Tom Burdin

I SUPPOSE that there are as many different ways to teach a person to fly a radio-controlled aircraft as there are people flying them. The techniques of teaching range from the very personal one-on-one instructional sets, to the classic method of teaching your kid sister to swim-throw her in. And as you might well surmise, the success rates of this variety of methods are as varied as the number of methods. Some people never learn with the very personal one-on-one instructions and a lot of kid sisters are great pilots. But by and large, the majority couldn't remember how they learned-they just did. My home club, the Greater Cincinnati Radio Control Club, recognized a need around training. Sure, we had club instructors and we even went so far as to designate two training nights each week during the flying season. That sounds good until you talk to some of the students and look at our success rates with new members. They told us of "lack of consistence in maneuvers being taught," "no method to our training," and "no standards." Those are not very nice feedback statements from our new members. Those comments, coupled with a noticeable lack of new fliers at the field, caused us to look at improving our training program.