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First Crash of the Millenium

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First Crash of the Millenium

Old 11-07-2002, 11:33 PM
  #1  
bartel
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Default First Crash of the Millenium

When I was 12, I built a 40 ARF trainer with my dad, and solo'd on my fourth tank of fuel (years of multi-hour daily video game sessions help immeasurably when flying RC). On my second solo flight, I noticed the plane acting really quirky, so I yelled for my instructor, who rushed over and grabbed the sticks. After wrestling with the plane for several seconds, the thing finally plowed itself into the ground at full throttle. Turns out the kid of another club member had picked up dad's similarly-channeled radio and was playing fighter pilot in the car. Plane was a total loss, but the engine and radio were salvaged.

Fast forward to 2002, after my junior year at Stanford. Over the summer, I built a Lanier 20 ARF Trainer with my girlfriend, and installed my old radio equipment and engine (a 40 FP). Since the cost of the entire model was only about $70, I figured I might as well take it out and "re-learn" RC on my own. As long as there was no chance of injuring someone else, the cost of the plane was pretty negligible, and I was itching to buy a new suite of equipment anyway.

So the two of us take the plane out to a series of soccer fields on the corner of campus. There isn't a soul around - it's nearly dusk. I start her up (having already tuned the engine and done some ground maneuvers) and soon she's airborne. The plane is fast and nose heavy, but reasonably stable as it climbs to around 300 feet. I'm wrestling with the controls at first (takeoff was a real scare) but soon I'm carving figure eights and doing a few semi-low passes. The plane actually required nothing more than two clicks of left airelon trim to fly straight and level at 3/4 throttle. It's all coming back to me at this point, and confidence is high.

I realize, however, that landing is going to be by far the most challenging part of that day. So I start doing some low speed, low altitude flybys, trying to get in the right mindset to land.

On one particularly beautiful flyby, I catch myself just watching the plane, unaware of the fact that it's on line to hit some trees at the end of the field. When I notice this fact, I manage to keep my head and don't try to throw the thing into a stall-inducing hard turn. I instead add throttle and start a reasonable turn and climb.

I clear the trees nicely, continuing my beautifully gentle turn. It wasn't until about a millisecond before impact that I noticed the giant construction crane looming over the end of the soccer field.

I don't know why I never noticed this crane before. Probably because I was generally flying over the center of the field, and quite high. It wasn't until I over-extended the last leg of my oval that I entered the airspace occupied by an 80 foot plane-smacking death tower.

The plane struck the metal bracing of the crane arm with a horrible "crack!". The fuselage was literally torn to pieces, tiny bits of balsa floating gently to earth. The engine continued flying for a good 100 feet before burying itself in an adjacent field. The wing gracefully fluttered down over a roughly 15 second period, with only one large impact on the left side as evidence of the event.

So now I'm buying a Rascal 40 with a .46FX. The lessons learned:

1. Really, really big fields are not nearly as big as they seem at 60MPH
2. Don't teach yourself to fly RC
3. If you can convince your significant other to help you build a plane, always, always be preparing them for the inevitable

Quote of the day - my girlfriend seconds after the crash:

"Why the hell did you do that?"

- Josh
Old 11-08-2002, 05:04 AM
  #2  
visioneer_one
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Default First Crash of the Millenium

Amazing how those things just leap into view like that. Lone trees, telephone poles, power lines (a tip - carbon fiber is electrically conductive. Flash-kaboom.), metal light poles (which ring like gongs for quite some time after impact.)

Mark of a true R/C pilot - you (unconsiously!) try to control the trajectory of the engine/fuse lawndart after you've strained it through a tree

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