I just recently (about 10 days ago) got into the sport of R/C planes. i ordered the aerobird extreme and started reading these forms. thanks to all the posts about the re-inforcement mods on Aerobirds.

I have never flown r/c but had experience with flight sims (x-plane). after reading i got scared because i found out the meaning of zones and the ABX is a zone 3. The plane arrived the other day and i did the appropriate mods and took it out the next day. although i chose to go without an instructor, if you have little experience it's wise to bring one along. flight sims helped me out a lot.

First flight (in sport mode) resulted in a crash. switched it over to pro mode and flew a little longer but not straight, that made me hit a tree. i re-trimmed it and flew it again. i got caught in a draft while turning and went into the infamous v-tail spiral. this broke my v-tail right at the bracket. i taped it up and flew again, with much better results. the plane is quite amazing.

i must say it's a good flier and a fun aerobatic plane. you definitely need some experience with it though. although this is my first ever plane, x-plane flight sim definitely helped out a lot. my girlfriend and one of our friends came out with me and they video taped the event. i just edited this video. i thought you might find it interesting to see. there's quite a funny misshap at the end. the ABX got caught in the wind with the motor off and got a little too close.

here's the link to the video. [link=http://www.owdesigns.com/firstFlight.mov]first flight [/link]
it's about 4:00 min (5.2MB) it's originally 855 MB at full resolution so i had to re-scale it and compress it a lot. hopefully it shows up alright.
you'll need quicktime. let me know what you think.

thanks again for this wonderful forum.

Congratulataions on your flight! It only gets better from here! Look forward to seeing your continued success!

-Mike