wings start to roll into the turn, you'll need to start feeding in some up elevator... (pulling back on the stick)... Not too much, just enough to keep the nose level OR since this is your initial turn, you want to go for consistant climbing, so keep the nose up a little... Once you've completed a nice slow 180 degree turn, (actually just before, it takes a little timing), roll the wings back out level and start a nice straight pass parrallel to the runway... Once you get past the opposite end of the runway, spacebar again and do it over.... Again till it's consistant and looks pretty....
Once that's good, then just add another turn and another leg... This time, once your in the middle of the downwind leg (the straight portion right after your initial turn), cut the throttle back to just over 1/2... You may have to bump the trim tabs a bit to keep the nose nice and level... so it's not climbing or diving on you... Now once you get to the opposite end, turn another 180 degree turn, and bring it right back down over the runway (at altitude though)... When you get to the end again, make another 180... Just hold that pattern... Each time practice making your turns nice and smooth, and keeping your legs nice and straight and parallel to the runway... (the upwind leg should be right over top the runway)...
Once you've got a good traffic pattern going, and it looks good, you'll have to practice with the timing, but when you are on your downwind leg, just about ready to make your turn, cut the throttle all the way back to idle..... Go ahead and complete your turn now, but LET the nose drop... You want to keep your speed up, but lose the altitude... We're not talking pointing it straight at the ground here, but let her come down... When you complete that turn, you should be at say 20 or 25 feet off the ground, and close to the end of the runway... Now... Level the wings... FOCUS on the wings... DON'T worry about where the ground is at this point... Just keep the wings level AND the nose level or just slightly pointed up.... You'll notice that even thought the nose is level or pointed up a bit, you'll still be sinking.... That's cause your now on the glidescope... Keep the wings LEVEL! As you slow down, you'll have to start feeding in slight amounts of up elevator to keep the nose up.... At some point, you're going to have one of two things happen... You'll either hit the ground with more elevator left and probably bounce a couple times.... but hey you landed in one piece right?!? OR you'll run out of elevator too soon, the plane will stall and probably not be in one piece depending on altitude.... Keep working on this over and over.... Once things click, you'll be able to do it without even thinking... What you are shooting for is to "run out" of elevator JUST at the same moment the wheel touch... You'll know when you do it right, cause it'll be the prettiest damn landing you've ever seen... Once you get a "good one" you'll be able to recognize when you're not on the right glidescope... Your going to come in way off the runway, or too late, too early, etc... If your going to hit before the runway, you can try stretching it a bit by adding a little throttle... If at ANY point you're not happy with what's happening, GIVE HER FULL THROTTLE and climb out.. One thing about landings that people sometimes seem to forget... They are ONLY mandatory when the engine has quit... NEVER settle for an "okay" landing.. If things don't look or feel right, power up and go around for another shot... Once you can take off, fly a pattern, and land, all consistantly without crashing, then you can start "mixing" it up a bit... do some loops and rolls (rolls are somewhat difficult with a trainer, they'll look ugly, but that's okay)... The idea here is at some point the your going to "lose" the plane... You'll not quite be able to tell it's attitude, or you'll just get disorientated... The idea is to "train" yourself to be able to pick up quickly WHAT the attitude of the plane is (they generally have REAL bad attitudes. ) and correct for it quickly... Last but not least, you may want to practice a few deadstick landings.... Any sim should have the ability to "kill" the engine... Don't set yourself up for a perfect landing though... Practice killing the engine with the plane in all different spots... The idea is as soon as the engine dies you want to figure out the best way to get the plane down SOMEWHERE on the runway... Sometimes you have to make and extra turn or something to bleed off some extra altitude or airspeed... It takes practice but you'll get it...

NOW!......

