pfd17

Iremember about 10 years ago when i started flying i had built a cessna 182 with a 58" wingspan,and i guess i figured that they were just kidding when they said to epoxy the wings on,i must have used scotch tape or a glue stick(lol) i took off and got up to about 100 ft when the right wing came off,the cessna went into the most impressive death spiral i have ever seen.When i arrived at the crash site i thought i would need a tow truck to get the engine out of the mud with the suction it created,man i still laugh every time i think about that.

Jeffpro

My Feedback: (1)

People at our club tell the story of a new pilot who visited the club and asked for some flight instruction on a trainer he had just built. His instructor checked the plane over and found lots of loose pieces...not just nuts, bolts, and wires, but big things like wings and stabs. Turns out the guy didn't know that he needed to mix epoxy and hardener. He thought the pack came with two bottles of epoxy and he only used one of the bottles!

sgt peanut

I just crashed my plane a couple of hours ago, into my friends plane in flight. He was flying from right to left, and i was flying from left to right. I went to do a loop completely unaware of his plane coming towards me. He was just flying straight and wasn't looking at his plane because some kid threw rocks at him.... whatever. As i was coming out of the loop i noticed his plane coming straight at mine, and i tried to dodge it, i almost succeeded. His wing clipped mine 3 inches away from the wingtip. Now he has a huge crack running down his wing. My wing on the other hand tore right off the plane and the rest of it barrel rolled into the ground. Im rebuilding it right now in the next thread.

foodstick

At the old Marbles Hobby shop near Des Moines, they had this thrown together beast of an airplane..ALL the control surfaces were hinged with aluminum hinges aparently off of a screen door, and the gas tank hatch was latched shut with what appeared to be the latch off of a suitcase... I bet it had some other goodies hidden onboard...

Lnewqban

Yesterday, I had a dead stick while I was inverted and low, and I hit the fence at our field while trying to land upwind.

The funny story is that only the front gear got tangled in the chain link fence, both acting as springs that stopped the plane without further damage.

The picture was taken by a new member, just on time, when my plane hit the fence.

foodstick

I don't know which is more amazing .......your  luck,or that second picture ! Its wild how you can see the front gear bending back, and the antenna being thrown forwar from its mounting points. Pretty unique view...

Jeffpro

My Feedback: (1)

Here's a lucky picture I snapped a couple of years ago at our club's float fly. You can see a plane going into the drink, just at the moment of impact with the water. The wing spar snapped midflight and that was all she wrote.

VeeAte

I got told a story of a guy at our club that was doing low fast passes in a warbird.

Each time he got lower and lower. Just off the edge of our runway at the time was grass about 1.5-2ft high.

As the other members were watching him come through for what would be his last pass he dipped that little bit too low and the plane disappeared into the thick tall grass. 2 seconds later at the other end of the field the plane shot out of the grass and into the fence full bore minus the wings!!
The wings were about 10 feet from where the plane entered the grass.

One of the guys who saw it happen apparently asked if the pilot could mow the new runway a little bit further south.

flyingdan

My Feedback: (5)

Here is a classic story

We had a new member come out with a high wing trainer with the wing held on with A rubber band...thats right only ONE rubber band.
Well can you imagine a wing clapping?
That is exactly what happened the wing would leave the fuselage and evenly lift up approx 6-8 inches then slam down onto the fuse over and over for a distinct clapping sound. As soon as he pulled the power back all became well. He did land with out a crash but oh man what a hoot.... You just never know what a new man will do. We all had a good laugh himself included.

Dan
AMA # 9650

Tango Juliet

From time to time several of the better pilots in our club will start a race track pattern getting lower and lower with each succesive pass and then do high speed touch and goes. The better ones will go inverted and try to touch the tip of the vertical stab on the runway. One of the guys touched the tail a little too hard and the cylinder head hit the paved runway and snapped the vertical fin. He managed to pull up (push down - he was inverted) and roll it over deadstick and land in the grass between the runway and the pits! The most impressive crash/save I've ever seen. The front of the cylinder head was ground down and the glow plug bent in the threads. One of the others ran the wheels off the hubs on a high speed touch and go.

BsSmith

I had a Tower Voyager that flipped over just sa it left the ground on takeoff.

The antenna was broken inside the fuselage, and it had gone out of range.

Flyin Beagle

My Feedback: (1)

I am calling Bs on you Smith

Flyin Beagle

My Feedback: (1)

Bad Joke, sorry, couldn't control myself at the end of a looooonnnng friday..

dhal22

i finally got it!!

aerowoof

Back in the summer of 1970 when I was looking to get into r/c.My dad took me over to the Lincoln- Sudbury high school to watch som flyers.One guy had a Sterling F-51 Mustang with an OS Goldhead .60 with wing olympic retracts using a Kraft Gold Medal 4 ch radio.They were flying from the football field which was elevated about 20 feet up from the baseball field off to the side.This pilot was doing low fast passes down the third base line and pulling up before the backstop behind home plate.His final pass he misjudged and was too close tto the backstop and put the left wing through it.Balsa confetti every where as the wing went throught the chain links and then the deafening silence from all who watched.Plane was painted in the miss america scheme.What a sad ending.

ross.felix

Here is a strip from our Golden Era Air Race in South Australia. The Gull?? lost 2/3 of its wing the rest is history.

more picks at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rossfelix/sets/

foodstick

That is one effective elimination of an airplane....

