I have seen several references to flying 1,2 or 3 mistakes high.
My question today is how high is a mistake?

Depends on your ability.... it is just a waying to fly high up so you have time to correct for mistakes...

for a TOC flyer...that may be 5 feet, but for a beginner, it may be 250ft or more.......

just fly high enough so if a mistake happens (stall, etc. etc.) you have room to correct before the ground grabs you

Start at 150ft... Close your eyes and wank on the sticks... Now open... Try to recover... If you make it, start at 140ft and try again.... Continue this process until you crash.. Then you've found your "1 mistake" height... Simply multiply this length by the number of mistakes you wish to be high... i.e. If your 1 mistake height is 30ft, then to get 3 mistakes high you would need to have an altitude of 90ft. Please be aware however, some conditions will require an adjustment to your 1 mistake high altitude... Cloudy days for example, can add 20, 30, or sometimes even 50 feet to your 1 mistake altitude... Any time the conditions are different (wind, clouds, rain, area, etc...) you want to make sure you repeat the testing procedure to find your ideal height for those conditions...

Sounds like I'll need 1000 ft.

I personally use 100ft. Most 40 and 60 sized planes can recover in the distance without to much of a problem but you will need to be quick on the sticks.

The type of manuver also dictates how high you need to be.

When I first started out I was always 200 - 300 feet high. Now I'm hovering at 20 feet and slowly creeping down although I admit my hovering needs allot to be desired

The amount that you value your plane also seems to increase the "1 mistake" altitude. If you really just don't care about your plane or about the safety of your friends, then you do stupid stuff right on the deck. Of course as you gain talent the description of "stupid stuff" changes a little too, although some things always remain "just plain stupid" no matter who is flying. At this point you gain an "EGO" multiplier factor wherein everyone else knows where the plane should be except for the person actually flying. This can be said as "Letting your EGO fly a plane in a manner your thumbs can't keep up with." [:@]

That definatly depends on the specific planes ability as well as yours the piliots. If you have a Cap or Giles that tends to be snappy and needs airspeed to recover then you need to be much higher than say a profile plane that can recover in almost a stalled state and doesnt know the meaning of the word snap. I consider myself an accomplised piliot and my giles couldnt be below 75 ft and have a mistake yanking on the sticks only made matters worse. Where as my Morris Knife I have hovered 12ft above the ground and gone dead stick flipped nose over tail and flared and landed it perfectly. To me that was a mistake high. Its definatly all relative to the plane as much as it is to the piliot.

With some tail heavy airplanes there is only one mistake. Doesn't matter how high you are. You get it into an inverted flat spin or something and you are done. (This is usually preceded by someone saying "Do something REALLY cool" ). [:@]

No kidding, Cogburn...lol

If when you go to recover your ---- PUCKERS, you are just below the 1 mistake high mark!!! Take the rest from there.

Great Question...

Matt

Easy,

One mistake is always exactly one foot more than the altitude you have to recover!

One possible mistake is to fly too high. So I guess three mistakes could be to fly three times too high.

I will fly normal 100 and below, but if i am doing aerobatics and inverted flight i will go pretty high so i can pull out.

This is a great method. It assumes an unlimited number of aircraft

As for myself, that is about 500 feet

It depends on the plane - With my Sig Somethin' Extra (OS FS70II 13x6 APC) I would come down to 12ft. inverted flying slowly above the field with the engine purring around idle; With the GP Super Sportster (OS 46FS 11x6 K-Series MA) that would be 20+ft. at at least 1/2 throttle.