You're going to have NO problem flying the real thing now... BUT! don't let this confidence persuade you to take your plane out on your own... Chance are you'll be fine, but without another set of eyes, you may not even have your plane or radio set up right... You need to bite the bullet and drive the 50+ miles to the other club... Take it out to the field and explain to the guys what has happened..... That you've practiced on a sim until you were blue in the face, but you didn't want to test your skills by yourself... I'm SURE there will be someone there that will check over the plane for you, make sure everything is kosher, and probably even volunteer to maiden it for you... At this point, HOPEFULLY they'll be nice enough to offer to buddy box you and let you try out your sim skills... Have one of them take the plane off and let you fly it around... See... not much different than the sim huh? Maybe even easier huh? Now, have your "buddy" land it and this time you take it off... Feel the same? Now cut the throttle, bring her in for a landing... If it looks and feels right, go for it... Otherwise, abort about 10 feet off the ground and try again till things feel right...

There should be no reason that after a couple tanks of gas, with all that sim time, that you'll feel MORE than comfortable with going out to your own field to fly by yourself...

One last note... The sim will let you do a lot of things, but use some common sense... NEVER fly behind yourself... Draw an imaginary line parallel to the runway and generally extended the entire length of the runway or more... Never fly behind that line... Never fly over top of yourself, etc... Always make sure when you start the engine that something or someone is holding the tail... Never stick your fingers in a spinning prop.. You know, that kinda stuff... Read the AMA guidlines and safety code... You'll be just fine...

In fact, my guess is, once you get some good experience on you, you'll probably make the first "non-arsehole" instructor for that club... Might breath some new life into it. Who knows how many people have left that club because of being treated the same way you were...

Enjoy... Hope this helped!

One more comment: Although I have a very nice field @ 2 miles from my house and some of my friends and I fly there fairly often, I also regularly drive 50 miles one way to fly with an overlapping group of friends. Before I found the nearby field, I was making the 100 mile round trip just about every Sunday. I'm going to fly at the close field today, because I have some other things scheduled and don't have time to do the long drive.

Jim

how far is hanceville al. from memphis tenn.? i just can not believe nobody will help ..

If you ever want to pack everything up to Columbia, TN. on a Sunday afternoon, someone in our club will teach you to fly. Our bunch does more sitting and talking than we do flying, so we always have time to teach someone to fly.

Nashcat

First, in my opinion, the club "instructors" telling you to try it by yourself is reckless, dangerous and stupid. Not you, the "instructors".

I do not condone the advice the club gave you. But I will say one thing about this time of year. A lot of the guys in my club are not flying this time of year. The weather has been great up until the last few days. But if they are like me, I am busy doing my honey-do lists so by the time spring rolls around I will have more time to fly. I also am building some kits so I will have some new planes in the hangar by spring.

You stated that you have been in the club for 2 months, which puts you joining sometime in November. I started flying in October of 2003. By the time November rolled around, I was the only one flying most times that I went out (had already solo'd). I had the itch really bad, the other guys must have had simulators or something!

I will agree with everyone else that the 50 mile drive is better than trying (and failing) to teach yourself. Just make sure you touch base with someone from that club to make sure that someone will be there.

You will realize that when spring gets here (and Daylight Savings) you should see more guys flying after work. Unless the club is dying. I hate that it is dark before I get off work. Makes me yearn for summertime when it stays light until 9!

I think their AMA charter should be pulled and they should all be caned!!!! That is the worst advice I have ever heard of!!! I don't care how busy I am, if a newbie calls and asks for help, I will make time to get him in the air. Sorry your other club members suck so bad!!!!

Lets look at the idea of getting someone from the club 50 miles away to help you. Say you spend the time to drive it and learn to fly in say, 3 trips. Cost is 300 miles of driving, say $40 in gas. Time cost is a few hours.

If you try to fly on your own, you WILL crash, cost to replace plane, possibly engine and radio maybe $100 to $250. Cost in time to fix or rebuild plane is probably 15 to 20 hours if it is bad, maybe 3 to 4 if it is minor.

Hmmm, seems to me the drive is a lot cheaper and saves a bunch of time, and you get to see some nice sights while driving and listen to some good music on the radio.

Make the drive, you will be glad you did. Its a great hobby once you get past the dough heads. Then you can get better than all of them, and start teaching others so they don't suffer the same fate as you did. It will make you feel good to be able to help others learn.


That or take a few days off and come up here, I will teach you.

Man, that totally sucks. I went through something simular when I was learning, and that's one of the reasons I spend as much time teaching as I do.

Get a lot of sim time, as others have said, that will help a lot.

