Tips to save your airplane
 

When I took (full-size) flying lessons, I was traveling, and so I had a lot of instructors. The best ones were naturally the older guys with more experience, and there's one tip that kept coming up. It works just as well for RC flying.

Engine failure is one of the most common causes of crashes, catching us by surprise when we're too low to make it back to the field. So...

Think of the "safe" flying area as a cone shape, with it's point being on the ground. In other words, he higher you fly, the further you can get from the runway, and the lower you fly, the closer you should be to the runway. Always stay within this "cone of safety", so that if your engine quits at any point, you can glide back to the runway.

And, related to this problem, is another tip which can save you a lot of hassle. Follow the engine manufacturer's advice, and break your engine in properly. Many new fliers get impatient once the plane is built, and figure they can break the engine in by flying. This is a bad idea! Take the time to run at least 3 tanks of fuel through your engine, running it at idle, transition, and high speed, as the manufacturer recommends, and you will greatly increase it's reliability.

Deadstick
 

Another thing my instructor taught me ... "Keep flying the plane." Just because the engine quit doesn't mean the plane will, automatically, fall out of the sky.

Tips to save your airplane
 

another tip to save airplanes.


if you are in a spin, loose orientation, whatever.

level the airplane first, get it going in the right direction second.

I have seen alot of crashes do to people that have got confused and saw the airplane was going the wrong way so they tried to turn before they had the plane level and in control. they end up banking it into the ground or something similar.


even if the plane is going over the flight line GET IT LEVEL.

I would much rather see a in control level plane over fly the pits than a out of control plane spin in front of the pits.


also if you come out of somthing inverted.. you can keep it inverted until you have altitude to recover.
how many people have seen a plane go in because it was inverted too low when the pilot tried to roll it.

level is level, upsidedown or not.

here is a few links of what im talking about.

First how not to do it.

second how to do it.

notice on the second he overflew the pits (still bad) but kept it level and climbed out over the trees were the first he fought to direction right into the tree.

Tips to save your airplane
 

grrrrrr

I really need to learn to not click quote when i want to edit.

anyway I wanted to say you may have to rightclick the vid links and save it to harddisk to view (at least thats when i needed to do in netscape)