I've always been interested in RC flight, and thanks to the guys at Flite Test, and their efforts to make the hobby more affordable and accessible to the everyday person, I finally took the leap and scratch built my first aircraft; an FT Bloody Wonder.
I downloaded the plans, taped them together and cut the pieces out of Dollar Tree Foam Board (I had to remake the wing because I had some difficulties cutting the beveled edges for the ailerons the first time around). I used the Lazer Toyz power pod kit with the "Beef" motor, and followed the plans pretty closely, except I added small pieces of BBQ skewers on the bottom tips of the stabilizers to provide strength for take offs and landings and mounted the battery inside the power pod using adhesive velcro. I also modified some cheap floss picks to fill in as control horns; they worked surprisingly well. They look something like this:
I did some preliminary trimming of the control surfaces by eye and set up the 3 mode switch on my Turnigy 9XR with high, medium and low rates and expos, setup a fail safe on my D8R II Plus Receiver. I also added a throttle hold for safety. On the day of my madden flight I did a range check and check that the plane was functioning properly. My first run was short; mostly getting off the ground, keeping level and then bringing her back down using low rates. The second run, I bumped up the rates to medium and again, tried to keep it low and level and she nosed in a little bit into a patch of grass. My third run, I bumped up to high rates, which was way too twitch for my level of experience, and ended up looping it up, and back straight down into the grass and dirt. She didn't come back from this crash. The fortunately the firewall took the brunt of the damage, saving the engine (I'm assuming this is by design) however, the crash somehow split my RX case, ripping off an antenna and the binding/fail safe button, and ripped the leads off of one of the servos. 
Here's what this experience taught me: The Bloody Wonder is a lot of plane for a first ever flight; I'm now building a FT Nutball to start building proper flight techniques on a slower and simpler plane. Have more open space might have prevented this crash. Although the area I was flying in was relatively large, the high speed of the plane shrunk the space and may have caused me to panic, yanking the controls to compensate and sending her in for a dirt nap. I will look for a larger flight area in the future.
This was a good learning experience, and fortunately not a terribly expensive one. I can't wait for my next flight.
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