Lost and Found
 

OK, I'm sure most of you have had a similar experience like this. Last spring I was out flying one of my OLD Jr. Falcons, 2 channel with a Medallion 049 on it. When I say old, I'm not kidding. Futaba Gold series AM radio, two S-28 pin type servos, and a 7 channel am reciever. (It fits if you remove the case and wrap it in foam.) Anyway, it was blowing about 15mph so the upwind leg was "hold it straight into the wind and wait...and wait...then wait some more." The downwind was "Count to 3 then turn before you lose sight of it." I was letting a freind's 12 year old son have a turn at the sticks and he was doing the usual "Wow, this is waaaay different than X-Box" and he happened to get too far downwind. By the time he handed me the box it was just a tiny yellow speck (this field is about 1 mile square.) By the time I figured which way it was headed it was out of range and going for the turf. I got a bead on where it went down so we trotted off after it. We walked and walked, this field hasn't been cut in quite a few years and some of the brush is over 7' tall.

After a couple of hours we got tired of the brush, the sticker bushes, and the wet areas and called it a day. I went back the next day with my Durango and drove out to the general area, put a stepladder on the roof and scanned the area with a set of 50X binoculars. No go. Over the next week I came in from the south, the west, and the north, brought help, but seems it was gone.

About a month ago, I noticed the brush and weeds had died back for the winter and decided to have another look. Found it right where I had "Beaded" it when it crashed. First I found half a wing. The rest was scattered over about 40' like an F-16 crash site. I found most of the plane, the reciever, battery and both servos. (Still works except for one servo) but no motor. So I marked the spot and called my buddy to borrow his metal detector, which took another week to get.

I acually came across it the first hit, but after digging around a while and not coming up with it, I figured it must have been some small peice of metal. After going through the rest of the crash site I went back to the first spot and dug a lot deeper. Found it almost a foot down. I didn't even recognize it at first, it looked more like one of those wreck diving TV shows. "It's hard to tell Bob, it could be a 1600's cannon ball, maybe the ship's bell, or a flask of Captain Morgan, won't know till we get it cleaned up."

So I brushed off the bulk of the junk, then soaked it for a few days and started the disassembly with the heat gun. Then more soaking and clean up. A new piston/cylinder/head from Bernie later and a new needle she hand started and ran fine. By the second tank she was spinning a cox grey at 18,400. Now all I need to do is decide what to build for it.

RE: Lost and Found
 

How about a Jr. Falcon

RE: Lost and Found
 

I have 3 more running. 1 is 3 channel electric, 2 and 3 are 4 channel, 1 electric, 1 with NV .061. Almost thinking of a Q-Tee, the current thread has got me thinking of my old one.

RE: Lost and Found
 

Heres some incentive to put together another Jr Falcon. Scratch built this one off Fritzke's plans, flies great on 2 chanels Kraft AM radio & cox Golden bee!....Gene

RE: Lost and Found
 

Very Nice Gene! Canopy and landing gear. I run all of mine sans landing gear as my airstrip across the street is rough to say the least. I have to dodge catus, palmettos, and random brush when landing. Keeps me on my toes!

RE: Lost and Found
 

Amazing how quickly something like this turns into an archeological project. I've lost a few 1/2A engines that way.
I've learned to lay the radio down with the antenna pointed straight at where the plane went down and to ID some type of background feature to help maintain a narrow area to limit the search.
The easiest 1/2A planes to find are usually combat wings that are still towing a streamer. Sometimes they get hung up in the chest high grass with the engine still running.

RE: Lost and Found
 

Wow, an interesting story. At least there is closure. I lost my all yellow Goldberg 1/2-A Skylane back in Summer 1978 due to a strong updraft before driving rain in North Little Rock, Arkansas. The updraft was so strong that I could not spiral the single channel down. It's probably a rancher's find in Kansas somewhere.

RE: Lost and Found
 

You know CP, all my control line crashes were A LOT easier to find:D

RE: Lost and Found
 

Ahh, so that's what those lines are for.

With RC I usually bring the radio and wiggle the servos and listen for the sound. Works in tall grass where there is no damage, only hard to spot the little ones...

RE: Lost and Found
 

The crash sites can be dramatic, but I've never seen a CL model buried a foot deep in the earth. :D

RE: Lost and Found
 

Good job. Now come up here and find my Nelson that has been hiding in the hills for 4 years.:D

RE: Lost and Found
 

i fly a lot in the wheat fields around home and the first couple of times i "landed" way out in the chest high grass it took forever to find and i'm talking about larger .15 sized planes....learned really quick that as soon as it goes down to look straight up and find something like a tree off in the distance that's directly in line and to march straight for it.

RE: Lost and Found
 

I lost a 40 size plane once back 30 years ago. I saw it "land" up in a pine tree, but it was in so deep and high in the tree I couldn't even see it. Finally blew down about 6 months later and I found it at the base of the tree. I brought the engine (an FP 40) back to life and finally retired it about 2 years ago. They will take lots of abuse EXCEPT lean runs. That will take them out in a weekend.

RE: Lost and Found
 

And it's always farther than you think.:(

RE: Lost and Found
 

Hi Hllywdb

Reminded me of the PT40 I had in early 80's that got a tree between me & it. Well it hit the tree line bordering the 40 acres. I gave up on finding it after a couple of days searching to include using a 3-wheeler.

