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

My vote is for shot down or your receiver lost power. It doesn't necessarily mean the battery is at fault because usually it is the switch. Let us know if you ever find the airplane and then we can help you go through checking out each part of the radio system. I had a similar incident with my pride and joy extra 300 a few years back. I didn't secure the battery and it pulled itself out on an outside loop. She went straight in... Ouch...

Failsafe may have helped some, but it doesn't work wonders. If someone shot you down, and you had failsafe, you could program the failsafe to hold the last input or tell all the servos to go to neutral. At this time you could start screaming at the top of your lungs and hopefully someone realizes their mistake and turns off the radio and you can start flying again. As far as keeping power to the receiver, a redundant switch system, battery, digital failsafe switch (that fails on instead of off) could all help. I hope this helps out. Hang in there, crashing happens, but the hobby is totally worth it.

I hadn't considered the switch. Have to mull that one over.

My plane started out as a Laniar Elplorer 40. I hated the way it flew, and I was very unhappy with the workmanship in the plane. I got the chance to change some things due to first a hard landing that took out the main landing gear mount, then a hard take-off the busted out the firewall and broke the former at the front of the wing. Got it back to gether and then really tore it up hitting the top rail of a fence. That one totaled the fuselage and put a ding in the leading edge of the wing. I built a new fuselage, stick style, and changed the wing geometory, extended the fuselage two inches forward and three inchs aft. This got rid of about four oz of lead under the engine. It was really flying good. I used some undersized nylon screws holding the new landing gear on and I was planning to fix that tonight when things went south.

I had complained to Lanair about the quality of the plane and they sent me a wing kit at a reduced price and I had never gotten around to trying it. Think I'll build a clone of what I lost today. Just wish I could get that OS 52 four stroke back though. Sweet running engine.

This is a photo of the rebuild before covering. I used day-glow pink on the fuselage because the plane was hard to see with any clouds. Should help locat it if I can ever get close.

Did you ask if anyone turned on? Usually, the loudest 'NOT ME!' is the guy who owes you a new airplane. It's a big risk, trusting people to follow the rules when you have a multi-thousand dollar gasser over your head...or any airplane for that matter.

You either got shot-down or BADLY thumbed it in, which is possible if you got into a spin and fought it all the way down.

I hope you find it. Where is the field in AG? I travel that way on occasion...would be nice to check it out.

Good Luck!!

If the fault was a control horn of clevis letting go, a firewall cracking or other mechanical fault, no, a failsafe would be of no help. Also, if it is a case of another transmitter, the receiver still has a signal and will follow the strongest. No again.

The failsafe may have throttled you down and brought her back in a big turn with rudder. Or, depending on the attitude of the plane at the time, may have knife edged you into the ground at low speed if contact could not be reestablished. Failsafes just revert to preset positions. Those positions may not be what are needed to avoid the ground, or level the aircraft.

I tell my students to stay closer and lower than you were flying so they can tell what is going on better. A guy shooting landings with a warbird doesn't need you to be flying in the next county or in the stratosphere. Sure give him some room but you have rights too. It would also make it easier to find your plane in this case. If he can't tolerate you being at a reasonable place in the sky then he can stay on the ground if you were there first.
Sorry you lost your plane. It can also be a cracked crystal or intermittant RX problem caused by the previous crash.

I dont think it was thumbs that did it. It went in like a lawn dart from way up.

Check our club web site. I just took it over and I've got a ton of work to do on it, but the basics are there and include some problems I've introduced. IE when viewing the slide shows, do a single click on starting the show and wait a bit. A double click starts two shows and they fight each other. kind of like what may have happened to my plane.

Oh yes. Sloflyers.com

Don

Sorry to hear about the loss of your plane its tough to deal with....i remember when i lost mine....my heart sunk in my chest and i felt sick. i was mad cuz i had pilot error and should of been smarter...i put it up to high close to 800-1000 feet and looked away for one second and lost it. next thing i notice is someone pointing out to were it is....doing a dive going down at full speed. it happends to all of us ive been flying for 8 years and ive crashed 2 planes so far, both my fault lol

