It might be simpler to aid climb. Thats what I did. Granted, I fell off with trad and my advice will probably be flamed into the ground. But it made me feel more confident with my placement and I felt better knowing out of the 1,000 pieces of protection I put in, maybe 1 would hold, haha. Your method sounds good too, but complicated.

so, i've been taking a low key trad course, but im still not satisfied with my placement techniques. how doable do you guys think setting up a top-rope then rappelling down, sport climbing up tied to both top-rope and a sport lead. placing gear and falling on it (on purpose) to test placement and stability. keep in mind im tied in to a top rope as well. (this will require two belayers and a set of different commands for each. i think its do-able, i just want another opinion. granted i will be training using this method for a while and not just making a fast transition to trad/multi pitch. essentially, i want to lead trad but need to perfect gear placement before that ever happens. good plan?

i know next to nothign about aid clibing though, and my college has a rack thats pretty much never been used. when the time comes, id be buying my own anyway, as long as nobody else is using it i dont feel terribly bad about wearing it out. i can also have them replace stuff. :-D
is there a thread abotu aid climbing around here by any chance? granted ill check out my freedom of the hills for all about it aswell.

the method you were describing is called "mock leading"

its fine for learning. you don't necessarily need two belayers, but if you only have 1 it needs to be someone who is experienced.

mock leading is great if you can coordinate it well and if not, its just a mess.

aiding is great, but you actually need to fall on the pieces to see if they will hold because some placements will hold body weight and not hold a fall.

the idea of toproping whilst you do this is encouraged as well because you never know if you will zipper all your pieces if you are leading aid.

I keep forgetting about the backup toprope. I've never done that. I used to put in pieces on the ground, or essentially climb to bouldering height, then set up anchors...and I would have my trad climbing sensei inspect my placements. Really, if you are learning trad...unless you are going balls to the wall, you need a mentor. Someone who can look at your placements and say..."That LOOKS good. But look what happens if I pull it this way, etc."

Also follow a better climber and when you clean a piece look at it , remove it , then see if you can place it back the same way.

I'm trying to get into trad as well. My plan was just to buy 5-6 cams, some stoppers and hexes and go practice on some boulders where falling won' t kill me. Hopefully I won't die, then I can graduate to doing real walls. Solid plan, eh?

Well actually no, I would not call that a solid plan to learn trad. leading. It might be a way to get familiar with the 5-6 pieces of gear that you have but nothing else. There is a lot more to constructing a safety system while climbing a route than placing a few cams in a crack. Things like a multidirectional first placement, correct, safe spacing of gear, anchor building, and gear management and gear management and energy management and gear management.....
Get a mentor would be a better plan, read some books, hell, even racking the gear and playing with the ropes while you watch tv is going to teach you more about trad. than just sticking some pro in a crack on a boulder.