About a week later with a rain coming I got to thinking about the 40FP and radio components. Went to the local field & got a full scale ride. Did turn up a few things (my stomach for one, when the pilot stood that small plane on its' wing & circled my rc plane).

That plane had gone about 75 feet into the tree line, and still hanging in a tree. Still have that OS with a DDD head in a Kyosho Cub.

T-man49 in Al
Saito 723
NV gasser enthusiast
in waiting

RE: Lost and Found
 

I am in total agreement with Combat Pig about laying your transmitter down with gthe ant. pointing to the last place yrhat you saw your model.
Also the model is always further than you think.[Thank you Bobby stephens.] Many stories about loosing models and how to find them.
RC DOC

RE: Lost and Found
 

Practically the same thing that hllywdb had happen happened to me when I was flying with my sister. She had the radio and was flying a .049 powered "Nickle". I got distracted for a minute while talking to someone else and by the time I looked at the plane again it was "specked out".
It flew OOS beyond the horizon of Douglas Firs. It had to be at least 1/4 to a 1/2 mile out of bounds of the field.
A few days later I stopped by Tim's Hobbies in Everett and Tim was there as usual. He started asking me some funny questions about what I've been up to lately and I told him about losing the plane. I bought something and was about to say "goodbye" to him, but he told me to wait for a minute and he reached behind a nearby wall and handed me the plane..!!
He was out for a walk in the woods near his house with his wife and out of the corner of his eye he spotted some bright color.
I've told this story here before, but it's been awhile.....:D
I have 2 other unbelievable crash stories, [not counting C/L Combat Tales] but will save those for another thread.

RE: Lost and Found
 

The hardest thing to find for me was when a wing blew off in mid flight, the fuselage made an arrow trajectory into a crop-field, while wing slowly went down with the wind elsewhere...

RE: Lost and Found
 

Im with MrCox on this one I watch for where it goes in, fix a target in front of me and behind me, take the radio hoping the batterey is still connected and listen for servos when I think Im close to it..lost one in a soybean field up at Deadstick Dans field and this one guy with a huge stick with a weedwhacker and no muffler just kept on buzzing the field with victory turns so I couldnt hear anything!..I did finallly find it..got close to goin over an stompin that stick, but I went back and bought some fuel out of a guys van instead....think I left shortly after that........But if anyone could bury a control liine a foot deep...fellas it would be CP! hahahahah...Rog

RE: Lost and Found
 

This happened when I was a lot younger. Me and my buddys where watching Sunday football and having a few cannisters of happiness. When all of a sudden we hear a big bang. We go out side and there is a glider with a cox pod on it lying by the house. I bring the plane inside and take off the wing and there is the guys info in there. I call him and and let him we found his plane. He then says he's going to give us a reward for finding it. I said how about a case of beer seeing we where all out and packy's in those days where closed on Sundays. He shows up about an hour later not with a case but 2 cases. We thought we hit the lottery.

RE: Lost and Found
 

Congrats on your find and reward. The builder was probably just happy you were honest enough to give him a call instead of keeping his plane, and probably glad his plane didn't break anything (like a window).

RE: Lost and Found
 

You have a lot of neat stories there, combatpigg, I really enjoy hearing about them. I think it great your sister enjoys flying, too. One of our club members is in his mid 70's, his wife is also a flier. They both fly together.

We'll need to hear about your C/L Combat Tales. [8D]

RE: Lost and Found
 

He was so happy not only to have the plane back but there really wasn't any damage at all. The funny thing is the plane hit about 3/4" of an inch away from there huge picture window. I asked him what happened and he said he lost signal. He was flying at the local Golf coarse about 2 miles away.

RE: Lost and Found
 

Roger,

That soybean field at my flying site can make anything disappear. When I was testing the purple littlest stik with the black widow it was way too far downwind and ran outta gas. Looked till dark and had to come back the next day...turns out it tried to hide under the soybeans and I had almost stepped on it twice! Purple stik is on the shelf...waiting for our snow...I hope the weather doesn't mess up the Burlington swap meet! We need to get the Carolina Crew together.


Deadstik

RE: Lost and Found
 

Here's another "serendipitous" tale about RC SNAFUing.
I was pretty new to RC and way too eager to fly everyday. I had a 6 foot span Olympic 650 with a Cox TD on a power pod mount and was flying at a school yard in the middle of town.
It was extremely windy for this area and I let the plane drift too far down range. It didn't have enough altitude to make it home and it went down OOS in the direction of a populated area. All I could do was collapse the antenna and curse my stupidity all the way home. By the time I got home I had a phone message to come back into town to pick up my plane. The home owner turned out to be a construction worker from a different trade than mine who I had bumped into a few times over the years on large projects down in Seattle. We knew each other from sight, but had never talked much before.
As it turns out, his wife was doing the dishes and looking out the window when she saw the glider fly through power lines. The lines seperated the rubberbanded wing from the fuselage...but the javelin like fuselage kept coming at her. She froze and stood there as it struck the wooden mullion that divided the panes of glass at her sink's window. It didn't crack the glass, but it dented the wooden mullion.
IIRC, I gave them some beer to help forget that the whole thing had ever happened.....[8D]