I'm guessing you're in a fairly wide open area, that will help if you do decide to make a go of it. If you have enough sim time, it will help. Also, the more you know about how planes fly, and what proper procedures are, the better. My fastest learning students have been guys with SIM and Full Scale experience and no "full scale ego".

Go to the field often, and try to see if you can figure out who are the "regulars". At my field, we have "regulars" that show up pretty much "on time" at certain times. Differnet groups at different times. Many of these guys can instruct, but generally don't. But, they WILL and DO instruct for friends. So, the trick is to become friends with the guys that are around when you want to be around.

A lot of guys are able to teach, but they worry about being responsible for your airplane. Make sure you make it clear that if the plane goes down, you won't hold it against them and so on. It takes doing.

Even with all that, you could just be stuck. In your case, I'd drive the 50 miles, at least a few times, until you're comfortable.

Btw, if you DO drive the 50 miles, ask around and talk to guys. You might find someone who lives 25 miles away from that field, and who could go to either field, but prefers the farter away one. We have a lot of guys like that in our field, guys who live closer to other fields, but come here instead (most actually are members of multiple clubs). Anyway, a guy might not come to the field closer to you on his own or for a stranger, but he might to help a friend.

I can't disagree with most everything said so far, so I will just add a comment. I would also think about what type of club you will be a member of 'after' you learn to fly. It doesn't sound like one I would want to be shelling out my $100 for each year. I'll bet you they would sit there and not help you even after you are flying on your own. It might be interesting to find out if there are others at the field further away that had the same experience as you and decided to drive the extra miles to a more friendlier field.

Update:
After going to a meeting tonight there might be some hope yet for this club.
Let me explain.....after calling for any other matters in the meeting I voiced my thoughts about what has been happening about not getting any help and how it effected the outlook on the club.
This is what happened..... After the meeting was over I had a few members come to me and said they were sorry even tho they were not the ones I was having the problems with and they offered to help me as much as they can and to offer there time to get me trained anytime that I wanted to get out and do some training just give them a call and they would meet me at the field and they gave me there phone numbers to call them. One guy even said, that, even tho he lived over an hour away he would be more than glad to drive out to the field anytime I wanted him to come out to do some training just give him a call!
The few that I talked to said that these things should not be happeneing and as I said.
In the meeting they even made it a point to introduce everyone to me and tell how long they have been in this hobbie along with a few stories about there first time learning... and it kinda reminded everyone there how hard it was and how they felt about the way they learned to fly. Most of the guys that was there tonight has been in this hobbie for 30+ years and are what i would call Old shool builders and flyers..which is what I want to do (build old school style).
They even talked about in the meeting about setting up a more friendly and agressive training program for new members that has never seen or built a plane and holding a training and info. work shop in part of the monthly meetings. Having fun flys to get more new member involved and to try to promote new people to join the club, by going to the boyscouts and amoung other things.

With that being said I think I did a good thing by bringing my concerns up and voiceing my thoughts about what has been happening to me and what has been going on!

Like I said there might be hope for this club yet!!!!! Only time will tell but i have a good feeling about it at this point in time!!!!

thanks to all that took the time to hear me out about what has been going on with my experiance with this club.

Blindguarden



Ps, AS for the flight sim I have had the REALFLIGHT G3 sence it hit the stores

That's great news, glad to hear it! I'm sure you'll find some of those old-school guys will be pretty interesting to talk to, I know I did!

Blindguarden,

Make sure to keep us posted on progress toward solo flying, and good luck!

What ever you do "DON'T GIVE UP!" it's just to much fun, and your hearts in it now.
Take all the really very good advise in here and go with it.

I did teach myself to fly with flight sims and using SPAD's for first planes. But I live were there is nothing for miles and miles around me, so I only endanged myself and my own house. (which I did almost hit one time) [X(]

Just don't give it up! You'll love it and you "will" learn to fly.

Best of luck.


"If at first you don't succeed, then sky diving is not for you!"

That's great news, the "old timers" are probably the best ones to learn from. Get out there and fly!!!

Glad to hear they reacted positively to your comments. Thats cool! Have a blast and keep the rubber side down. You will like flying!