sir crashallot

right after reading a few posts of hinges breaking and so forth i came accross the memory of an accident i had years ago after the model had been stood over winter unused, what happend was the previouse summer i had a tank burst on me, i cleaned the plane out so i thought, however i flew it twice since the tank burst then packed her up for winter. the following spring i got her down and gave the batterys a good cycle and off i went. got the plane all fueld up and engine running and took off bt the model continued to climb out and eventualy did almost a full loop before crashing 10ft or so behind me, elevator had jammed. after carefull checking the model at home i discovered that when the tank burst some fuel had got into the plastic cleeve of the pushrod for the elevator and my guess is it dried out over winter and got sticky. so ever since that i always check every corner of the plane when i take it out of storage and i mean everything. even the airframe gets a thourough checking.

if you have a simalur story to this post it in here so we can try and avoid these silly mistakes in the future

jetmech05

Good post..... thank you

outdoorhunting

I've not had anything like that happen ( that I know of). But some of those early spring "bumb thumbs" Might just be caused by something else. I'll start checking a lot more thoroughly from now on.

sir crashallot

id never heard of it happening neither, the fact is it did happen and if id spent more time checking it i would have found it.

outdoorhunting

Yea, it seems like it's always the little things that will come back & bite ya on the butt!!!!! The " stupid, why didn't ya check that cindrome"

sir crashallot

well i had gone solo a few weeks befrore and i had that clever feeling mixed with i cant wait to get in the sky. i should have let my instructor check the plane over but at 14/15 years old it seems to take for ever for that so i thought il be ok whats the worst that could happen. and yep i ended up going home with a bigger space in the car. not to mention an ear chewing by my dad. now im 22 well 23 this year and im geting really wise now about how to aproach things like that and my mind sits and thinks for hours about what should be checked, even when im working on or doing major repairs to a car i have to let my mind think and process the damage and question myself what else has been damaged that cant be seen. since that day my mind took over iand i think 3 or 4 times before i make decisions so we can say very safely LESSON LEARNED

sir crashallot

oh by the way the plane that went in was a chriss foss wot4 superb plane if you can get your hands on them, if i remember correctly theres no sidethrust its built with straightlin in mind and man can it fly. its a blast and everyone in the uk over here knows the name very well. only plane i know that you can buy different wings for

heres the website
http://www.chrisfoss.co.uk/Wot-4.htm

sir crashallot

and heres the xtra wot, never owned one but by gum they can fly

crossman

When I started flying two years ago, I pulled my Eagle-2 out of the basement, after 12 years of storage, and checked it over completely (or so I thought). one evening, late in the spring, it was too windy to fly and looking like rain, so we were under the pavillion at the field. The wind caught my plane and blew it into a picnic table, knocking the tail off at the glue joint. When I sat down at home to fix it, I found that the elevator pushrod was broken. I didn't think it was hit that hard. When I tried to match the two pieces up, they didn't seem to fit together. After much studying, I realized that the mice that had stored seeds in the fuselage over the years had also chewed almost completely through the balsa pushrod. I have thought about the outcome if it had broken in flight, instead of on the ground, and decided that some things do happen for a reason. Trust me, the plane has been checked completely since, TWICE!! It's ready now for a complete recover as well.

sir crashallot

thatjust gave me an idea. you can buy webcams thats tiny and have built in led lights. remove the casing so it is around 1 inch square in size and attach an old pushrod iner and outer, bobs your uncle you have a camera which can connect to your pc or laptop via usb that you can insert into wings and fuselages to inspect the areas hidden from our view and sight. on large models this would be great on small models it will be hard but hey maysave you heartache in the future.