Well I got my Don's 4800 installed into the Rafale and took if out for its maiden flight yesterday... I think it now fly’s a littler faster with Don's motor as compared to stock and best part is not a single heat issue...

Now comes the wild part of yesterdays flying, on the 3rd flight I decided to try a 2200 mah battery I had laying around for my Trex Helicopter. Flight wise all went really well, you could tell it had some added weight but the balance seemed fine and top speed wise it was about the same just a little less glide with the added weight but on the positive side was the 10 minutes of flight time I got.

Now comes the really wild part on the 5th flight I was doing some inverted passes and all sudden I see something fly off and the plane and then the plane was all over the place. I could hardly fly it all, just fighting it to get control and trying to keep it level, I shut power off and fought the thing all way down to the crash.

Well walking out to see the damage, I go by and pick up the piece that had feel off, it was the canopy and I thought hum, once I got to the plane I saw what had happen was the Velcro had come lose and the battery had dropped out of the plane. Apparently the battery got warm enough that the Velcro tape became soft and that caused the battery to fall out knocking the canopy off.

On the good side amazingly I was able to get enough control that I didn’t auger it into the ground it was more like a 25 degrees splat. After inspection I am suprised I got it down that well. I hit level so really the only things that it did was dent the heck out nose cone, broke a little piece of foam off the right wing tip, lots of scuffs from the tall grass, broke a piece of foam off around the canopy area from where the battery wire was hanging outside the plane and it also broke loose the front landing gear mount and bent the others, all and all really lucky because it could have flown again that day with just some glue on the front landing gear mount.

But now I think since it scuffed up the paint pretty bad in several places, it's time for a new cool paint job and the nose cone probably is going to need replacing if I want it to look as good as new....


Electron