niceorange

Awww, my poor work of art.

Well, I did many things wrong last friday. First, I chose to fly my new cub on a field too small for it. Second, I ignored the weather which mentioned of a cold front, and third, I should have forced it down sooner! Heres the story.

I took my new cub out on floats for its maiden flight, the weather was very cold, but fairly calm as I took it off. Almost immediately, the wind started coming in faster and faster. Having no experience on the Cub, and not getting a feel for it quickly, I knew I was in trouble. For about 5 minutes I wrestled it around, it nearly standing still upwind, and FLYING at me down. Unfortunately, the landing I wanted was down, and wasnt happening. To land it upwind required me to go over the treeline, and drop it in before running out of field (softball field, I KNOW, I KNOW, BAD MOVE), anyway, my first attempt at this went well, but I quickly ran out of runway, and had to abort about 5 feet off the deck. I brought it up again, but the winds got worse. As I circled over the trees for another aproach, a gust of wind rolled it over. I flew it inverted and rolled out, but was now over an adjacent field, and out of clear sight. Through the trees I saw it diving hard, and I pulled out, but that was the last I saw of it in the air. Somewhere out of my vision I hit the tree canopy, which destroyed the plane. Fortunately I had the forsight to shut down the engine before the crash, so no damage was experienced by any mechanical pieces, but the balsa ripped apart. The left wing half broke off, the right ripped off the fuselage. The fuse itself split down the middle, and the tail and floats were also torn off. After treking through the snow to find it, I wearily brought it home, where I stripped it of everything, repaired the floats (minor damage), and sent it packing. This is what was left after deconstruction.

niceorange

The original!

4*60

My Feedback: (41)

Don't know what to say except thanks for the comments and hope you can get over it. I will be little more cautious as a result of reading this.

BenWillis

Sorry to hear of your loss. My first few flight were at a field that was to small. Got out of that situation FAST!!


Your not throwing it out are you!!!!!!!!!!!????????

If so pack her up and send to me, I will pay shipping


Ben in SC

niceorange

Are you serious? There really is nothing left of the fuse. One wing is intact, the other split in half. If you really want it, i'll be glad to send it to you, I guess I just dont know what to do with these old wrecks. Let me know. -Kevin

BenWillis

Sure am Kevin,

Learning to fly by myself helped my building skills tremendously .

Just send me ALL of the pieces so I can piece it back together, was this an ARF or Kit? If kit plans would help greatly.

I will PM address info.


Thanks,

Ben in SC

vegas mossie

Remember, never take a picture of the plane until after the maiden flight. It sets the gremlins loose inside the plane...

niceorange

Haha, I took the picture in FEAR of the maiden flight. I lost my first plane without any pictures of it, and vowed never to forget another. Sure, I probably jinxed it, but at least I have an 8x10 glossy to remember her by

knpjdad

My Feedback: (2)

Man! I'm sorry about this one... That was a BEAUTIFUL plane! hope you get another one in the air soon.

Goinstraightup

My Feedback: (26)

OOF!!!! That's a total write off.

MikeS

My Feedback: (37)

I have repaired worse and flown the plane for years. All the pieces are there. Keep track of where each belongs, strip the covering, carefully glue back together with thin ca for the split balsa, epoxy for the formers. Replace sections that cannot be reconstructed and reinforce weak areas (careful not to overdo it) and recover. You can get it back and flying in 1/10 the time of building a new plane, or about the same time as putting an arf together. Most reconstructions end up with only 1 or 2 areas that are really demolished, the hardest areas are where epoxy joints broke cause you just cannot re-glue them together.
Strip the areas that look good, too. You can have hidden breaks that can ruin your day on the first hard pull on the elevator. The starboard wing may be useable as is. Depends on a hands on. Make sure you twist and pull gently to find all the broken seams and cracks at the glue line.
Good luck and don't give up.

niceorange

Thanks for the support guys in this difficult period . I wish I had know that people repair stuff like that before hand, I would have been much more careful to recover all the pieces from the crash site, and would not have been so careless taking the components out. I probably caused more damage to the fuse than the crash did stripping parts out (although it was split in two
). Unfortunately, emotions were high that day, and the only thing I wanted to do was get the parts out, take pictures and hit up ebay!! Cooler heads later prevailed, and I have decided not to get out of the sport, just take a little break from it. All in all, I probably put about $700 into that plane because it was my first gasser, and I upgraded radios to a 6 channel computer. Between the accessories, fuel, batteries, starters, floats, etc, the plane was very expensive. Obviously though, I have the stuff to do it all again, so for the price of a kit I can be in the air again. I dont think I want to tackle the cub again, I found it very floaty and unstable in the wind. Perhaps it would fly better in still air, but where I fly is seldom that calm. I will return to the air someday, probably in the summer when I have more money and time, until then the motor is all oiled up and in the bag, and the radio stuff is ready to go. At least you learn alot from crashes.

watt_the!

i had the exact same model..crashed on first flight...

MinotRich

Have you seen the latest issue of R/C Modeler magazine? There is an article in there about rebuilding planes. Pick up a copy and read the article. It might be just what you need to motivate you to rebuild your CUB. After I read it, I finally pulled my Goldberg Electra out of the corner and started rebuilding it after an unfortunate crash late last year. The first part of the article discusses bringing home all the parts (which it looks like you've done already.) Put them in a corner until you have "cooled off" sufficiently. Then, start over. Consider how much time and money you already have invested in that airplane already. It might look like a lost cause, but trust me, as you begin rebuilding, new ideas will pop into your head and you never know, you might even be able to improve upon the original kit!
After rebuilding my Electra, I have been kicking myself about trashing a trainer I had a couple years ago that met an unfortunate end that wasn't crashed nearly as bad as my Electra was. Hindsight is always 20/20, eh?
Anyway, tajke some time to think it over, get some ideas and then get the balsa and knife out and start over! You'll be glad you did, trust me on this one!!!

tinsink

I really can't imagine what it was like to fly in Springfield in January. I live in Southern CT. and attempted, with a few friends to fly about that time. We cleared off the asphalt runway and
got the planes airborne but within 3 minutes our fingers were so cold that they hurt and became numb. Not good for flying. After a few attempts we gave up. We just weren't prepared for the cold.
Anyway, it snowed so often that we gave up on clearing the runway anymore.
Well its June now and the temperature here gets up to about
62 degF during the day, usually because it's been raining so much, and we can't do much about the runway now-it's under water. Sure could use those floats you had on the Cub.

Rich