OMG, this weekend has being bad for me.
We finally had a couple of good flying days after 2 weeks of 20 MPH winds.
Thinking that I was going to fly Fri I charged the NiMh batteries in my planes Thurs night, Fri was too windy so I didnt fly, Sat I go to the field very excited to fly. Used a volt meter to checked the batteries, one read OK the other read charge. So that is what I did, flew the OK and charge the other one.
Well 5-6 mins in the air and the battery went. Plane went in a spiral and a tree ate it.
The other plane is new to me, I bought it used 1 month ago, I have fly it only once, no problems.
So I set my timer for 10 mins (hate deadsticks) and up I went. After 3 mins of flying mid throttle I tried to increase it for a loop and there was no throttle control, i tried the trim all the way down and nothing, there is a throttle cutt buttom in my Dx6i but I have not enable it for this model. I was at a lost, there were 3 other people at the field and I yelled for help but they were gone for the day.
So I flew it in the pattern for another 10 excruciating mins, they felt like forever. Finally the $%^&@# ran out of fuel and I got a deadstick, landed it softly in one piece. The wire has come out of the throttle arm, there was some oil spill and it just slided out. I guess the screw was not too tight.
Out of two incidents I lost a plane and got two more gray hairs because of the other
There is this old flyer in my club that always said after one crash it is time to go, before you have the time to crash another one

You did go through everything on the used plane didn't you? Check for loose screws and wires? If not I bet you will from now on.
I have a young friend that gave up flying a couple years ago, he now wants to get back into it. He brought his planes over for repairs so I went ahead and told him I would check his batteries for him on my cycler. His 6 volt battery would only go up to 3 volts. That's a tosser. His 4.8 volt 1100 mah battery took a full charge but would cycle down to 285 mah and start charging again. I gave it a couple trys and it did the same thing. If you had an old battery like that and it would take a charge but would only put out 285 mah from an 1100 mah battery that would be a problem for you. A battery should pull at least 80% of it's mah or it's a tosser. It should have pulled at least 880 mah to be any good. Cycle and you can be sure you have a good battery with all cells working correctly. Tighten all screws and things don't come loose. I go through all the screws in my planes several times a year. I always find loose screws, vibration will do that.

Of Course.............I didnt.[X(]
 I change the plug and that was it. I almost pay the price today.
You bet I will be checking all the screws from now on.
The Easy Sport that the tree ate had a new battery, Im going to change it to the used Funtana.

This is not really unusual I've had it happen myself. Strange how very long a flight can be!!

I had an engine mount break loose when flying once. Because of this I had no throttle response. So I decided that I would try to kill the engine by pointing the nose striaght up. It had a OS 91 fs in it and when we pulled the nose of the plane up the motor would slide back and the throttle would close. Problem was you would loose enough airspeed that it would flop over towards the ground before the engine would die and would go to full throttle headed sraight down. It finally ran out of fuel but with the engine bouncing around it did a number on the cowl. Just one of those freak accidents but we laugh about it now. Well actually, we laughed about it while it was happening too.

That is not normal.
Something is wrong with your charger, batteries or voltmeter.
Is yours a loaded voltmeter?

http://www.hangtimes.com/redsbatteryclinic.html

I have found new packs usually take 4 {four} cycles on a good charger before they will charge to full capacity. I'm not even a big fan of the little wall wart chargers. New batteries can also have a cell problem right out of the box.

MAKE YOUR OWN DISCHARGER CHEAP!

Every RCer should have an expanded scale voltmeter. Use it before every flight in the beginning days of each flying season and any time you have a doubt about the battery.

Cut a servo extension lead in half and solder bannana plugs onto the ends so you have both ends coming off bannana plugs. Solder a female end onto a common 12v car light bulb and heat shrink it (tape won't work cuz they heat up).
Plug the bannana plugs into the expanded scale volt meter, battery on on end and light bulb on the other. now you can discharge any flight or radio battery to the correct discharge level.
Don't go in the red. Recharge with whatever you have for a charger. Wallwarts work just fine for this. 16 hours charge time. Repeat 2 to 5 times and you should be good to go.
Cycle the batteries every spring and the new packs as mentioned and any time they have been stored. Charge all the batteries a couple times over the winter too.

