Welcome to our little corner of the sky! We're Frank and Dolores, and we've been flying radio-controlled model airplanes for four years now with the Riverbend Radio Flyers, a club of about thirty-five members who share a mowed strip on a farmer's back forty out past the county line. Frank got into it first (a midlife thing, he admits it), and Dolores came along "to hold the tools" and within a summer was out-flying him. More on that below, because he's a good sport about it. Mostly.

We put this page together because every spring somebody shows up at the field with a brand new plane they bought at the mall and no idea what to do with it, and it breaks our hearts to watch what happens next. So: read the beginner section before you buy anything. Please.

Here's what four years and a lot of balsa splinters have taught us.

1. Buy a high-wing trainer. Not a warbird. Not a jet-looking thing. Not the one that looks cool. A trainer has the wing on top of the fuselage with a little upward angle to the wingtips (dihedral), and that makes it want to fly level and right itself when you let go of the sticks. That self-correcting habit is what saves a beginner. The usual size is a ".40-size" trainer, meaning a glow engine of about .40 cubic inches, with a wingspan around five feet. It comes as a kit you build, or as an ARF ("almost ready to fly") that you assemble in a few evenings. Get the ARF for your first one. You'll build kits later when you know what you're doing.

2. Find a club and an instructor. Do not teach yourself. We mean it. Every club has instructors who volunteer to train newcomers, and the difference between a person who learns with an instructor and one who doesn't is about three destroyed airplanes. Our club charges nothing for instruction; you just have to be a member.

3. Learn on a buddy box. This is the secret. Your transmitter plugs into the instructor's transmitter with a cord. The instructor holds a switch: when he holds it, you have control; when he lets go, he has control, instantly. So you fly, you get in trouble, he lets go of the switch and saves the plane, and hands it back to you. Dolores learned on a buddy box in about six weekends. Frank took nine. We'll say no more.

4. Join the AMA. The Academy of Model Aeronautics is the national organization for model flying, and your membership includes liability insurance. Just about every club in the country requires it, ours included, and you'll want it the first time your plane and a parked car disagree about who was there first.

5. Budget honestly. Trainer, engine, radio, fuel, starter, field box, glow plugs... figure it's a bit more than you thought, and then the plane gets repaired a few times. Still cheaper than golf, Frank says. Dolores says she's never seen him add it up.

(Actually the basement and half the garage.) Here's the current fleet. Pictures are coming; Frank's brother-in-law has a scanner and we have a whole envelope of prints from the field waiting to go through it.

Radios: we each have our own transmitter, and we're on two different channels in the 72 MHz band, which is the band set aside for model aircraft in this country. That matters at the field. See the next section.

Every club has its own, but ours are pretty typical, and they exist because every one of them was learned the hard way somewhere.

• Frequency pins. Two transmitters on the same channel at the same time means one person's plane obeys the other person's sticks, which is a crash, guaranteed. So there's a board at the field with a clothespin for every channel. You take the pin for your channel and clip it to your transmitter. No pin, no power on. If your channel's pin is gone, somebody's already flying on it, and you wait. This rule is absolute. We have seen a grown man walked off the field for turning on his radio without the pin.
• The safety line. A line of orange cones runs along the near edge of the runway. All flying happens on the far side of it. Never fly over the pits, the parking area, or the spectators, and never turn toward the line. The plane stays out there; the people stay back here.
• Pilot stations. Pilots stand at marked stations along the line, not wandering around. Maximum four planes in the air at once.
• Call it out. "Taking off!" "Landing!" "Dead stick!" (engine quit) "On the runway!" Say it loud. A dead stick has the right of way over everything.
• Engines run in the pits only, pointed away from people. A propeller at 12,000 RPM does not care about your fingers. Dolores has a small scar on her left thumb to prove it.
• AMA card on you, club card on you. The farmer who lets us use his land is a good man and we are not going to be the reason he changes his mind.
• Mow when it's your turn. Not technically a safety rule. Still a rule.

The field is open dawn to dusk, seven days a week, but the crowd is there Saturday mornings from about 8 until the wind picks up around noon. Come out and watch; that's how most of us started. Somebody will hand you a buddy box before you leave.

An honest accounting. Anybody who tells you they've never crashed has never flown. We keep this list on the workshop wall, and Frank insisted it go on the page too, because "beginners should know it happens to everybody." Then he asked if we could leave out number 6. No.

Score: Frank 6, Dolores 3. Two of Frank's were on the ground. We'll let you draw your own conclusions. He would like it noted that he has been flying longer. By six weekends.

The club's last big get-together before the field closes for the season. Everybody is welcome to come watch; spectators are free, and bring a lawn chair.

• Pilots' meeting 9:00 a.m., flying starts 9:30, rain date Oct. 16.
• Events: spot landing (closest to the circle wins), timed touch-and-goes (how many in two minutes), limbo (fly under a ribbon between two poles; the trainer class ribbon is generous, the expert class ribbon is not), and the egg drop, which is exactly what it sounds like and is the messiest thing we do all year.
• Dolores is defending her spot-landing title from last fall. Frank has entered every event and expects to place in the egg drop.
• Pot luck at noon. The club provides hot dogs and pop; bring a dish. Dolores is bringing her seven-layer bar. Get there early for that.
• Instructors will be on hand with buddy boxes all day for anyone who wants to try flying. This is the best chance you'll get all year. Bring the kids.

Directions: e-mail us and we'll send them. It's not hard to find but "turn at the big oak" doesn't work well on a web page.

Frank writing this part, because she wouldn't. Dolores is the better pilot. It's not close. She's smoother on the sticks, she's calmer when something goes wrong, and she never turns toward herself and pushes the wrong way, which I did on my very first solo flight and, if I'm honest, about once a year since. She flies the glider, which I don't have the patience for, and she does aerobatics I won't try. Half the new members ask for her as their instructor. I'm proud of her, and I'm a little jealous, and I build a better airplane than she does, so we're even. Sort of.

Dolores here. He does build a better airplane. And he climbs trees.