First of all we’d like to welcome you to the hobby of Radio Controlled Model Aircraft and and invite you to join our club. Hopefully you will find it to be a challenging, rewarding and relaxing hobby.     We hope you will find this club to be the friendly fun club we try to make it.

    You must join AMA and the Club In order to fly on our field which is made available to our club and its members by the city of Coffeyville, Kansas.

    If you are a beginner in the hobby and need help or instructions the best way to find an instructor is to go out to the field and ask around or stop by our local hobby shop at 1211 Elm Street in Coffeyville or call Bob at (620-251-5094) or contact one of our instructors listed on the right of this page.

    Every instructor has a different method of teaching. Basically your instructor will start with basic turns, then taxiing, take-offs and finally landings. Expect the total time that you spend on the buddy-box to be about 15 20 hours of flight time. This time will vary widely from student to student so just relax and pay attention and you will do just fine.

Not all styles of teaching work with all students. If you aren’t comfortable with a given instructor, go find another one. No feelings will get hurt.

    Here are a few things you will need to do before your first flight lesson. If you follow these tips your first lesson should go smoothly.

1. Choose a model suitable to your experience and needs and assemble carefully. If you need help assembling your model feel free to ask one of our members for advise or help.
2. Charge your plane’s receiver and transmitter batteries fully. This means putting them on the supplied slow charger for the FULL 18 hours.
3. Break in your engine. Again follow the supplied instructions to the letter. Taking shortcuts will severely shorten the life of the engine.
4. After you have completed all the steps above (you can do the break-in at the field if you aren’t comfortable around the running engine yet, just let your instructor know in advance. 
5. Make sure that you have the following MINIMUM supplies:

	A fully charged plane and transmitter.
	Fuel and pump
	Rubber bands (or screws) to attach your wing
	A nicad-starter (glow plug starter)
	An electric torque starter (or “chicken stick”)
	A few extra props
	If you have purchased additional field equipment bring it as well.

    Once you get to the field and have an instructor make sure to tell him if your plane has never been flown. It is imperative that your instructor know this so that he can make the necessary pre-flight checks such as servo direction, tight hinges and etc.
    Do not get offended if your instructor finds a couple of things that need to be repaired before the first flight. This is not an attack on your building ability. It is his job to carefully check for things that might cause the plane to crash. Better to find them now before the plane leaves the ground.

Once the plane passes the pre-flight check, your instructor will take your plane and fly it once to trim it out before connecting the buddy-box. After this you will get a chance to get “on the sticks”.

Finally a couple of things to remember:

	All of our instructors are volunteers
	The instructor cannot be held responsible for your plane if it crashes in the course of your instructions. (there would be no instructors if they were)
	Our field hours are from 8am to 30 minutes before sunset 7 days a week.

Have fun. This is a hobby, relax and enjoy.

If there is ever anything I can do to help or you need help finding an instructor, feel free to call or e-mail me any time at tstotts@terraworld.net

 We look forward to meeting each of you at the field.

Bob Merrit
620-251-5094

Troy Stotts
620-251-1105
tstotts@terraworld.net

Any Club members who are interested in instructing basic flying and are willing to be contacted by interested parties please contact 
our webmaster