What _do_ you say to a beginner?

From: Manuel Cisneros <macs8953_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2016 00:47:51 +0000 (UTC)

I've been lurking on this beginner event thread, just watching to see where it goes. I appreciate that there are many different opinions which touch not only on events, philosophy, venues, and others, but what I would like to ask is what do people in the indoor community tell beginners when someone asks how to get started.
R/C, and CL folks generally have well defined paths to offer, and to a certain extent, FF types can point a beginner in a direction once the person's main interest (glider, rubber, power) is identified, but what would you say to someone who says "I'd like to learn about indoor rubber powered model, where do I start?"

I leave out indoor glider and power because I believe, and I may be wrong about this, rubber seems to dominate indoor activity so I think most beginners will be looking at rubber power.

My limited experience with indoor has been with LPP, rubber sport models, and indoor scale but when I embarked on those paths I already had many years of modeling experience so I had had time to figure out what I wanted to try.
Assuming for the moment that the beginner is looking for a path into competition, is there a logical progression you would suggest?
Is it SRPM -> A6 -> PP -> ??? -> EZB -> F1D?  Is there general consensus on this?

If the person is of a certain age and affiliated with a scholastic group, do you say "Go find an SO group and start there?"
Do you urge them to get a copy of BFIMA (Ron William's book) and use it as a guide for how to go about it?
I know ideally an experienced modeler would take the beginner under his/her wing and mentor them through the first few stages of the process but if such a mentor is not available, is there any resource that the beginner can use?
Manuel.
Received on Tue Feb 16 2016 - 16:47:57 CET