aeajr

My Feedback: (2)

Skywriter,

Thanks for finding my plane. Now, if you could just fly it back to Syosset, Long Island, that would be great! Give me a call and I will talk you in. Its the big open field next to the soccor fields.

Ha Ha. That would be a laugh if you did find someone's plane three states away.

Cactus.

My Feedback: (1)

a fisherman did find one of our planes 8 miles out to sea and two weeks later after it lost the battery during the display and looped into the distance, heard it for about 10 mins doing slow loops, how stable is that! the plane was a right off tho. not sure if anything was reusable

aeajr

My Feedback: (2)

I just finished reading your squadron pages on your web site. Fantastic. So, how many planes is it? 20? 30?

Great stories. I will view the rest another time.

Cactus.

My Feedback: (1)

Thanks
im not sure how many, how ever many that are on there is what i've had.. doesnt inculde years of free flight tho.
lots of updates to do in the next few days. many many vids
as for lost planes, part of mine fell off today, if floated down in a field and others watched, it was inline with the gate and a post, follow that line.... find the bit

staggerwing

My Feedback: (5)

I wash my planes with "blue stuff" ---you know car window washer fluid. If a plane goes down I get Fiona my Newfoundland Dog and send her after the smell of "blue stuff." It's worked every time.

Grampaw

One time we had an occasion to use a Locator that costs us $30 an hour! We were flying at our R/C strip and Jim had his big Yellow Yardstick out. For you youngsters, that was a 10 footer, made from RCM plans, of 3 foot yardsticks, balsa and a tad of ply and flew with a .60. After take off Jim yelled "I ain't got it!" The Yardstick made a 90 degree left turn. We figured he was joking, again. But running out onto the field as if he could catch the plane convinced us he really didn't have it. The Yardstick turned 90 degrees left again and headed for a major highway at about 75 feet high. Over the highway it made a 90 degree right turn and headed East. Two of us drove East in my pickup on a parallel road, hoping to get ahead of it, but at the highway we saw it out over the trees, still holding altitude. It had changed course to the left out over a swamp. It was gone. The next day Jim and two others took a Cessna 182 out over the swamp and found it, in the top of a tall Cypress tree. Had out a full size plane driver spotted it, and called it in, there might have been a Rescue Party out in that swamp! That big yellow model looked like a J-3 Cub perched up in that tree! We rode three wheelers in to get it, armed with axes, chain saws, climbing ropes and a long ladder. Taking a hunting trail marked from the Cessna we went right to plane. Jim climbed the tree. When he stepped out on the limb to get it, the plane shook loose and came crashing down through the limbs to land with a thud on its wheels! Damage, one small puncture hole in the wing! The Cessna "Locator" plane was expensive, but worth it. The Yardstick flew the rest of the summer and was retired. It still hangs today, in Jim's hanger. Who says R/C flying ain't fun and exciting?

robb_h

My Feedback: (1)

We had a similar thing happen at our club. A plane was lost off the end of the runway, and was never found after many searches. Later that year, a club member and his brother spotted it rather quickly using their Cessna 150. The plane was only about 30 feet off the road! Many people thought it had gone down much further away.

Robb

aeajr

My Feedback: (2)

The Swamp story is great! And the one about the plane being only 30 feet from the runway.

I am amazed how many people have posted stories about searching for a plane with a gang of people looking, and not finding it until they walked past it on the way back to there field. Or finding it and realizing that it was "right there" all the time.

These little plane locators, at $20 or so are so cheap I am amazed that everyone isn't using them. Frankly that is one of the reasons I started this thread. People don't know about them.

So many stories of favorite planes lost, or hundreds of dollars of stuff gone, or finding the plane weeks or months later "just a few yards from where I was looking".

The one that really got me was the one about finding the plane weeks later in the back yard after the wind blew it out of the tree that was, "right in front of me" but at a position where it could not be seen.

I will never fly without a locator again. They are just too cheap and easy to use. You gotta get one of these things!

Keep the stories coming, they are great!

willyj934

My Feedback: (4)

I found plans on the web and have made several beacons. Ikeep them in most of my planes. The web site is http://www.uoguelph.ca/~antoon/gadgets/locator.htm

They are not hard to make. Luckily I have never needed to use them.

Willyj

rockmon

At our field in order to fly you have to be part blood hound just in case you loose a plane. It's not cool to loose a plane but it is funny to watch guy's take off in the direction they swore the plane went down and never find it. Most of the time it's just beyond the point that you stopped looking and the rest of the time you ran right past it because you are keeping your eye on a landmark when you first go in and are not really looking for the plane and you run right past it, that's why a lot of them are found a lot closer than you thought it went down by someone at a later time or on your way back out of the woods. A compass should be part of you field box if you fly in the woods and make sure you REALLY know how to use it, any of you guy's that hunt know what I mean by that. I learned how to use a compass when I got lost and spent the night in a swamp and had to burn my longjohns to start a fire because it was so wet, I had a compass but did not know how to use it correctly, you have to trust the compass also but that's another longjohn story.

