Now for a little bit of good news and bad news...
We'll get the bad out of the way first.
I was doing a second flight with my F-16 this past week and was still struggling with the trims. I 'believed' I could just use the current settings and get 1 flight in - I wasn't going to fly again for several days so I would have plenty of time to adjust them later. Plus, I wanted to try some loops and rolls and high speed passes with this flight. I was able to get a few rolls and a loop but kept having to add too much up elevator. Did I mention before this jet was fast? I slowed her down so I could look down on my transmitter to my trim button and when I last looked up I saw her going low and behind some trees, kind of far out too. I don't normally get that far to where the trees pose a problem. I applied full throttle and pulled up and saw her head right behind a tree - she was in a banking turn.
I heard the fan spool up to full throttle, then the excruciating crunch of wood, dead silence, and the explosion of foam come through the tree. Ugh, what a horrible feeling. Losing a plane to stupidity. The tree did quite a decent job - tore the wing and elevator from one side and took the tail. The battery got ejected too. There was leaf and twig bits stuck in the fan assembly. The other half of the plane was undamaged. Good thing these 50mm airframes are inexpensive to replace! What a (repeat?) lesson to be learned...
On the bright side I did order a replacement airframe the next day - they went on sale. Talk about timing!
I did get my order for my other 2 planes on Friday - the Panther and a Raptor. The Panther is a 64mm and the Raptor is a 50mm. I already started on the Panther and may be finished by tomorrow. It seems to be a straight forward build.
Mark
