Well I had taken Gentle Lady out on last weekend with my new highstart and had one of those heart stopping moments that every pilot dreads over. This should probably go into the crash section but read on.....maybe not.

In determining the number of paces to launch my Gentle Lady, I counted about 40 paces of rubber and ended up doing several launches, a few at 50 paces which resulted in a very nice launch in light wind, and a 60 pace launch into light wind. My last launch got it up to about 250-300 ft I'm guessing and it was about at the height I normally get from the winch. I circled around for a few times trying to find something but the wind was a little stronger up there and I wasnt getting any penetration. All of a sudden I lost all contact with the plane.......absolutely nothing. All I could do was watch it continue to circle around with my last radio input. It kept traveling around in simi tight circles as it was losing altitude. I started walking towards where I knew the wind would be blowing and it traveled the length of the field. I started heading east and and watched it as it almost clipped a tree and finally was ready to land itself on the concrete parking lot......my poor GL and its perfect monokote job. On its last circle around in narrowly missed the curb, flew a few feet back onto the grass and brushed a wingtip on the grass spinning it around and doing some sort of weird 360 on its nose like a top. I went over to it and just realized I got extremely lucky....no damage at all to my plane or anything else. The cause was a broken wire in the battery cable next to the plug. And to think this battery was in my composite sloper just the day before. Maybe I should have stayed in bed that day...