I've been flying now for 20+ years. I got into the hobby with a little model from Toys R Us. It had a control where to go up you gave it more throttle and to come down you backed off the throttle. Push to go up, pull to go down. As a present my wife bought me a Stryker which flew with a 3S battery. I crashed every time I tried to launch before I realized that on a real R/C airplane you pull, not push on the right stick. I improved my skills with a hot glue gun and repairing broken foam, but I finally got into the sky without crashing.
Now I'm into mostly flying EDF jets. I live on a farm in the Tennessee mountains, and I was inspired by a friend named George Baker who flew every day for a year. He had a field next to his house. Well I have a cow pasture next to my house, so I took the challenge to go out and fly every day, rain, shine, snow, wind, hot, cold, whatever. At first I just flew when the cows weren't there, but I got tired of cleaning manure off my hand launched, belly landed planes. So I put an electric fence around a 300' long area and I keep it mowed. I made a flight stand and put up a wind sock. This all started in 2017 and now I've been flying every day for over 8 years, more than 2,900 days in a row flying some kind of fixed wing plane outdoors. I'm seeing if I can make it to 10 years. Wish me luck! Oh, and yes, I count crashes as having flown, even if the landing was (shall we say) unplanned.
