Right! Now we're getting to the heart of things. I've noticed inquisitive people often lack disciplined concentration habits. I noticed the tendency in myself years ago while learning to ride a motorcycle. I love to observe progress at construction sights, admire the lines of the latest cars, etc. What before was a potential fender cruncher now became a threat to my life. I resolved to either learn better concentration habits or sell the bike before a tragedy caught up with me.

I began to realize that concentration is a limited thing and every task requires a "hit" to the concentration budget. To use a currency analogy, lets say you have $1.00 worth of concentration. While flying R/C maintaining your wings level takes $.25, maintaining field orientation takes away $.30, remembering how long you've been up takes $0.05 and so on up to a total of $.80. A guy walks up badgering you with questions which requires $.20. At this point the smallest unanticipated thing can cause a crash! "Dumb thumbs" is just a way of saying your concentration tried to write a check that bounced.

Experience tends to reduce the cost of each task. Maintaining level wings in a new pilot costs $.80 but probably only costs $.05 in a well seasoned one. Conversely, speeding things up reduces the entire budget. Going from a gentle trainer to a hot pattern plane may cut your budget from $1.00 down to $.50. Fatigue lowers your budget drastically also.

Once you start thinking in terms of a budget you can start to work on ways to spend more wisely. Earlier I mentioned planning each maneuver before starting it. Doing this has the effect of paying much of the concentration cost up front so you take less of a hit to the budget in the middle of the maneuver. Most aerobatic maneuvers can be performed toward sky or toward the ground. Traveling skyward increases your budget by slowing things down, while toward the ground does the opposite. Change-ups in the middle of the maneuver are especially dangerous because they extract an exhorbitant fee on the concentration budget - mental price gouging. A panic situation is the ultimate price gouging.

Individuals also vary in their concentration costs. One guy may only pay $.05 for avoiding stall speed while another may pay $.40 because he's become obsessed with it. So it's important for each pilot to identify their high costs and work the prices down. An interesting side effect of simulators is imbalances in skills that develop. I've recently noticed performing a knife-edge to the left costs me $.10 but to the right costs me $.50 because of the direction I always take off from.

I've found the best way for me to improve my flying is to accurately assess my performance of each flight just after landing making a mental note of mistakes I made and things that went well. By doing this I can focus on areas to improve, eventually freeing up my concentration budget to spend on more challenging things. Without reflection we quickly forget the nuances and return to the simulator to log hours doing things that don't really need work.

I don't mean to sound clinical about flying. It should be fun! But improving concentration will go a long way to reducing the task burden so flights can become more enjoyable, creative and worry-free. With a better budget cushion I tend to fly more relaxed, smooth and precise. I can experiment a little because I'm ahead of the airplane and that's really why I enjoy flying.

I crash, therefore I am. (Rene forgive me)

Here's a philosophy joke: Rene Descartes is having dinner at a fine restaurant. He eats a large and sumptuous meal. Afterward, the waiter ask him if he'd like to have a nice piece of cake for dessert. Rene replies: "I think not." And suddenly disappears.

Another excellent post. Being mentally AHEAD of the model is the key. Dumb thumbs happens when you (I) get behind. I've noticed that throwing in spontaneous moves definitely eats away at that mental buffer, so for example, if I do a series of back to back stall turns I'll be a little less "ahead" on each turn and more and more likely to do something dumb. And at some point I need to break off and just do a simple circuit around the field to regain my "ahead buffer."

Gee Don, a new joke (NOT)

Course, the last time I heard it he was in a bar had was drinking too much.

I am fortunate or just plain careful, normally when I crashed it was due to radio interference or pilot error (usually hard landing). I religiously check the batteries before each flight and a range check at the start of every outing. I check all connections surfaces and I ask a club officer or Trainer to check out all new aircraft before the maiden flight and generally let one of them take that first flight. This policy has served me well in the past and has severely limited the number of crashed aircraft. The last one was three years ago. I still believe the number of crashes I have are related to the amount of flight time I get. If I haven't flown in sometime my skills aren't always what they were and if I have been flying a lot it’s a case of the laws of averages. I learned proper propeller respect as a lad flying Cox .049s and .020s and I have the finger scars to prove it. I would hate to get hit by a prop of the airplanes I fly now!

Letting an expert do the maiden seems sort of like letting the king sleep with all brides prior to their marriage. My feeling is that learning to do a successful maiden flight is as much a part of learning to fly as doing that first solo. It's just not the same when someone hands you an already trimmed model and a complete flight report of things to watch out for. Certainly, I'd never give up the maiden for a sport or sport scale model.

That having been said, I do accept that there are times when there is so much on the line with a special scale model that doing the maiden yourself can be foolish. I did have someone else maiden my EIII, because at the time I finished it, I had just started RC flying and only had about 10 solo flights under by belt. And I've even begun to accept that maybe it would be better to have my friend and ace flyer do the maiden on my Snipe. There's just too much riding on this. It's the "prototype" for CD ScaleDesigns and I've also just heard that an editor from one of the Japanese RC magazines wants to do an article on it and may even put it on the cover. He's sending a photographer in June or July. If it were just me, alone on the field, flying a model for my own enjoyment, I'd go ahead and do the maiden myself...come what may. But now there are other people to consider as well.

Easier to take the in flight photos!

True enough! And it's often much easier to find a good flyer than a good photographer at the field! But still, I do aspire to be that guy who can both build with skill AND fly with ease.

My own aspiration!