Something I haven't seen mentioned here is changing flying fields.
My brother and I flew a lot with the local club during their free training nights, it's great to see people spending every Wednesday of their summer helping people with their planes, and we have both somewhat soloed a time or two. Well we felt like we could take them out to a large salt flat area which is pretty much unlimited runway and fly on our own. Well that was a wrong choice we both wrecked but we both think it was because without enough solo time we weren't experienced enough to compensate for the change of landmarks. We both were lower than we thought and I wasn't as far out as I thought. So I think familiar surroundings are very important until you have a lot of experience.

Nothing takes the place of practice!!

I fly at several places and while patterns and approaches differ the simple fact is practice can be the difference between going home with a flyable plane or not.

Sorry to hear about your crash hopefully this won't prevent you from continuing?

Yeah, that familarity thing can easily affect you, espeically when flying somewhere that doesn't have much landmarks.

I flew at Nats last year, and it was really strange feeling flying in a big open area like that, I'm used to having close in tree lines or other objects around. It didn't cause me to crash, but I could see how it could cause someone with less experience to go in.

As you get more experienced, you will develop a "feel" for the airplane in flight. While you don't get real feedback from the airplane, your fingers start telling you things, like a certain amount of stick deflection should result in a certain movement at certain speeds, so you start to "feel" your airspeed, and landmarks start to matter less.

EVERYTHING is important until you have experience.

That is why so many of us stress to join a club and get help.

THIS IS NOT AS EASY AS IT LOOKS!!!

On May 1st our new field opens and I know I'm going to be a bit shaky the first time up.