Introspection

Those of you that spend too much time reading this blog (just as I spend way too much time writing it) will probably recall my post about the Bermuda Triangle which amongst a few nice pictures also discussed my somewhat troubling day at the field last Saturday.

I lost two planes (one of them not mine!) at the far end of the field. At the time I put at least part of it down to radio interference, and I still have some belief that that played a part, but there are other factors which are worth discussing because it is very important in life to try and learn from things that happen to you. In the end, it is not about who's fault it was. In the end it is about trying to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Many of you may not know that I ride a motorcycle and I try to apply the same principle there. I haven't yet had a close call (or an accident - only a couple of minor scrapes touch wood) which hasn't, on reflection, taught me something and or given me some new technique to avoid future incidents. I just want to talk about motorcycling to make a point of a mindset that you must avoid if you are trying to learn to fly RC.

Amongst the short termers (motorcyclists who are in the "sport" for 5 years or less) there is often a flaw in the rider's mental approach where after an incident they look for who or what to blame, rather than considering what actions they might have taken to prevent the situation arising. To want to blame someone or something when things go wrong is a natural human emotion - it protects our egos (which frankly we need, whether it is to ride a motorcycle, or to fly a $300-400 rc aircraft that might represent hours of our own effort), and it also has tie ins to our fight/flight response in situations of high stress (which is not so useful in the modern world unfortunately). However, it is easy to overcompensate, and once the emotional high of the anger dissipates, not spend the time to be honest with yourself.

This is a mental discipline that I think many people could benefit from. It is not about self flagellation. It is about accepting an imperfect world, and figuring out what you need to do to work with it.

So, with the sermon done 8-) here are my thoughts on some of the things that contributed to my RC accidents on Saturday:

• I was too low and too far away. If everything had run to plan it would have been fine, but this is the real world and things don't always run to plan.
• Recovery of an aircraft at a long distance is extraordinarily difficult. It is easy to lose perspective on a model at distance, particularly if that model is affected by inputs that aren't yours (wind shear, radio interference, etc).
• The decision to try and land the RV4 at distance, before trying to recover the engine, was a mistake. I should have done my engine stop drill - close throttle, open throttle, to see if power could be restored - there was plenty of juice in the battery so it was just a matter of busting through whatever caused the engine shutdown.
• Letting an unknown plane - the Extrafun, get that far away from me, on radio gear I'm not thrilled about (an Awesome RC 27Mhz TX - same model as the Electrafun) was a mistake. I was balancing that against the fact that the plane had a high stall speed, and I wanted plenty of room for the landing run up. Next time I'll keep in mind that range needs to get more weight in that consideration.

Til next time...