blueangel

What was the strangest crash you ever had. I had one crash, but it wasn't strange.

blueangel

No one has had a strange crash? I don't belive that. I have seen a few strange crashes, but I didn't crash them. C'mon, let's get this crash story forum going!

blueangel

I have a really strange crash. I read about it on the web on a crash storie web site. It is strange because it involved one plane and a firework. When it was all over there was many parts of planes! A person had bomb bay doors on their plane. He always put a firecracker in the plane, lit the fuse, and took off. One day he didn't check the servos for any problems. He lit the firework and took off. When it came time to drop the firework, the doors jammed. You can guess what happened next. Boom, it was raining monocote covered toothpicks! It would have been really cool to see that one!

FHHuber

I've got a couple of abnormal ones:

4*40 on second flight, did a normal take-off, and entered downwind leg of the traffic pattern when the tailplanes fell off. It did just over 1/3 outside loop before it dissapeared behind the trees. When the model was found, it was sitting on its wheels with just a minor ding in the right wingtip covering. (tailplanes had even set back on... looked perfect.) Didn't even break the prop.

A /25 powered sport aerobatic model was being flown along dong aerobatics at the aircraft's performance limits. Entered a flat upright spin, and it was refusing to recover. Finally the plane went into a vertical dive, just in time to go full bore straight down into a tree. The plane was found trapped between 2 branches, with just a broken prop.

Nehru

I also had many strange Crashes to my credit one of my Baby Ace a 40 size plane was flying beautifully and suddenly it went into left spin, recovered and went into the same spin and Big bang I had to collected all the scattered pieces into a small plastic bag. Reson for the sudden spin not known.

b1rd37

Back in the early 70s my oldest boy was flying his trainer, making a left turn on the far side of the runway when a fast pattern plane came by from the other direction and neatly clipped the fight wing off my boy's trainer, he ask "what do I do now", I said "cut the throttle and wait". Normal so far, the weird part was the pattern plane. My son's wing shuld not have caused much damage to the pattern plane, it continued straight for approx. 140 yards, nice and level, the pilot yelling "I dont have it," befor it dropped a wing and went in, It took us over an hour to find it. We never could find out what happend to it, we did find some paint from my sons plane about half way out one wing, verry little damage to the leading edge.
My sons plane was flying the next saturday.

FHHuber

The first impact may have turned the RX switch off on the Pattern plane. Then... hitting the ground can turn the switch back on... and the whole R/C system would check out fine. (if not damaged...) This is EASY if the switch is turned on by sliding forward. A scrap of debris hits the switch, and its off. (this is one reason ALL my switches turn on by slidng back)

SaviCatses

Silly question FHHuber,

Why not mount the switch so that down is "on"? That would probably solve many accidental switchs wouldn't it? Even a hard landing could leave it on.. except if that hard landing was done upside down, in which case whether the switch had turned off before or because of the crash would be not really matter!

FHHuber

Usually, its more convenient to mount the switch horizontally than vertically, so they end up that way. Also... most of the kit radio installation diagrams will show the switch horizontal.

when I can... I mount the switch in a place where you would have t rip something off the plane to accidentally access it. Inside the cockpit of my Fokker Dr1 for example... its absolutely NEVER going to be accidentally flipped.

blueangel

That is really strange. And your son's plane had no damage? I wonder if that is what happened to the pattern plane. But if it did turn off, why did it suddenly go down? We might never know.

b1rd37

B1RD37
(GA)

Here A Lot!

Posts: 34
Joined: Oct 2002
Tue November 26, 2002 08:31 AM



Back in the early 70s my oldest boy was flying his trainer, making a left turn on the far side of the runway when a fast pattern plane came by from the other direction and neatly clipped the fight wing off my boy's trainer, he ask "what do I do now", I said "cut the throttle and wait".

Jerry

Scale Freak

For the Baby ace, what you are describing sounds like a classic tip stall/spin. This happens when the aircraft is flying close to the stall speed and aileron is applied to make a turn. The downward aileron increases the angle of attack enough to stall that wing. As the other wing is still producing lift, its in a spin faster than you can blink.
If you were flying along, you probably were not too slow, but how is/was the aircraft for wing loading? A high wing loading equals a high stall speed.
In modeling, this happens most often on landing as a lot of R/C pilots are not familiar with near stall flying techniques.The meathod to prevent these, when flying close to the stall, as in a landing, is to maintain direction with the rudder only. Keep hands off the ailerons. This is true in full size aircraft as well.