The Inevitable Occurred!

[wjcjr]

As the title hints it had to happen. I had my first real crash today. Got fool-hearty performing sub-10 foot altitude hard banks and fly bys.

Plane had banked a little more than I expected and when I pulled up on the elevator she dived in and clipped a wing tip and performed an arrested cartwheel. Luckily this display played out now with 12 inches of snow on the ground in this area.

I went over expecting the worst and to my surprise NOTHING! Not a bit of damage, well the wing needed to be turned straight.

To recapture my ego and confidence I used the rest of my time practicing smooth take-offs and landings. ROG take off circle around smooth landing, repeat etc.

This is great I love it!

Also my son piloted the controls with some assistance today while 100+ feet up. We pulled a couple loops, he had a grin to show off.

I am noticing the recent posts of these mod'd planes. I saw one with Hi-Tec servos installed, were those servos from a radio kit? Is Hi-Tec a decent brand? These mod'd planes make me want to get building, I looked more in-depth into my plane's innards today and this looks like real satisfying fun.

Wayne

[jt01]

Glad to hear no damage Wayne,it could have been disastrous. best to find out errors when theres a nice safety net to help out.

Jim

[mrmugen]

Glad to hear it's all in one piece. These planes are very crash tough. However you gotta see the pics from earlier today at the crash site. Will post pics in a few. In off topic. We need a crash thread going soon. With vid's and pics of crash's and aftermath.

[lawndart63]

Got Glue! LOL!

[wjcjr]

Uhhh did it AGAIN! I went flying in too small a landing area. Wind was 9 mph, not terribly bad comparing to last few days.

I was doing take-offs and landings with my last battery. 6 out of the 7 landings were good to great. Then after taking off one last time with what I was aware was a used battery a car pulled up behind me in the middle of the road and stopped. This was my landing strip. I tried to gesture them my intentions to use this road which runs down the parking lot I was in. My efforts were in vane. I tried to glide around them on approach as now they narrowed my strip to about 6 feet, WAY too narrow for me right now. I brought the SC in, maneuvered around the car just fine but neglected to see the itty bitty twig sticking out from a tree. The twig caught the right wing and the plane which was barely gliding then turned and dived straight into the cold, hard tar. The people in the car now decided to leave.

Damage was limited but is my first damage. Cowl is mush, broken in three places. Pieces of it hitting propeller now. Prop is my first broken prop, well prop never broke but is significantly chewed up. Spinner shows signs of being in a head-on. One of the landing gear plastic covers is broken.

Finally the gap in-between the wing and fuselage needs attention, I will be looking for some carbon fiber rod for wings, fuselage and wing edge fuselage area. For you who have used the carbon fiber rod what is the average cost of this stuff? I am going to check out the LHS probably Saturday.

I gave the gear box/shaft a thorough looking at with no damage or bent shaft of any sort.

Here are a couple things I have learned or re-learned this week.
- Don't forget sunglasses.
- Baseball cap a nice addition to the glasses.
- Do not fly facing the sun. Loss of plane orientation due to the plane glared is EASY.
- Lastly RE-LEARNED to leave a good area open for approach and landing. At the least until I am more competent.

I am having a blast all and am now seriously thinking about a second plane to build up and play with.

Wayne

[swampfox201]

Wayne,

Too bad about the mishap. I broke my landing gear covers awhile back and tried gluing them but they seemed to break everytime I landed hard. I finally cut some new ones out of a milk jug. Didn't want to buy a new landing gear just for the covers.

Hope you get back up soon.


Todd

[mrmugen]

Wayne, Make sure you test that prop shaft with a new prop before flying. The slightest bend in it will send bad vibrations throughout the plane and cause possible radio failure. You will know right away if it is bent a lil or not. The prop will not track true, it will have a "shadow" if it is bent. You willl know if it is bad. I thought mine was fine the first time by just running the motor w/o prop on it. Just a word of caution. Glad you are enjoying it. I say go get a new fuselage and start picking away at it. It is a lot of fun to set one up from scratch. Make sure you take pics of the build if you do.

[wjcjr]

Mr Mugen I will be starting my build as soon as possible. Just need some time to refresh myself on parts I care to order and order.

I will indeed take some pics and inform of my build. I have a couple ideas.

Wayne

[citafly]

Try this place if your lhs does not carry a good selection:

www.dragonplate.com/

[mrmugen]

Have you ever used the foam core firbe board?