Phi3l

I have never lost one myself, but a guy at the field with a trainer on day lost control (it looked like interference or dying battery or something) and it disappeared behind the trees. Well about 100 yards or so from the near edge of those trees is the Mississippi River. He went and looked for a while and figured it went into the river. Nobody heard any sound like an airplane hitting tree branches. I don't think that plane was ever found..........at least in that county...


Phil

Grampaw

Another full size aircraft "locator"

In a previous post about using a 182 to locate a lost model I failed to mention finding it about 7 miles out in the swamp. We'd never have found it on foot. It's very true that you can have trouble finding a plane right in front of you! Like the day we were flying off a duster strip on the edge of a big bean field. The wing and fuselage of my plane parted company. While the fuselage augered in I watched the wing flutter down into the beans, about 50 yards behind the hangar! I knew right where it was, so I went in to get it. It had rained the night before and walking in the chest high beans was impossible. I couldn't see anything and I didn't get more than ten yards off the runway! I gave up. That night I called the owner of the duster operation, a long time friend, and told him my problem. I asked him to see if he could spot my wing from his plane the next day when coming back from a job. I said if he'd mark the spot on the strip, and call me, I'd go get it out of the beans. He did more than that. Calling early the next morning he told me my wing was in his hangar, without a scratch! He found it right where I said it was. But before he called, an Ag Cat taking off to do a spray job, made an orbit over the beans and via radio directed my friend on the ground with a hand held rig, right to my wing! After retriving it, he put it in the hangar, called me, then climbed into his idling Ag Cat and took off on a spray job himself! Ag pilots really are the greatest!

basmntdweller

My Feedback: (9)

I have always been very lucky at finding planes. At one point I had found six at our local club one summer in just a couple weeks. Those I had been at the field when they went down. A couple weeks later I got a call from one of the members saying his plane had gone down in the corn field. Several members had searched for several hours that day and continued searching for several more days. He called me because I had been so lucky in recent weeks. He told me about where he thought it went down and the direction it was going when it went in. I went out to the field and there were a few guys flying. I said I was going to look for the plane. I walked less than a third of the way that he had said and found the fuse nearly buried in the soft dirt. The wing had come off and was laying up in some of the corn stalks. I walked out of the corn field carrying the plane less than ten minutes after going in! This plane had people searching more than ten hours for it. I got lucky again!
The toughest plane I ever found was in some thick trees. It was less than 10 feet high in a tree but couldn't be seen except for one very small section of red wing and then only from one angle. Standing directly under it, it wasn't visible. After finding it the first time I lost it several times trying to pin down it's exact location. I could only see it from about 50 feet away and tried to direct the owner to it. We were able to knock it down with a long branch we found on the ground. That one came out pretty good except for a few holes in the covering, several of which were caused by us knocking it out of the tree.
basmntdweller

Surfer Dude

Where i used to fly guys crashed like crazy, we used to make bets on who would be the next to go in because it happened every day. We then realized that when we did go in to bring the transmitter along and move the sticks around to hear the servos moving. It worked usually about 90% of the time, but that was when you had a pretty good idea where it was. I no longer fly at the field, I moved to a field were if you hit a tree you have major problems.
Chris

aeajr

My Feedback: (2)

Trees can be so inconvenient that way!

Bonefrost

My Feedback: (6)

I lost my Firebird in some houses by the park.
But I wrote my name and # all over it and some pool cleaner found it a week later and I went and picked it up.

My buddy also lost his Firebird in the same houses.He went up and down the streets for 2 days and finally found it on a roof.

So its possible.

aeajr

My Feedback: (2)

Well, if you want to improve your chances of finding it next time get a pair of these:

www.keyringer.com

You rubber band one on top of the wing. Flys fine!

sdavied

My Feedback: (4)

Quick story about how I found a fly-away.

A friend of mine advanced the throttle of his RV-4. Takeoff was beautiful. When he made his first turn, though, hell froze over. The airplane, at full power, stayed in a right climbing turn. We jumped in the car and chased it along dirt roads for a while, but it eventually got too high for us to see anymore. We had lost all hope of finding the airplane. Then, I had an idea. We abandonded the chase and went to the local airport several miles away. I rented an airplane and we took off to go find the lost bird. Sun was setting quickly, so we had to search fast. We looked where we thought it should be to no avail. I turned the airplane around and flew back to the model's starting point. I knew that the wind had been blowing about 10 knots from the northwest and that the RV-4 would follow the wind. So, I traced the path for about 10 miles. No luck. Surely the plane couldn't have gone this far! I decided to push on for a few more miles and then return the airport to land. The sun was just about to set and I was actually in the middle of the turn toward the airport when my friend yells "Got it!" Sure enough, there it was a mere five feet or so from a creek. We made a mental note of where the plane was located and returned to base.

