This morning I went to the field to watch a friend maiden a new plane. It was a Cessna 182 with a Magnum .91 four-stroke in it. Very nice looking plane. It trimmed right out to hands off level flight with just a few clicks of aileron. Then proceeded to fly quite nicely. He flew it a couple of times & it did real nice rolls for a high-wing plane, I was pleasantly surprised with the way it flew. On the third flight it took a hit, or so we thought. He lost complete control of the aircraft. Much the way my Dragon 40 did, it would not respond to any imputs & just had a mind of it's own. It dipped a wing, then dipped the other wing, & then just went straight in with a full head of steam![:@] I have never seen a spinner in so many pieces in my life. It shattered into at least 50 to 60 tiny little pieces. So we fetched up the carnage & brought it all back to the pitts & set it on the table. After awhile he turned the radio back on & it just chattered away with all the servos twitching violently. Our other friend pointed out that usually when you take a radio hit you will still have some control left, that at least one control surface usually still works & that was not the case here. So with that in mind he thought maybe he had a cracked crystal. So we took the crystal out of the reciever & put another one in & sure enough, Charlie was right. It worked rock solid. Come to find out this reciever & crystal had come out of another crashed airplane. Now I have seen you guys preach about not using recievers after a crash for over a year now. I must admit that I have been guilty of not heeding this advice. It gets hard sometimes not to use them when they still appear to be ok & they range check, I use them simply because I can't allways afford to replace them with new ones. A new reciever & crystal plus taxes gets up close to another $100 for me. If you need larger recievers than I use then it could get even more expensive. I am however going to try to use only new stuff in new planes from here on in. The price of a new crystal in this case cost him a $200 ARF!
So I have now seen first hand what you guys have been saying can happen all along. I am now a humbled believer.