Just one of those days ....
It's last day before travel out on assignment ... so I agree to go flying.
Wind direction is not so good so we use another gravel road from our normal. On way to the site - the Dog Guard in back of car swung down by itself after a bump and broke tail of my Cessna ... I get to site .. take out the Cessna - which is my start model to see conditions and get fingers moving ! Pre-flight check shows the snapped stab .... My mate is flying his Cessna and having a ball ... but landings are a bit iffy where we are. So determined to fly ... I power up my Scratchbuild ME109 ... check out ... open throttle and away she goes ... she lifts but she's sluggish ... seems not enough power ... and she banks to left .. I try to level her to land out ... but wing tip catches a raised hump of dirt ... over she goes ... snapping fuselage in 3 places. Now at this point - I should graciously pack up and go home ... no not me ! Out comes the HK Racer 540 Edge ... I decide that today with conditions to only fit the 3S 2200 .... away she goes and no problem. But eyes start to water in the cold breeze ... orientation is getting hard at distance in the grey'ish day and my watering eyes ... so I decide it's time to call it quits. The 540 is a hot landing machine and unfortunately cars are parked at end of road downwind. I walk upwind a good distance warning my pal that I'm going to be landing along the road .. he stays at the cars. I abort first landing ... too close, too hot and there's a deep channel next to road that was beckoning the model in !! Power and pull away .. round again but further out this time ... she's lined up ... but boy is she travelling .... My mate jumps to the side as the 540 is still gliding hot .. I see the cars coming up and decide it's chop and dump ... BHAM - hit his cars passenger side tyre a glancing blow ... both wings pop of ... cowl and motor separate from body ... but amazingly - the wheels stayed on !! My mates laughing his head of !! We pick up the pieces ... and decide enough is enough .... We leave the site and decide we will go and see another flyer who we know is flying at another local site just down the road ... Hello's all round and all that .. my Mate asks if I'm going to fly anything - as I have another couple of models in the car ..... I think about it and then decide to fly the Ultimate Biplane ... She takes of from the rubber strip I had laid as runway ... and trims a bit strange .. but she's flying well. Loops, rolls, and then I'm into an inverted routine ... all's going well ... then out over the field she's inverted, and I go into a tuck and under loop to come out right way up ... TOO LOW ! After she finishes the cartwheel ... that's both wings snapped of one side ... underside of nose is smashed ... struts snapped ... there's all sorts of wood bits rattling inside the wings ... We collect as many of the bits as we can find ... and bag them up ... I go home. The Cessna took 5 mins with hot glue to sort the stab .. The 540 Edge with the clip on wings ... luckily this saves the wings ... and fuselage is only split seams ... as it wasn't a head on smash ... it was right wing hit the wheel ... http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y24...3/DSCF7048.jpg After about 30mins work ... firewall is back on with motor, cowl splits are CA'd / Hot glued ... fuselage seams sorted ... wings back on with the couple of small pieces glued back on ... She's ready to go again. http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y24...3/DSCF7049.jpg The ME109 and Ultimate will take a lot more work and can wait till I get home again ... But truly just one of those days ... I think I am not the only one who has them ! The 540 flight and crash is video'd but I need to sort it before upload ... Nigel |
Here's the 540 and its encounter with a BMW 530 .....
Please I realise that some are going to comment on landing towards cars .. people etc. - This is just two of us on a difficult road location ... Enjoy !! (I can laugh about it now !) Nigel |
I think you were in a bad interference area.
OR Your transmitters need to be checked out. Or you are my age. 75. In witch case. Nothing is defective. With the RC gear. :) Rich |
I feel for you--I really do. I have at this writing only two flyable planes. Two are in process of repairing. And 5 unbuilt. Not long ago I had 4 planes in the back of my truck (all good to go) At the end of two hours none were in flyable condition. Really poor day.
Hopefully your days will improve! |
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The Ultimate - when at the second site - I dropped it when turning over to open the battery hatch ! All seemed OK ... and I flew it .. into the ground ! Just one of those days ... I've ordered various film covering colours .. I have my new table saw ... various foam .... so once back from Singapore - I shall strip the Ultimate and rebuild her .. with new colours etc. I will be looking for suggestions to replace certain parts that are hard for me to find material ... the Lite Ply interplane struts are example .. I shall do a full rebuild thread for wattflyer ... Nigel |
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I had the same type of thing happen the other day was shooting landings in front of our shop and thought I further out then I was. Came in a little hot and instead of landing in front of me let it float to land behind me and BAM right into the side of a truck. A little epoxy and it was good to go |
Truck ?:)
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Yea a 90 chev
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Can't deny the video ! But that baby comes in fast ... My mate had already arrived and set-up on that location by time I got there. If it had been me - I would have parked along the other road so to keep the cars out of flight line. But as they say ... hind-sight is too late ! Models all back together ready to go again ... Nigel |
You were up close but two years ago i was flying a 60 size seacruiser seaplane around a lake in IN at a funfly. The camera man asked if i could do another low fly by so i pushed the throttle all the way up and came around . I seen the 50 ft tree but my eyes were playing tricks on me and i flew my 18 year old seacruiser through the tree tops at around 60 mph and watched my motor fly out the other side along with my flight pack battery . After poking the rest of the plane with a long metal pole while my old ars was standing on a 30 ft ladder the rest of it fell into the lake and sunk. We all those days once in while nigel but at least there were not 40 other flyers watching you like they were me at the water funfly. :eek: :D lmao joe
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Lol seeing as how airplane disasters come in three's you might have stopped there ! Lol
Glad you were able to recover and repair ! Nice work Nigel ! - Hawk |
ya,we all have days like nigels...but ever notice some days everyone has trouble and the wreck count is unnaturaly high to the point where you think packing it in before flying might not be such a bad idea. days when you arrive at the field to here stories of the good pilots losing old ships and then ya wittness a crash or 2 before dumping one of your own...:(. some days just spell trouble for rc flying:rolleyes:.
