I have been flying for 3 years now and I finally made the big mistake of not putting the antanae out. I went to pull up from a dive and it wouldn't pull up. After the plane hit the ground I realized what happened. Doh! Hopefully that is the first and last time.

man that stinks, I watched my roomate do the exact samething. plane was a total lose. I'm sure it will never happen to you again!!

When I was in training my instructor was flying my NexStar and had trimmed it and was just about ready to hand it over to me when he noticed the antenna was still down. So it can happen to anyone.

Go 2.4 and forget the antenna. Dennis

and the PIN !!!!!!!!

I did PRECISELY that last week.

Have been flying 2.4 for several months now...when I took a student up on HIS Tx Wed evening, we kept getting a "bobble" right at the same point of the field.

Wanna guess why?

One day last year, I spent most of the day flying with the DX7. I had a Little Something Extra E-conversion that I was charging up and was going to fly that later on that day.

Well, when I was finished flying whatever it was I was flying, I pulled out the LSE and the transmitter, and got ready to fly. I was on channel 11, 72 MHz.

I took off, flew around a bit, and it seemed to behave oddly. It kept going further and further away from me and all of a sudden, I lost it. No control except I did have throttle. So, I idled it and watched as it went out and glided into the woods.

When I found it, only the prop was broken. Lucky.

But the reason I had problems was that I forgot to raise the antenna.. after flying the 2.4 GHz all day, I simply didn't notice that the antenna was not pulled out.

CGr.

Man, you guys were able to fly a little ways without the antenna up? I forgot the antenna a week after I soloed. The airplane had barely left the ground when it started to pitch and bank all over. Luckily, I had the presence of mind to check the antenna and was able to save it.

A trick my instructor taught me. We use clothespins for frequency control at our club. When I get the pin, I clip it on the throttle. When the clothespin is removed from the throttle it goes on the tip of the extended antenna. Believe me, you will notice a clothespin hanging on the throttle. This has saved me more than once.

*heh* My student and I did no less than 3 circuits with it down...the first time it glitched we thought "Huh...bit of a chuckhole out there". 2nd time, same place, student says "still there" and i thought to myself "Huh...yeah...and it shoulda moved by now"...3rd time, I said "ok, something else is going on...we're dropping the signal out there for some reason....OH ****!"

CGR's right...it's just a habit thing...as much as we get IN the habit of pulling the antenna up, we can get OUT of it even quicker. Even a day's worth of flying can do it to ya.

What I've also noticed is that it's not just us...it's EVERYONE at the field. Guys that, even a year ago, would have noticed your antenna and shouted "HEY FRED! ANTENNA!" just don't look any more...or if they do, they "know you fly 2.4" or whatever.

Along these same lines, I've seen a BUNCH of guys forget to "card up" when they switch to a 72mhz plane from flying 2.4...be it for some other plane they own, or instructing, or whatever. That's gonna bit SOMEBODY real soon, I fear.

We're all human...take one of our "points of focus" away, and we pretty easily slip into the lazy way of doing things. I've simply had to make myself go back to exactly the same "radio/frequency" part of my preflight routine that I ALWAYS used, and just saying "unnecessary" for items like cards and antennas when I'm on 2.4

I've come close a couple of times lately to doing that. I fly some of my stuff on 72MHz, and some on 2.4. It's easy to get used to not having that "fishing pole" antenna sticking out when you get used to 2.4, and when you change back, you have to remember the antenna. I've tried to get in the habit of folding the short 2.4 antenna down as part of my procedure, to at least stay conscious of the antenna.