yes ive done that a few times! First time was a scale piper cub, i did my pre flight checks and spent a day just taxing around the yard, sorting out the mixture and doing little hops, when the time came to get it in the air all was going well until a aileron servo came free from its mount and the plane just rolled uncontrolably onto the deck, i had to dig the engine out of the soft ground, needless to say the plane was a write off, the other casualty was an electric mustang which i set up as a slope soarer, basicaly just a glider, it flew very well and with a 20mph wind would do 100ft virtical climbs whilst rolling and fly as long as you wanted inverted, it flew like it had a motor off the slope but because there was no motor or battery pack up front it needed a lot of lead on the engine mounting to get the c of g right and during a rather impressive series of aerobatics the G force from the nose weight coupled with a year of hard use and stress snapped the engine mounting free, ripping the nose of the plane off with it in the middle of a roll, the result again was total destruction.
Best plane i had was a Kit built Hawk jet, made from built up foam, reinforced with ply spars and covered in class reinforced tape it was fantastic, if you are looking at learning to fly these things, slope soaring a foamie is the way to go, a few of us would go up the downs and spend the day dog fighting each other, you can litteraly let go of the controls and let it plough into the ground and it will be totaly unharmed.
Helicopters have always interested me but from what ive heard are a lot harder to fly than a plane, maybe one day i could progress to them but for the moment slope soarers are perfect, they will fly longer than any petrol/glo fuel model will and once you get the hang of it they will perform just like a powered model.
The hovercraft's down here are about to be replaced with nice new ones, ive been on them a couple of times and through work have been lucky enough to be on a chartered trip in one where they basicaly picked us up from portsmouth after a dealer event there and took us all on a 1hr joy ride up and down the solent, racing along various beaches, it is an amazing peice of kit!
D
and now that's gone too
.
The skill of the operators was amazing, flying them right into the sun until I couldn't see them, but they all managed to get them back OK, not a crash all afternoon. Never seen anything like it since.