I used to fly alone allot. One day, I was flying my now nostalgic Sundancer from a histart. Now, I had developed a rhythm of turn on transmitter, turn on receiver, pull back, hook up and launch. That day, I couldn't seem to get more than 5 minutes and wondered if the plane was out of trim. One one launch, I forget the turn on receiver step. The Sundancer tracked up pretty well and released. Upon iniiating the first turn, I discovered my mistake. The plane drifted off to the right and I thought it would land in the next field so I scaled a fence (I was younger then) and tried to keep it in sight - it had started to come down. Well, completely unaided by my pilot skills, it hooked a decent thermal and landed very safely in the side yard of a house about 3/4 mile down wind - total time for the flight was about 20 minutes. Lessons learned: - I now ALWAYS do a surface "wiggle" before I launch and ask flying buddies to do the same before they do. - I now ALWAYS look to see what I'm about to walk through as I got a terrible case of poison ivy that day. - Now, I don't always blame the trim as a properly trimmed plane flies well in spite of the well-meaning pilot. Older and wiser, Jim Deck
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