3W flyer

Ross.felix, thats just amazing.... i remember at my local clubs fun fly about 3 years ago one of guys their was flying his hanger 9 60 size P-51 mustang in the limbo event and and on his first try he hit the poll about half way out on the right wing and the plane rolled over inverted right into the ground and just basically disintegrated in a cloud of dust, and man what a spectacular crash that was. when we went to pick up all of the parts the only things that where left was the cowl/ engine/ firewall and part of the left wing.

VeeAte

I was just reading the racing article in one of my magazines with those pictures this morning Ross. Would love to know what speed that plane was doing when it hit. Spectacular. That would have been a nasty job to clean up. I bet there is still shards of covering and balsa strewn about that field. I always try to pick up all the pieces, but when I walk past that spot again (on the way to the next crash site) I can still see bits of canopy and other assorted plastic bits here and there.

We fly on a farmers property and I would love to speak to the farmer one day. The guys in the club reckon there must have been hundreds of spinners, mufflers and props munched up by his harvester over the years. Never heard a complaint tho

Sounds like your mate did a number on the Mustprang 3W! I have to ask tho..... the limbo involves flying under something?

Sessholvlaru

Last weekend a fellow club member came out with his Hangar 9 46% Ultimate. Bought it and the motor (DA 150) off of RCU. He was about 3,500 smackers into it. First flight was great, and the plane looked good. Second flight was doing a down line when he got locked out (JR 2.4). It went in full bore, right into a stream which is about 20 feet out past the end of the field. The splash was at least 25 feet high. Plane was in splinters. Got out the raft, and he managed to pull the DA out of the mud below 2 feet of water. Plane toast. Carbon Fiber spinner and three bladed prop toast. $600 pipes toast. Motor is being rebuilt and looks good so far except for a bent prop shaft. Got back most of the servos. He mentioned the receiver locked him out on the ground on another plane a while ago, and replaced one of the satellite receivers, and could not duplicate the lock out. Had redundant everything, figured that was the cause. I hate to see 'em crash, but I hate to miss 'em if they do!

AH1G

Back in the old days, the 70's, I was mostly flying HP sailplanes and decided to build a 60 power pattern plane and put it on floats. The plane was beautiful, solid yellow for visability, scratch built floats, dual water rudders, glassed floats and fuse,ect.As I remember I stuck a Super Tiger 72 on it(more power!)

I had told two of my two eager flying partners to come by the house bright and early on Saturday to watch and "help". I spent hours the night before checking EVERYTHING for correct throws, function and operation and finished in the early morning hours.

When they arrived and saw the plane, they were ready to get going. With a little hand wringing we started it up, checked everthing again and with little hesitance put it in Lake Washington. I taxied out about 40 feet in front of the house andcranked the throttle to full. The plane was on step in about 10 feet and rotated off the water in 40 feet. I made a nice lazy left turn and climb the response was super. As I continued to climb and at about 200 feet directly in front of us, the plane snap rolled, did a loop, rolled on its back andwith the engine screaming,headed straight downDave andHarry are both yelling, pull up, pull up! I'm trying I'm trying! It turned itself into a submarine.
No throttle response and no control surface response! As a neighbor down the street putted out to the plane and recoveredthe peiceswith a salmon net.
I thought to myself... Shoulda' charged the batteries...

Its funny to me now however,the three us were totally stunned at the time.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

jetboy2003

I can relate to that... Flew for about a year before i realized my mistake while building my second plane. She held together though, but I did end up pulling the wing halves apart (very easily) and mixed some new epoxy.

BIG4D

This story almost made me physically ill. It was my first trip back out to the field for a number of years. I was just a spectator. I just happen to being my Canon DSLR with me.
There was a gentleman there with the biggest Yak that I have ever seen. Man was he good! He flew it 3 or 4 times and did some amazing 3D maneuvers with it, I was in AWE watching him fly. There were several people there watching and several there flying as well. When he went up, everybody stopped what they were doing and watched him. He flew that thing like it was an extension of his body! Always in perfect control (or seemed to be).
He decided to take it on one more flight before he left. When he took off it just sounded different then the other times that day. It seemed to sputter a little bit on a vertical climb. It didn't seem to bother him, he just kept of flying. After a bit he brought the plane close and was very slow, he had done this before on this this flight and the others, so I knew was about to transition from flying to hanging on the prop to hover.
Well, just as he throttled up to go vertical, the engine DIES! He is only about 40-50 feet off the ground. The plane drops the nose and it PANCAKES IN flat on it's belly! CRUNCH! I looked over at him, he just drops the TXr to his side, looked over at me and says "Darn it! Bad time for the engine to die!" He then calmly walks over to the table sets the TX'r down and a group of people go out and bring the plane back in!
Final damage looked to be, broken engine mount (it was just hanging), broken carbon fiber landing gear and broken carbon fiber prop. He told me that if he had more time and another set of gear he could have it flying again in about 2-3 hours.

RVman

The stab decided to break on a WOT low pass, I was about 20 feet above the ground and it just went straight down right in front of me. I never really saw the crash cause I was still looking ahead and the plane was in the ground already. It happened so fast. You can see the indents in the ground from the wing. The spar was broken in 6 places. All the electronics were wrecked but the engine was fine except for a partially broken mounting lug.

foodstick

That is an EPIC crash,
total rekit, but still looks like an airplane...