Newbie question about electric vs gas

A .40 glo 'trainer' is actually very tricky for an average newbie to fly, and its bloody dangerous in unskilled hands.

A slow stick by comparison barely has enough energy to destroy itself, let alone anything it smashes into. Everything happnes much more slowly.

I can understand the justification for anyne who knows nothing except 40 glo 'trainers' to insist that you go to a club and get instruction.

On the other hand, I cannot think of anything easier to lash together and get flying than a slow stick, nor see any reason why any competent individual can't - in halfway decent weather conditions - more or less get the basics done in an hour or two on one, totally unaided.

I would not have wasted a whole lot of time and money if I had known about parkflyers when I re-entered the hobby.

learn" crowd keeps trumpeting their message. And then when someone says, "Well, I taught myself", the response is quite often "But yeah, that's very unusual" or "OK, but Personally, I have to wonder if the attitude stems from some need to pretend that the hobby is harder than it actually

Hey, I have been saying for years, if you want to become a great pilot, stick a smaller engine in it, and take that darn gyro out:) rick markel

My Model Aircraft Home Page

On 5/17/2004 5:00 PM Ted shuffled out of his cave and grunted these great (and sometimes not so great) words of knowledge:

I think you are missing the point about clubs and instructors.

YES, a person can teach themselves to fly. It has been done many times.

The "gotcha" to being self taught is:

It is USUALLY a steep learning curve and can be quite frustrating (and expensive) while learning.

This is primarily due to not having a knowledgeable person available to make sure the plane and radio are set up properly and/or provide some BASIC guidance for using the controls.

Everyone learns at a different rate, and what comes easily to one person does not to another, but that doesn't mean they can not master the skill with some instructions. I am not even going to go into the safety aspects - I'll let someone else do that.

I'm just going to interject something here, as the guy who asked the question in the first place.

I'm confident that having a club and an instructor would let me learn to fly planes sooner, and with less frustration, and possibly safer (although one *can* read about safety pretty easily).

I also KNOW that I prefer to spend my leisure time alone or in the company of my family. If a form of leisure that I'm considering *requires* being social, I'll generally choose a different form of leisure.

Your club may be made up of people who are varied, polite, charming, good-looking, and fascinating. They certainly will know more about RC aircraft than I will. And if someone who likes hanging out with other people, and who likes instruction/help/advice from experts wants to learn to fly, that person would be well advised to join your club, especially if flying sooner and with less frustration and lower cost are important to him/her.

But not everyone is like that.

Despite this quibble, I'd like to thank you all again for the informative remarks.

--John

Don't forget the safety in numbers thing too. Club fields have usually sorted out local interference issues and are far enough away from other clubs too. If you choose to fly near enough to a club to interfere they will NOT be happy if you shoot them down. The reverse may be true too!

Just take care to check out the area first.

Conversely the palce you are most likely to get shot down at or have a mid air is of course a club...and the place you are most likley to do property damage to some person or his vehicles is of course a club...

We've been through all this before. As long as you don't fly more than

1/3rd the distance to someone elses transmitter on the same channel, your model will almost reliably respond to your transmitter, not his, and vice versa. If you can't see em flying, you are almost certainly far enough away.

Clubs are necessary, becasue glo planes are noisy, need runways, and a special place to fly. because there are many transmitters and planes and spectators gathered together, you need safety rules of a fairly stringent bnnature, and because the risk of an accident goes up roughly as the square of the number of modellers present, you need insurance as well. The only upisde is you get to chatter to fellow madmen.

All the advantages are actiually with the solo flyer in a remote spot flying something less aggressive.

Personally, I have to wonder if the attitude stems from

How true these words are and sums it all up Rich. I had interest in joining a club but backed off due to time and also were i would be flying my SS and other electrics most of the time. To me clubs are a good thing if you have time to go to the feild, fly glow or large electric, and deathly afraid of flying for the first time........thats about it. R/C flying is easy to do if you use common sense.

Mike

And you can USUALLY flatten that steep learning curve by choosing the right plane, good gear, using common sense, reading books, asking questions at your freindly LHS......even asking questions here....well sometimes ;-)..... So there is no "gotcha" to being self taught

This I can agree with.....but....if the person has some mechanical background and takes the time to find out about setting up the plane and gear ....no problem.

Mike

John, To really get you started in flight sims you could download FMS.

Though I don't think it has the same setup for wind conditions or is as acurate as sims such as realflight, you will probably catch the flying bug even sooner. ;-)

-- "Don't call me a mindless philosopher" Max Gaming and Brown Paper kite site