I was up with my instructor today and he had just told me that a couple more good landings and he was going to pull the cord and cut me loose. Well, he had no sooner said that when my plane went crazy and then went in like a lawn dart. I was flying high, probably about 500 ft or so and out quite a ways as there was a guy making some runs on the runway with a big scale war bird and I was trying to give him a lot of room. I have no idea what happened other than when I made a turn back, it pitched over on it's nose and went straight down. Neither me or the instructor had any say where it was going. Behind our field is some viniards and then a creek bed with a small mountain behind. As best we could tell, it went straight to the creek bed which we then found out was down in a 50ft deep gully that was completely overgrown with posion oak and brush, along with some big ole trees. Standing at the deer fence, you couldn't see in more than 20 to 30 ft. We couldn't find a way around other than through the creek about a 1/4 mile away. With the rains, you couldn't even get through with a four wheel. I've been plotting out some farm roads on Google Earth that may, and it a big May, get me back behind the creek so I can get a look from another direction. I'm going to check that out tomorrow.

Two questions as a result of today. Are the plane locators any good?? I never though of them much until today. 20 20 hind site.

Second question, is would a fail safe setup have done me any good? I dont really know what happened, although I think it may have been one of the club members turning on his transmitter which was on my channel. It could have been that my receiver died, it was in a crash a couple weeks back but has seen eight to ten flights since. It could have been a structural failure of the tail, or I could have hit a bird I guess. I was just to far out to really be able to tell. My instructor though I got it into a knife edge and it stalled out. Only problem with that is that the straing down should have answered to elevator I would think. I had full up all the way in and so did my instructor. Seems like we should have seen some response. It took about five seconds or so to make the trip down.

Don