This sport isn't for everyone so your first port of call should be, to contact the club on any Saturday at our flying site and watch what goes on. We recommend this before you make your purchase. Feel free to have a talk with the students and ask of them their views on their equipment, the training progamme or even what they would would change if they had to do it again. You may even be lucky enough to find one of the instructors (for a nominal cost of fuel etc.) willing to instruct you on his own machine with buddy box, leaving the major cost of a model to a later time if you decide that the sport is for you. Some will even provide training throughout the week depending on what is suitable to both instructor and student.

The minimum requirement needed for your initial outlay includes:-
a: High wing trainer of at least 1470-1530mm (58-60 inch) wing span, either 3 or 4 channel. There are lots of excellent ARTF (almost ready to fly) models available. Seek advice on these.

b: A good engine, within the recommendations for the model e.g. If the manufacture recommends a .40 to .46 size engines for the particular aircraft, go for the .46, it may be slightly more powerful, the throttle control can take care of this.

c: The best radio transmitter and receiver that you can afford complete with servos. We state this beacuse the radio equipment can be interchanged for every model that you will ever own. The majority of members use either Futaba or JR.In additon to a,b and c above, you must have support equipment - fuel, starter battery, glow starter and leads, along with some tools.

All club flyers use 35MHz, the use of any land frequency is forbidden.

Before commencing on your training, your instructor will ensure that you have the necessary equipment and that your pride and joy is fit to fly. He will fly it, trim it, point out any problems and then correct them, and then fly it again. This time he will check the handling of the aircraft at high and low speeds, climbs and dives and may do a few mild aerobatics. After this, and when the instructor explains what the controls do, its time to embark upon your training course!

The N.D.M.A.C. follow the syllabus as laid out in the approved BMFA handbook 'Up & Away'. We therefore recommend that you obtain your copy and read it. (obtainable from Colin Bailie or Barry Aspinall). It fully explains the training progamme and the relationship between instructor and student.

If you still have your heart set on learning to fly model aircraft, your next step is to cinatct the Membership Secretary, George Elliot, who will advise you as to membership of the club. But please do remember that the BMFA permit you to have 'hands on' on three visits to the North Down Model Aircraft Club.

At present two members are training with the view to becoming BMFA Approved instructors.

If you require any further assistance don't hesitate to contact any member of the committee all of who appear on the contact page.
Below is a basic guide to the transmitter. If you have never come across one of these before it is well worth a look to give you that head start!

1: Power switch. No prizes for guessing what this does! Push it upwards and it turns it on, pull it back and you have no power. When getting ready to fly, the transmitter should ALWAYS go on before the plane and ALWAYS come off after the plane! 2: This is the rudder and throttle stick. When you move the stick from left to right instead of the whole plane banking (as in the pictures above) the back end of the plane moves about. This is used more when you do aerobatics. This time when you push the stick away from you the plane will go faster and when pull towards you, the slower it goes. When learning you tend not to touch the throttle stick too much but when you are taking off, landing and doing aerobatics it is in use alot. 3/4: These little dials are called the trims and they make very slight adjustments to the airplane to make it fly straight and level. Trim numbers 3 and 4 are used very little. Number 3 is mostly used when you are landing. If you find you are right back on the throttle and you still have too much speed, bringing the trim towards you will slow you down more.

Number 4 trim is probably used the least for general flying. When taking off (still on the ground) if you find the plane steering one way give oppisite rudder. For the more advanced flyer this is used suprisingly a lot. When turning if you find the back of the plane to be dropping slightly simply give rudder the same diretion as aileron and this will straighten the plane up. It is mostly used in aerobatics (spins, stall turns, knife edge, etc) but a beginner would not have to worry much about the rudder. 5: This is the aileron and elevator stick. When moved from left to right it makes the plane turn in that direction. When the stick is pushed away from you, the plane will go into a dive towards the ground (which is never good) and when pulled towards you the plane will go up which is suprisingly hard to grasp while learning (trust me, I know). 6/7: If you were to take off and find the plane kept climbing even if you had stopped using your elevator, you would use trim number 6 to make the plane go in a straight line. This used to be the only method of fine adjusting your trims but now days the computer radios (like the one shown above) can adjust the trims even more. Again, in mid-air if you found the plane kept tilting to the right, you would use trim number 7 to make the plane level in flight, although when learning your instructor should do the neccesary adjustments. 8: This is the little screen which tells you lots of information. When you turn the transmitter on, the screen will tell you how much battery is left in your transmitter and also which model you are on. When I say "which model you are on" I mean because this is a computer radio you can store many diferent models settings into this plane so you don't have to mess about with the settings for others. The transmitter shown is a XP 652 and it can store up to 5 different model settings and you can give each model a three letter name (eg: if you have a cap 21, the three letters might be CAP, and for an acro wot maybe ACW) JR also have other transmitters, the XP 642 which stores 4model settings and the newest version, the XP 662 which can store up to 6models!! 9/10: These are the rate switches. This is used again mostly in aerobatics and you can adjust these switches withing your radio. When you flick the switch to the top you are on high rates and depending on how much you have adjusted them in your transmitter it will change how sensitive the controls are. If you want low sensitivity keep the switchces in the low rate position (towards you) and if you want to do a roll, spin or other aerobatics flick the switches away from you and the planes functions move alot more. If you would like any information at all about getting into flying at all, please send an e-mail to: info@ ndmac.co.uk and we will get back to you as asap!