Lesson #1 check your rubber bands

The plane I learned to fly on (besides the flight sim) was an E-flight Apprentice 15-E. It is a beauty of a plane for any beginner or even the more seasoned pilots. It has duel rates, full 4 channel function and all the bells and whistles right out of the box... including a set of rubber bands that hold the wings onto the plane itself.
Well after learning to fly and putting at least 40 flights on my Apprentice I had never changed the rubber bands and noticed one day at the field that one of the rubber bands had developed a small nick. That day I had left my nitro powered plane and electric aerobatic at home, I just wanted a smooth, slow, relaxing flying day at the field like so many others like to have to unwind after a long week.
Like I said I did notice a nick in a rubberband as my brother and I strapped them on the wing, but in my enthusiasm and anticipation of flying I thought nothing of it. I had not been flying all week and was really dying to get my plane up in the air and soar with the vultures around our field. So we got our plane ready, plugged in the battery, ranged checked it... and up we went.
My brother had been wanting to fly as bad as I did so I let him have the 1st flight of the week as we both were anticipating it just as much. Every thing went fine for about 35 seconds and then the dreaded SNAP! That was about as long as it took for that nicked rubber band to give way and allow all the others to pop right off in sequence. They popped off the wing like you had just flung one off your finger, then the wing came off... and that was all she wrote.
My sweet, forgiving, never been crashed before trainer went into a wingless dive, it reminded me of a bomb headed to the ground with no chance what so ever of recovery, the point of no return had been passed. I stood there hoplessly and watched as it just came down in its own death spiral crashing to the ground as the foam wing peacefuly fluttered over head like bufferfly on its own path. I felt a deep sence of guilt.. I had let down the plane that had given me so much. But it was not in vaine. I learned to check my rubber bands.
To me "check the rubber bands" is a metaphor for do a good preflight check. Do not take for granted that all the parts on your R/C plane will always "just work" like I used to. Make sure you go over your plane, inspecting it, looking at it like a NASA engineer looks at the Space Shuttle before a launch. The smallest little nick in a rubber band may be the coup de grace on a plane that has never been inspected properly.