Your very first flying experience

[Rchawks]

Built a gentle lady and crashed, bought a coyote built and crashed. My long story accidently got erased, what ya going to do, **** apple pencil.

 

[Trippp]

Nice story, what drone are you flying now?

 

[Rchawks]

I have a MM and a MA2. Right now I’m just flying the MA2 I’ve gotten used to the power and speed, lol. MM still has its place just not as much. I was set on buying the 3 but I’m waiting it out to see what comes next.

 

[WyomingCB]

Interesting question.
My very first flying experience was being bucked off horses.

My next first flying experience was through video; you know, the movie called Top Gun. LoL.

More Seriously, my first flying experience was in a single engine Cessna. I took lessons in the early 90's. It was some of my most fond memories from my younger years. I really REALLY loved it! It got too expensive to finish, being a college student with wife and kids involved.

Next came with my kids toys. You know the ones; no GPS, no auto hover, no gimbal, sticky contol sticks, only part of the controller actually works. No auto RTH, 3 minutes flight at best, ect, etc.

Things evolved and here I be.

 

[ScottTX]

My 1st drone flying experience was with a Syma X8W about 5 years ago:


My daughter bought this for me as a Christmas present about 5 years ago.

I didn't crash it, but I was too busy with work for a "hobby".

Fast forward to a couple of months ago to the purchase of my Air 2. 1st flight was flying it around the perimeter of my back yard's 7' privacy fence.

Been having a blast ever since...

 

[Big Bro]

I've been around model aviation my whole life. Growing up my dad worked for the engine maker Fox Mfg. It wouldn't be unusual to wake up on a Saturday morning to find my mother cooking breakfast for the guys (some of which are AMA Hall of Famers now) before they headed out to the flying field. The first model airplane I can remember flying, I would have been about 12, was a Baby Ringmaster control line model I built with a cox .049 glow plug engine. We used you run ourselves dizzy flying those little models. To the O.P. I built and flew a Gentle Lady as well, and can remember getting caught in a thermal that took it so high I could fly for hours. My neck was sore for days from looking straight up for so long. I still have a Radian Pro foamie sailplane that I love to fly.

 

[Rchawks]

(I'll try again, lol)
When I was 22 a co-worker and I was talking about rc planes and how it would be cool to see one fly. We found out there was a AMA field at the Navy base where flyers would get together on the weekend and fly sailplanes using a powerwench to launch. The planes varied in size from the Gentle Lady at 6 1/2 ft to 118 in Bird of Time and Cross Country gliders. It was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen! I joined the AMA but ended up teaching myself how to fly on my own because I lived in Portland Tx a small town next to Corpus Christi where the field was and it was just too far to drive every weekend, given the overtime I working,(although that changed later when we moved into a house just 3 blocks from the same field). It didn't take long to crash my GL which taught me how to rebuild a balsa plane.

My second plane was a Bob Martin Coyote Sailplane which I crashed on my first attempt in the strong wind which always blew in from the bayfront. It was way too much aircraft for my skill set at the time and this taught me how to rebuild sheeted foam core wings. I spent the next 15 yrs flying every chance I got, much to my wife's disdain.

After moving back to Midwest and finding out there were no slopes without trees my slope soaring days were over and I switched to using a high start and installing a servo activated camera just to see what it would look like from the air. I then progressed to using a electric sailplane with a mounted camera for my aircraft of choice. After 6 or 7 yrs of that type of flying I watched my airplane take a nosedive from a high altitude due radio failure. That took the wind out of my sails for better than ten years.
Then I bought a drone, a MM, then a MA2 and here I am today ( much to my wife's disdain, lol )