first time flight

Congratulations on your success.

Although an instructor is not needed, its not a bad idea to have someone present that can fly the plane if something unexpected happens during your first couple flights.

Had a problem occured, things may not have turned out so well. Neither can an experience pilot save every plane.

Congrats on your solo!

Ditto that. What would you have done if the controls turned out to be way too sensitive? I have seen that as the biggest problem with a new plane. Experienced pilots automatically dial down their fingers to fly the plane.

Double ditto on that! "What if" is a BIG phrase. I assume there were others present. If not...NEVER fly alone!!!

Frankly, you got lucky. A sim is drastically different from real life. Dr.1 Driver "There's a Hun in the sun!"

More importantly if you happen to injure yourself, a companion would be able to do something towards summoning assistance. It happens.

I didn't have the benefit of G2 Realflight (computer is too old lol, ) anyway, I used a instructor, as is the norm, in a club, as our club wont even let ya fly to you get you wings, and I'm glad I did, my plane , also new, and what i thought was perfect, had a few issues, the engine was fine, but the plane was badly out of trim, due to incorrect aileron setup, ( which was fixed by adjusting it, ) also the CG was a tad off I'm just glad i had a pro take it up first, so I could understand better what was wrong to make it better, and we did, My first day i got 3 good flights in, my nerves were shot after lol, , but I never once worried about having to fight my plane on its first flight, , your plane must have came out better than mine lol , not saying your lucky, you still have your plane in one piece, so ya must have done pretty good !!!! But I'm still glad I went the instructor route

Actually, it doesn't. You use other visual cues like size of model, and relation to other objects. Good fliers flying models they know can accurately predict to within a few feet. A beginner with his model can't.

I have crashed 200 meters away, and been out by at least 10 meters on where I thought the model was. Its always seems closer than it is for me and my friend, who managed to somewhow fly down BETWEEN an avenue of trees, and almost landed it fine, except the last low level turn was beyind him, so he flew it through (or most of it through) a post-and-rail fence at the end :-)

My giess is that if its the same for pylon racers, being 10 feet beyond teh pylon is no big deal. Just a little slow on teh laps is all.

If you were flying 200 metres away and were only off by 10 metres in your estimate, thats on;y 5%. Not bad for no binocular estimating.

But you can touch a keyboard to within a mm at 20cm. THAT is .5% THATS binoculart vision.