G'day

I know just how it feels to have a throttle no longer work. Some time ago I was flying my Four Star 60 with its Saito 100 and having a nice time when I noticed that I could reduce power to about half but not below. It was far too high to allow me to land to I flew around for about 15 minutes while the fuel was used up and then had a nice dead stick landing. Dead sticks don't worry me because I used to fly old timers and gliders and a dead stick is a normal condition for these models.

Anyway, the landing was the best I had ever done with the Four Star and then I started to investigate. The answer was obvious. One engine mount bolt had disappeared, and three others were very loose and the engine had moved forward mount and all pulling on the throttle and restricting its range. Fortunately the bolts were still partly engaged when I landed. I cleaned up and refitted the mount with some thread locker.

I have quite a large number of models. A few are flown often and these get regular attention but the others which are flown only infrequently need extra treatment. When I decide to fly a model that has not been flown for a while I check the model over for loose bolts etc and then discharge the battery and note its capacity. I then charge it slowly overnight and then discharge it again and note the capacity again. If it is within 80% or so of its rated capacity I then charge again and go flying. Any thing less and it gets replaced. Since I have been doing this I have not had too many surprises when flying models which have been in storage for a while.

Mike in Oz

Thanks for that link, there is a ton of good info there.

I always say, "End hour day with a good landing if you still have a plane to fly".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql5wi1YiyAA

Yep...battery maintainence is of the first order of importance in this hobby...everything sort of revolves around battery performance. The more planes you have, the more work ya gotta do to make sure they stay healthy.

I have a Sea Monster flying boat. (thankfully, STILL have it )
The throttle servo crapped out a couple minutes after take-off, at a throttle setting of a few clicks above idle. Almost full tank of fuel...9 oz. and a TT .46 at a speed that was just a bit too fast to land, and not much above stall.
I putt-putted that thing around in ground (water? ) effect for almost half an hour, at an altitude of about 2 or 3 feet, max altitude I could get it up to was about eye level...until it finally ran out of fuel...


Reminds me of another time when a friend had his throttle stick wide open. At full throttle, the 3D type plane (IIRC it was a Morris the Knife? ) would flutter virtually all of the control surfaces, so he had to loop, roll, tumble, etc. etc. non stop for the rest of the flight to keep it from over-speeding and fluttering itself to death...

[quote]ORIGINAL: Gray Beard


I had one of these "wall wart" chargers fail last year. It was for a Futaba 4YF system. That transmitter only has two LED's, one red and one green to show battery levels. The red one is supposed to flash when the battery starts to get low. The problem is that I was using that radio in my trainer to teach new pilots. My attention is firmly placed in the air when I'm teaching. I used the wall charger for both tx and rx, and the voltwatch on the plane showed a fully charged battery. The green LED on the transmitter was also brightly lit, so I assumed that it was also good. We were only about 3 or 4 minutes into the first flight when I lost control of the plane and it spiralled in. I immediately looked down at the transmitter, trying to figure out what had happened, and the red LED was not flashing, it was solid. If it had done any flashing, it didn't do it for long.
After charging the transmitter overnight again with that charger, it only lasted a few minutes again before the red LED came on. I still don't recall it flashing, but it may have. Just to make sure that the battery had gone bad, I charged it using my Accu-Cycle, and guess what.... it worked fine. I tried the wall charger on another transmitter battery and it failed to charge that one as well. The charger was definitely the culprit, even though the LED on it said that it was working. I threw it away.
There should be an audible alarm on that transmitter. I don't know very many pilots that ever look at their transmitter while they're flying, they're watching their plane and the airspace around them. An audible alarm would have allowed me to save that plane.