Damage was unexpectedly minimal. The plane sailed through two tree braches so that the wings took the brunt of the impact. The fuselage was completely without damage. The wings had to be rebuilt, though. The RV-4 is currently in full operation. Cause of fly away was determined to be the battery disconnecting from the reciever.

hattend

My Feedback: (20)

I chose no because I don't know what "almost" means (you either lose it or you don't)

I have had some slope gliders go down on the face of the slope in tall manzanita that made it almost impossible to find but after 4 hours of walking, I have found them (sometimes finding I walked past them and was only 3-4 feet away and didn't see them - is that an "almost"?)

If I would have had a down plane beeper I could have walked right to them...but would that take the fun out of it?

Don

aeajr

My Feedback: (2)

For me, looking for a plane for 4 hours does not sound like fun, but at least you found it. I searched for 8 and never found it.

I have been telling everyone about these lost plane devices. It amazes me how few people use them. I will always have one in my planes.

tjcarita

My Feedback: (1)

If someone could figure a way to have a plume of colored smoke go up after your plane is lost. "Sound" is good, Sight would be even better!

Cactus.

My Feedback: (1)

ever crashed an electric plane? its possible lol

tjcarita

My Feedback: (1)

Crashing my electric was possible 4 times for me so far !
Some day it will be nothing but epoxi ! LoL

visioneer_one

My Feedback: (506)

I've lost *two* over the years, both sailplanes. Had a couple of close calls, too.

The heartbreaker: my first Weston Magic. Beautifully handcrafted by Frank himself. Launched it one day down at the Point of the Mountain site and flew and flew and flew and flew and flew and flew... that's odd. Why won't it come out of this thermal turn?

'cos the rx batteries are dead. Oof.

The plane held its turn, spiralling gracefully upward. It drifted high and to the east... went over the mountains, and was gone.
Never saw it again.

-==-

The 'disappearing act': my old Zagi-EPP. I was sloping this one on a cliff above te ocean. The wind started to die down, so I was flying close to the lip of the slope. Pulled too-tight a turn and stalled it - it dropped its nose and made the signature Zagi half spin, which dropped it below the edge of the cliff (and out of my line of sight). I ran to the edge... no Zagi. I don't think it went into the water, as I would have seen it floatng away - I think it went into a crack between some rocks. It may still be somewhere on that cliff, but it would be insane to risk my life in order to retrieve it.

-==-

Close call #1 : my old Skimmer 600 electric sailplane. This plane had one fundamental design flaw - its rudder was too small to turn it effectively under power. It would mush slowly if turned in one direction or would drop the nose and spiral down if turned in the other direction. This was a really bad combination for a newbie pilot! (me.)

Anyway. I was making a landing approach. I still didn't quite have the concept of 'energy management' down, so I made *long* approaches - I'd range out 700+ yards, turn and line up with the field, then attempt to glide in as slowly as possible. I stalled it and dropped a wing. I went to full power and tried to lift the stalled wing... the plane snapped into a tight nose-low spiral. I froze on the sticks, and watched as the plane spun down and disappeared behind the trees of the swamp which bordered the NE edge of our field.

Fearing the worst my instructor and I slogged off into the swamp. We were sure that the plane was rubble, but were determined to at least retrieve the radio gear.

Did I mention that I was wearing warm-up shirts and running shoes?

Did I mention that it was mid May, and that the spring thaw was well underway?

We spent at least an hour criscrossing that damned swamp. Got sliced up by sawgrass... munched upon by mosquitos and blackflies... stepped into knee-deep mud and lost a sneaker, then had to retrieve the sneaker... stepped on something which I *think* was a snake, but didn't wait around to find out

Filthy and exhausted, we decided to quit. We were at the outer edge of the swamp, and figured that it would be less taxing to walk across the golf course which bordered the swamp then back to the field than going back through the swamp.

We pushed through the shrubbery and walked onto the fairway. Not twenty feet away from where we stood was my sailplane - without a mark on it! It had landed itself perfectly - there was even a long, straight 'slide trail' in the grass marking its path after touchdown.

My instructor was astounded. Called me "one lucky José." Whatever that means.

We collected the plane and walked back to the field, trailing bits of mud and grass all the way.

Yak, yak, yak. Got two other lucky retrieval stories, but I have some errands to run. I'll post them later.

aeajr

My Feedback: (2)

Now, if you had a plane locator in that plane, you could have saved youself a slog in the swamp....... blah blah blah.

See how boaring I can be?