🚀 go-pugleaf

> ... [I] have a preference for mode I as what little flying  I did 
> ten years ago was of that variety. It seems quite a bit more natural to
> me when it came to coordinating turns and the like. ...

I know exactly how you feel.  I flew about 10 years ago for a couple of 
summers, and learned an even more obscure "mode".  We called it reverse
mode one.  Left stick was throttle/aileron, and right stick was rudder/
elevator.  The argument for the seperation was not too great.  Seems the
"best" flier in the club (the one who taught everyone else) started out
with a powered glider and a four channel radio.  Of course the glider was
rudder/elevator control, and when he looked at the diagram that explained
how the controls were set up, he put his rudder on the left stick.  Later
when he graduated to a 4 channel powered plane, he realized he'd have to
put his turning control, the ailerons on the left stick, and that's how
we all ended up with reverse mode one.  

I just got restarted in RC a few months ago, and was concerned that old
habits would creep in as I was trying to learn mode 2.  I only ran into
a problem once.  I was flying along, straight and level, and decided to 
do a roll.  The plane did this VERY strange maneuver, which scared the
!*&% out of me.  (I was lower than I should have been to start out with).
I managed to recover, thought about it as I was trying to relax, and finally
realized I'd reverted to old instincts for a moment, and had managed to 
do a RUDDER roll.  My plane does not do graceful rudder rolls.

Anyway, I still think separating ailerons and elevator makes a lot of sense,
and if I get up the nerve, I'll give it a try.  The drawback is that
I'll be "incompatible" with the rest of the world. 

(We need to figure out whether net.rec is more appropriate than net.ham-radio
for these discussions until we get our own group.)
-- 

Scott Wiesner
{allegra, ucbvax, cornell}!nbires!scott