I love model aircraft of any shape or size. In my first few months of flying FPV, I'd installed an AP with RTH, OSD, a head tracker and pan/tilt. I loved it!
3 years on and I seem to now get just as much enjoyment out of flying "commando", that is flying without an AP or RTH, as I do flying my Skywalker with APM and full mission planning facilities.
The experience of flying without aids or the safety net of RTH is a little more daunting and becomes even more so the further out you go, not because the Rx/Tx kit can't do it (it was doing it perfectly well when the AP was installed), but because there seems to be an invisible barrier that when crossed, makes my sphincter tighten.
When flying "commando" I tend to take more of a note of my surroundings before the flight, using Google Maps/Earth to scope out any interesting features or even dangers. I then tend to do some some initial recce flights, looking for specific shapes or colours on the ground, roads and copses of trees, dwellings etc. that I can make out when I'm up there. There is no home arrow!
The suns a biggie, assuming you can see it and can be a useful aid to getting a bearing if nothing else.
I also tend to take a note of the way that the wind is blowing the plane. I know that this can change, but it can be an additional marker that you can call upon of you get disorientated and at the heights that most of us fly, you don't need to worry about backing and veering too much (http://www.theweatherprediction.com/habyhints/48/ (http://www.theweatherprediction.com/habyhints/48/)).
For me, flying FPV without aids and a simple failsafe of "turn off" forces you to consider not taking undue risks, and by risks, I mean risks of losing your expensive plane, and puts a different dynamic on the flight that perhaps is more akin to flying a real plane where you have to keep your wits about you and be aware of where you are at all times, not by what the screen tells you but by what landmarks you can see and what the craft is doing.
So the question, is the technology making us complacent and if so does that even matter?
Surely it's more complacent to go off flying without a simple, cheap bit of kit that could help you out if it all goes a bit wrong. Not saying it's in any way wrong to do that and I always regard home arrow/RTH as an emergency measure, I think I've used it in anger once, although I do tend to fly in coastal locations where you'd need to be a bit dim to get lost. But as for real planes these days even people in microlights tend to have a GPS just because, why not?
For me it's asi pole question of what's safer. After all it's the pilots responsibility to ensure that the flight can be completed safely. What's better, a FailSafe that dumps the model or a FailSafe that returns the model to above the pilot? No brainer for me. Any how on the MFD AP you can turn the OSD off or on during the flight.
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I think it's different strokes for different folks.
I was glued to a video by bonafidepirate that I watched last night where he resurrected his glider and was doing thermalling close in - that really appeals to me for some reason, the challenge of staying aloft with no power while flying FPV just seems "fun" for some reason.
I don't really like flying at range - I have issues with it that cause me to worry more than enjoy the flights (which I've touched on before) so I tend to find my own fun by flying closer in, buzzing the ground or simply just cruising around in circuits. I like it and there's next to no risk of me having to walk for miles to gather up some chunks of EPO.
Makes for really boring videos though!!
It's not as if I don't have decent kit. FrSky, decent antennas, Cyclops Tornado, Skywalker ... all good, probably good for at least 3-4km at a reasonable altitude.. just can't do it :)
Yes I think it probably has made people more complacent in so far as they take more risks. The extreme of this is the phantom pilot has a false sense of security.
A similar argument could be put forward for seat belts and air bags I suppose.