personal profiles

Here's a chap who enjoyed visiting ModelFlight and sent me an interesting e-mail.
MEET Ray Smith who is the owner of Hobbies Aloft R/C Flight School which is located on the Central California coast near the city of Monterey. Ray is also an aeronautical engineer and a professional educator holding a California (US) teaching credential. He is also a die-hard hobbyist with over 35 years r/c experience. Ray has been training people to fly r/c model 'planes for a little over 30 years, and always on a completely guaranteed basis. His company is operated in exactly the same way that full-size flight schools are run. Lessons are on a scheduled basis and students are charged only for the time they are actually flying (i.e., stick time). Safety of flight is guaranteed, whether the student brings their own equipment or elects to train using the Hobbies Aloft trainer aircraft. Training starts with the student practicing "up-and-away" manoeuvering (circles and figure eights, climbing and descending flight, etc.) for a short while, and then quickly progressing to landing training. Landing training encompasses approximately 90% of all training until the student flies solo, usually at about 10 - 15 hours of total stick time (and between 500 and 800 landings/touch-and-goes). When the student is able to demonstrate three consecutive take-offs and landings without help and with no damage to the aircraft, he/she is awarded a solo certificate and no longer needs help with flying r/c trainer model 'planes.
	Here's probably the most unusual thing about Ray's flight school - he does not use the "buddy-box" (or buddy-cord). Ray disagrees with the view that the buddy-box is the best way to teach r/c flying and contends that it actually lengthens the time required for students to learn to fly and that it is almost useless in preventing damage during landing training.
As a professional educator, Ray strongly believes that physical skills are best taught using a "kinesthetic", or "hands-on" approach. He says, "In full-size flight instruction the physical connection (and therefore physical feedback) comes from the fact that the student's and instructor's controls are connected. The trained hand is able to transfer skills directly by forcing the untrained hand to make correct flight control movements until the student is able to do it on his/her own. The additional benefit is that no damage will occur because the instructor is also on the sticks to do anything the student is, as yet, unable to do." For each landing approach, Ray tells his students, "You do your best and I'll do the rest". raymond@redshift.com There is also a link to Ray's website on the links page. Thanks for getting in touch, Ray. What do you think of Ray's views on buddy-box training? - drop me an e-mail! Visit the picture gallery page to see some of Ray's models.

I hope you enjoy these personal profiles - they are a good way to foster the club idea that is behind ModelFlight and they are certainly very entertaining. Please join in the fun, send ModelFlight an e-mail and tell us about yourself, your family, hobbies and interests, what you do for a living, how long you've been model-making, what club you belong to, if any - in fact as much or as little as you see fit. Include a picture of yourself if you wish.

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