Well some good news and some bad news.


First the good news. The weather finally turned in my favor. I mowed the runway down to 3". Today was a good day to fly later in the afternoon. I did a nice takeoff, shallow climb to altitude. I found that I could still fly after all these years that have gone by. The plane was well behaved. No trim needed. I really felt good. I decided to fly rectangular patterns around the runway.


And now the Bad News. Making the fourth turn with the plane flying directly at me, something went wrong. The plane just spun in. Too fast to react. My first thought was that it went into fail safe as it reacted how I had fail safe set up. Doing the post crash investigation, I don't believe it was fail safe. Thinking more pilot error. The controls were not in the fail safe position. The radio n servos still worked. using binoculars I went a good distance away n radio still functioned good.
Just before the third turn in the pattern, I reduced the throttle a bit. I think I may have accidently reduced the throttle in the fourth turn and just stalled the airplane. Since the plane was turning toward me I did not have a good perception of speed.
Anyway, the Debonair is gone. no damage to the engine. The wing has a crack which may be repairable. I may give it to my granddaughter if she wants it. It has her name. Back to the building board. I can salvage some from the old plane and build another wing if I need to. Debonair II coming up. Without the paint. Just plain ole plain.

At at least it was not my Ugly Stik. That would have been hard to take.


The picture shows the plane facing the runway ready for takeoff. Second picture shows the crash on the runway. I flew a nice tight pattern.