After about 75 flights on my Seagull Edge without a scratch, I dinged it. On approach, perhaps 20 feet in the air and close to the end of the runway, I suddenly got hit-- I dont know from what. My elevators went instantly down and before I could regain control, hit the sand at the end of the runway, and then bounced up onto the runway proper. The landing gear splayed out on each side until the plane was inches off the ground. The gear is aluminum, so it must have absorbed a lot of energy to bend like that, because I cant bend them by hand, or with a pair of pliers. Inspection revealed a dirty cowling and underside of the fuselage, but not one crack or former bent or broken. I had a friend with a vise straighten the gear, cleaned up the plane, put the gear back on, and it is as good as new. What a great value and design!!! Now, what caused the glitch is scaring me. Cell phone? What can cause a glitch like that?

I am guessing that its not a cell phone. We ran tests at our field and found that a cell phone needs to be within 10 feet to affect a plane. Farther away and there is no interference. With the cell phone close to the plane, some of the servos would jump and jitter intermittently. Immediatly noticeable if you have the engine running and the throttle servo starts to twitch! Thats how I first found out about the problem. I was breaking in a new flyers engine and the plane was held back by a rope so it didn't go anywhere. The engine started to rev up and down when a guy walked up with his cell phone on. Back to your problem, I have seen about 5 planes at our field now that suddenly do a turn to a slight angle and stay there until they crash. Being curious about what happened I stuck around until the plane was retreived and inspected. In all the cases the cause was the battery pack for the receiver was depleted. Since the elevators suddenly went down and stayed there, it sounds a lot like the same symptoms. You said you had about 75 flights on the plane and now you have a technical problem so maybe time to do a cycle on the reciever pack and see if thats got something to do with it?? If nothing else its a good start. [8D]

In the last few months I've read alot about receivers and transmitter problems partly due to some problems I've experienced. Some of the things I've discovered are: Never point the transmitter with the antenna pointing straight at the plane, the signal is weakest from the tip of the antenna and doing so may result in "lost" transmission. Always test batteries before each flight. I've gone to the field many times with what I thought was a fully charged battery only to find after one flight it was not safe to fly again. Last summer I was flying my Twist when I suddenly lost control of thr plane as I was landing. The plane landed very hard and tore off the gear. I thought I got a "hit" some how. I repaired the plane and headed back to the field a few days later. When I turned the plane on the plane didn't react for maybe 5 seconds and then there was movement in the servos. I turned the plane off and back on again and after maybe 5 minutes while sitting on the bench the plane lost the transmission. The problem ended up being a bad crystal. If I had flown the plane I would have lost it. You have to be almost a detective at times when it comes to transmitters and receivers. good luck

Never would have thought to look for a bad crystal unless the Rx. was in a few crashes maybe. On the battery condition before each flight, an easy way to check this to have a Voltwatch installed in each plane. You just look at the LEDs and see what color is lit up. One of these saved my Sea Fury once. Batterys were reading good until I landed after a 3d flight. The green lights were out, only the red one at the end was on. Turned out the pack had a bad cell in it. Cheap insurance and I install them under the canopy in all my new planes. [8D]

I looked at everything before I figured it being the crystal, I think someone on this forum suggested I look at the crystal as well.