Goddang Thermal cutoff almost made me lose it
06-02-2011, 01:36 PM
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Goddang Thermal cutoff almost made me lose it
So I'm flying my Electrifly E-Performance Reactor Bipe, my favorite little plane, and I'm putting on an airshow for my kids and some company over our swimming pool. After some harriers, a little hovering, and about 1:30 of flight time, I pulled up high to do a inverted flat spin. Good thing I had a little altitude...
I entered the flat spin and throttled up to make it into a violent twisting conflagaration of a maneuver but I had no engine response. ***? I exited the maneuver and started gliding back towards my landing area (which was about 400 yard from where the plane was at) and it became obvious that gliding into a slight headwind, it probably wasn't going to make it. I settled into a glidepath that would get me close to the airfield as possible and started jacking the throttle, trying to get a response. Nada.
No time to think about that now. Losing altitude, and now I can see I'm DEFINETLY not gonna make it. To make matters worse, the plane is slowly sinking behind a hill, blocking my line of sight. Eventually It completely vanishes and I just hold the glide path on the sticks, hoping it won't stall/crash before it touches the 3' tall uncut hay. A few seconds later, I hear what sounds to me like a sickening crunch......
I lock the throttle off and SPRINT (and I'm a big guy, sprinting is not a great thing for me) over to the "crash site" to find it sitting, wheels down, perfectly unharmed, suspended in the tall grass just outside of my LOS. The only damage was the hatch coming off and a *tiny* tear in the monokote. Everything else checked out okay.
It flew fine after that. The only thing I can think of that would cause it to do that would be a thermal cutoff from the ESC. Either way, it flew fine in the subsequent (close to the field) flights. Whew.....
Luck > skill?
I entered the flat spin and throttled up to make it into a violent twisting conflagaration of a maneuver but I had no engine response. ***? I exited the maneuver and started gliding back towards my landing area (which was about 400 yard from where the plane was at) and it became obvious that gliding into a slight headwind, it probably wasn't going to make it. I settled into a glidepath that would get me close to the airfield as possible and started jacking the throttle, trying to get a response. Nada.
No time to think about that now. Losing altitude, and now I can see I'm DEFINETLY not gonna make it. To make matters worse, the plane is slowly sinking behind a hill, blocking my line of sight. Eventually It completely vanishes and I just hold the glide path on the sticks, hoping it won't stall/crash before it touches the 3' tall uncut hay. A few seconds later, I hear what sounds to me like a sickening crunch......
I lock the throttle off and SPRINT (and I'm a big guy, sprinting is not a great thing for me) over to the "crash site" to find it sitting, wheels down, perfectly unharmed, suspended in the tall grass just outside of my LOS. The only damage was the hatch coming off and a *tiny* tear in the monokote. Everything else checked out okay.
It flew fine after that. The only thing I can think of that would cause it to do that would be a thermal cutoff from the ESC. Either way, it flew fine in the subsequent (close to the field) flights. Whew.....
Luck > skill?
06-04-2011, 11:33 PM
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RE: Goddang Thermal cutoff almost made me lose it
Welp.... Spoke too soon.
Just pancaked it in while practicing some low altitude hovering. Snapped the motor mount off and broke the landing gear.
Ah well... my luck was bound to run out sometime.
Just pancaked it in while practicing some low altitude hovering. Snapped the motor mount off and broke the landing gear.
Ah well... my luck was bound to run out sometime.
