Yikes! Horrible article. I took some flying lessons a long time ago but decided I'd rather let someone else fly me where I want to go on a much larger plane.

Yikes! Horrible article. I took some flying lessons a long time ago but decided I'd rather let someone else fly me where I want to go on a much larger plane. I have been designing, building, flying and crashing model airplanes and helicopters of all types since I was a kid. Slow, fast, gliders, jets, three-foot to ten-foot wingspan. I've even done the in-plane FPV camera thing --where you mount a camera in the plane, radio the video down to the ground and wear goggles that make you feel like you are inside the plane. Flight simulators have never felt real. Never. Even with zero wind. And, if you do have wind, and, in particular cross-wind, landings can be a handful if you don't know what you are doing. And, yes, these are toys --sometimes $10,000 toys, but toys nevertheless-- yet the laws of physics are pretty much the same (save some scale effects). I would never consider doing what this guy did. Kudos for having the stupidity to try it. I wouldn't. I've seen too many very nice model airplanes in the hands of experienced flyers get trashed on landing. Anyone can take off with a little instruction. Flying, turning, maintaining altitude, lining-up with the runway at the right place, time and speed and flying it in are entirely different matters. I also have a relative who flew 747's. He couldn't land a model airplane to save his life. I put him on FPV and he'd grease the thing in. Interesting.