“My Dad got me into flying airplanes. I used to watch him fly nitro planes back when I was a kid. I was always intrigued by r/c aircraft. I would buy cheap toy aircraft such as helicopters, planes, drones etc all the time but they would always break after a few days. That was discouraging. I then saw my dad come home with a bind and fly electric sport plane. It was an E-Flite Sukhoi. Such a cool plane and when I watched him fly it, I was immediately hooked. I wanted to buy an electric “Hobby Grade” plane as soon as I had the money. I traded some of my R/C cars for a couple of planes from a local guy. One new in box and the other used. Both high wing scale models. I had no clue how to operate planes with servos and radio systems. So I asked my Dad to come help me get everything setup. He was able to show me how everything worked and I learned so much during the process. Once we got it all setup and charged a battery for it, we took it over to my local park. Two vacant baseball fields. Plenty of room to fly and nobody around to get hurt. Perfect definition of a park flying location. Well it was time to plug in the battery to get ready for my first ever flight. I was so nervous and excited at the same time. Took a couple of key words of advice from my Dad and went for it. I gave it full throttle and pulled back on the elevator and I was airborne. It looked so good against the sunset. The feeling was incredible. Unfortunately that feeling didn’t last long…. I didn’t realize it was a 4 channel plane and ailerons don’t turn the plane how I thought. Spiraled right into the ground. I wasn’t high enough for my Dad to take over. We went to check out the damage. There I learned to things. Always, always fly 3 mistakes high and foam airplanes are easy to fix! I was able to repair the plane in about a day and get back out there the next day. This time my Dad was right there to help me if I got into trouble. So we went back out to the park and got it flying. It was such a great experience to truly enjoy a hobby with my Dad and to learn how to work with my hands and not be scared of failure. Failure is almost always guaranteed when starting out in any hobby. I’m just glad I was able to repair a “hobby grade” aircraft instead of having to throw it in the garbage like the toys I used to buy. These are the reasons why I will continue to love this hobby as much as everyone else does. I have attached a photo of my son to show how much he loves airplanes. We fixed up his airplane with tape and glue. Now he breaks it on purpose because he likes to fix planes as much as he likes to fly them.”