That’s Ted in the picture, holding one of his earliest planes, a Zagi wing. I met Ted soon after I started flying radio-controlled model airplanes nearly two years ago: spring, 2005.

A guy at D&J Hobby in Campbell, CA, had recommended a Slow Stick when I told him I was looking for a beginner’s airplane.

Tools don’t scare me. In fact, I like building things and I have a garage where I can work on projects. I’ll build airplanes, I figured, and then I’ll learn to fly. But I’ll always be a builder first, flyer second.

I spent a week or so assembling the Slow Stick, making all the usual first-timer mistakes: control horns mounted backwards, propeller backwards, servos reversed and so on. Near as I can recall, I knew which way the wing went, but that was about it.

Meanwhile, I visited the Tom Cats field in Morgan Hill and saw big and beautiful gas planes, immaculately constructed and masterfully flown. But I found the pilots aloof, and I was not comfortable there.

A clerk at Sheldon’s told me about Baylands, a place where I could learn to fly and get help from friendly people.

So one Sunday I took my Slow Stick to Baylands, where I saw a small crowd of flyers. I lurked at the back of the fray.

Ted Cooper spotted me and correctly read the desperate expression on my face. “I’m Crazy Ted,” he said cheerfully. “Want help with your plane?”

Of course I did. He corrected the reversed servos, trimmed the surfaces to neutral and checked the plane’s balance. Then he showed me how the transmitter sticks worked.

Although I’d been reading beginner’s guides on the Internet, I found it boggling that you pulled the right stick down to make the plane go up. Either I wasn’t reading carefully enough or everyone assumed it was too obvious to mention, but it was news to me that Sunday: down is up.

He launched the plane. I was amazed to see it in the air. When it was safely high, he handed me the transmitter and I panicked. Which way was up again? Within a few seconds, I was hopelessly tangled in the air. Ted took over, flew a bit and landed it safely.

I stuck around and watched Ted fly his own planes, a rag-tag air force that included a glider, a warbird or two and some foamies that looked like they lost more than one knife fights. Ted flew them all, unfazed by their cosmetic failings, finding beauty in their flight.

It took months until I managed a flight longer than the Wright Brothers, but one week I took off and kept the plane in the air for five minutes. A day later my record was 20 minutes. And soon I knew how to fly. What fun!

I didn’t learn to fly that Sunday, but Ted showed me the Baylands Way. Now I consider myself a flyer first, and a builder a far distant second.

This past year I’ve worked on taming my flying. Initially I flew very high and very far away to minimize the effects of pilot error and avoid collisions. But that strategy leads to other mistakes: I couldn’t reliably tell plane orientation at great distance and when I crashed (as I often did) I risked losing the airplane. To date, I’ve lost three airplanes from far-off crashes.

Now I fly closer and lower, and I crash much less often.

I’m not nearly as good a flyer as I’d like, but I know that down is up and near is good and a plane on the ground is never as good as a plane in the air.

Thanks, Ted.

Tags: Airplanes, Baylands, Flying, People, Radio Control, Slow Stick.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 29th, 2006 at 1:09 pm and is filed under Baylands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.