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Nigel, I'm sure you've tried this living where you do however it might be worth a mention.
A guy I used to fly with 25 years ago suffered from watering eyes during the cold winter flying months. He swore by ventilated ski goggles and wore them all the time. I haven't actually seen anyone doing it since but if our winter weather gets any worse I might just take it up myself.:D:D |
It was my turn today :oops:.
First flight (of the latest foamie) went fine! Zipped back & forth, did some loops & rolls, went inverted for a while, made a nice landing, and taxied right back to the station. I should have called it a day right then, but noooo... A few minutes into flight #2 I did a roll too close to the ground and too far away. Got disoriented and plowed straight in under full power. The crash site was (I'd guess) a couple hundred yards away, on the other side of a creek with steep, snowy, muddy banks :mad:. The motor was completely in the ground, like a stake, holding the plane straight up. Wing was cracked a little behind the main spar, and the tail feathers were hanging by the push rods. I didn't bother digging for the propeller blades... I'd also brought the first version of the monoplane foamie, so I sent it up next. Everything was going fine until faulty depth perception caused me to clip the top of some :censor: little tree :eek:. At least the plane fell to the ground. Put a good size dent in the leading edge of the wing and knocked the vertical stabilizer off. So after half an hour I was out of flyable planes. The damage wasn't that bad - both planes are now repaired & ready for further abuse. I'll bet they're scared to death :D. |
Dave,
Glad to hear you're back in business. I pulled a three banger one day. One after another, something went catastrophically wrong. Bing , bang boom. Done. Went home asking myself if I was really cut out for this hobby-LOL Next, day, get out there and greased everything. Who knows? -Hawk |
I swear it's true....
My mother- in- law tried to visit me once, and I tried taking out her broom with one of my combat planes before she landed. She spotted it just before impact, and the damn thing turned to stone before her gaze. Fell out of the sky like piano, shattering into 1/2 kilo gravel. The only EPP plane I could never fix:sad:
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Oh well why not ... out comes my Mirage 2000 with piped 61 up front ... this was a beast .. but boy did she go !! Took of ... did the flight .. all the typical Delta stuff and high speed as well ... then came to landing ... I was a fool to pick the Mirage ... nose up ... trying to get her to drop into the landing area ... thought she was past the trees .... She hit the top of one and rattled all the way down through the branches to end up a smashed wreck only fit for collecting up in a plastic bag ! The walk of shame to get bits and walk back to paddock area ... Pal of mine asks if I'm going to give a pylon race demo ... having brought my RM racer ... so fired her up ... mate gave it the heave ho. Só there's me doing the pylon style knife-edge circuits ... and another thinks he's going to stay with me ... BUT he's flying his NEW Aerobatics machine ... I bank and yank a left hard turn ................ BHAM ! that's his machine carved in half ... with my RM still flying but obviously worse for wear ... I invert, motor cuts out, flip upright and land cartwheeling her across the lawn. He's livid ... but soon admits his fault for being daft trying to fly with my racer ... Spectators ? Just a few hundred or more .... with my wife pretending she doesn't know me ! :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes: Nigel |
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It can be a real pain ... as the video - you can hear me moaning !! I really had trouble seeing at the late stage of that flight ... lining up for landing was near impossible as the water streamed out ... Nigel |
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She's such a pearl to fly ... i suppose over-confidence creeps in ... and wish to do it lower ? She's the World Models balsa / ply EP version ... so bit fiddly to repair - but unlike foam - does repair up nice without any crocodile skin etc. It's a job waiting for me when I get home. I also intend to get rid of that factory colour scheme - which actually at distance is not so good ... I intend to have similar to the attached as the scheme with plain white undersides : Nigel |
Last Sunday, one of the most accomplished fliers in our informal club crashed 3 of his planes. None were a total loss, but he just had a bad day. The worst part was one was due to a propeller coming off in flight on his Durafly P-38 twin, and the other two were literally seized motors in flight. You just never know.................
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I do have another theory - for my own flying ... todays models are lighter, more affected by wind / gusts etc. than IC models I was used to years ago ... Wind that I would not even think about before - is now serious news for todays foamies. I have wondered at times whether to trial weighting one down - see what happens ... only joking !! It's funny that I only really went electric because Glow Fuel is so expensive and hard to get in Latvia ..... nearest stockist is 4hrs drive away ... price is horrendous ! Gasoline engines are too big ....so only compact models are electric for me .... Nigel |
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