I used to be really into RC planes when I was a kid. I saved FOREVER to buy the kit to build my first one. It was one of those kits that came with about 12 blue-prints, and a bunch of balsa sticks. You had to cut and build everything from scratch. Took me about 6 months, but when I finished, and fired up that nitro engine for the first time... most awesome toy EVER! Of course, I never got really good at flying. It's incredibly tricky when you're looking at it from weird angles and a distance. Ended up crash landing on a highway when it ran out of gas one time though, and bent the front landing gear.
Of course, instead of repairing it, I just built a new one... this time a high performance stunt plane. Took that sucker out and my instructor nearly freaked out about how stupidly fast and manuverable it was. I'd of course, modified the plans a bit to fit the same, larger-than-spec engine into it, so I wouldn't have to buy a new, smaller one. This thing was just too fast, could do a full roll in a fraction of a second, literally. The elevator cable apparently couldn't take the stress, and snapped during that first flight. The whole thing came barreling in at us on the ground. Hit probably doing 80-90mph, almost directly down. Nothing left but splinters. The fuel tank broke, and the battery cable was shorting out in the wreckage, so it actually caught fire even. Spectacular wreck, but put me off planes for a while.
I eventually repaired the first one, the trainer, but didn't fly it for years. Tried a few more times after moving to texas, and got a bit better at it, then just got kinda bored. Finally my friends dared me to take it out one day at the end of high school. It was windy but I thought "who cares?" It was so windy the thing fell out of the sky as soon as I turned with the wind and lost all lift. Smash! Finally let me parents sell all of it at a garage sale for like 50 bucks (I'd probably spent $700 on things) with the condition that it goes to a kid who actually wants to fly it. Supposedly it did.
Anyway, best of luck to you. We want photos of the crash! :-P