Now as for finding the plane....do you guys have anyone who flys real planes at all? There are a couple guys at our flying field who fly the real planes and sometimes they fly over our flying field looking for downed planes. they then can spot or notice the bright colors of the plane. and then get a good map that shows the area and pinpoint a somewhat more specific area where it would of gone down. if you know the general direction you so it nose down into then id head into that direction. setup landmarks and such. me and my dad did that for the plane i crashed, and actually walked pretty close to it, we didnt find it that day someone else did during the winter we marked out the general areas in the trees where we thought it went down and then proceeded to walk into that space and cover the area inbetween those 2 markers. we used trees for markers, like the taller tree, boulder, etc...that sort of thing. im sure you can recover it, and the electronics will still work i still use the receiver from this crashed plane that sat out at in the swamp/reed area for almost one entire flying season. the receiver works just as good as the day i got it, no glitches, nothing, its amazing what the electronics can take even though my battery was toast, lol it went flying thru the canopy and went into the ground about 1-2feet lol. wings split in half, but fuselage was fully intake, kinda surprised me.

you could buy a new plane to if you liked that way you could get to flying faster then you could have a backup plane to. well good luck finding your plane, im sure you will, and im sure the repairs on it wont be to bad for the fuselage, probably will require a little more work on the wing, good luck

David

this helps to...ive done this before...when i crash a plane....i look online for a new one or at the catalogs and then withing a week or so i end up buying another plane then the feelings of the crashed plane go away, ya!! [8D]

I was definatly to far out to get a good look at what was going on. I just get a little tense when there is another plane in the air near me, and I give them all the room I can. Maybe to much in this case.

Laying in bed last night going over what happened and what may have lead up to the crash, two incidents came to mind that may have been pre-cursors to the crash. I fly on Monday, Wed and Fri, so the first would have been last Friday when the plane went dead throttle on a landing approach and ended up in the weeds next to the runway. I couldn't get it to throttle up, but the prop was still turning when it touched down. I attributed it to a low end mix problem and made an adjustment and the engine was running really well after. I had one other incident, again on landing and this one I chalked up to dumb thumbs and a stall at about two feet up. Both could have been the receiver stuttering I guess.

I sat down last night and built up a shopping list for what I lost. I about choaked on the final price at Towers list prices. I included every screw, collar, glue, covering, etc in the list and this little plane had $807.14 worth of parts at list prices. Those 5 and 10 dollar trips to the hobby shop sure add up quick don't they.

yea i know the feeling man

i just bought a Raptor 50v2 heli and a 7chp radio. combined that costs me $800 it adds up fast. but its a fun addicting hobby!

Yep, when the plane ignores you it's time to find out why. It gave you fair warning and you missed it unfortunately. For some reason you lost radio contact on BOTH occasions and the second time it cost you your plane.[] A trip to the radio Dr. for the radio system would have been a lot cheaper than what you are going through now. Ain't hindsight great? Assuming you do find the plane, I recommend you send EVERYTHING in the radio system to a shop for a check-up. RX, batteries, switches, anything that flew. Sent the TX too if you suspect it in ANY way or if you have changed the crystal yourself. ANY damaged switches on the TX? I broke my trainer switch on mine and lost a plane because it dropped into "instructor mode" in mid-flight and I couldn't regain control of my plane.

Just a thought to consider: once the plane is in a spin full up elavator garantees that it will stay that way all the way to the ground. I have had it happen to me! You would swear up and down that it was something else.

When a plane is that far away it can stall very easily without you even knowing it. It starts it's spin to the ground and then you hit full up elevator and that keeps it going. I'm not saying it couldn't be something else but that is what it sounds like.

It sounds like a plane locator may have helped in this situation. Finding a downed plane even in light cover can be a pain, but the ground where yours went down sounds like really tough country to search. Spending the money on a PCM receiver w/failsafe settings wouldn't hurt, but it wouldn't do anything to prevent an awful lot of other things that can cause a crash.

Good luck, and happy shopping!

Wow 800 bucks in a little airplane. Sorry to hear about your loss. I dont know what I'd do if I lost my 2500 dollar Extra 260. I'd probably get another. Hehe. What eflight said is so true though. If you want to ever either get over a crash or get over the fear of crashing, just look through a catalog, find something you really really like, and tell yourself, I can only buy it after I crash my current. :P

In regards to the spin theory, he said it went straight in so it doesn't sound like there was any rotation to the dive. Also, full up elevator would flatten out the spin, but usually RC airplanes are designed so stable that it would just pull out without any rudder input.

Quick question. Did you range check with the engine on before flying? Sometimes at certain RPM ranges there can be intermittent RX problems due to a bad crystal or other components that may be damaged. I always range check with the engine running every day I fly.

These things happen unfortunately to the best of us[],as you already know by the replies. I crashed my plane on the second flight due to low batts but I found mine around 400m away. Shes under repairs now.Good luck with finding your plane and hope shes not to badly damaged fingers crossed.Dan

Campgems,

I have flown there. It's a very nice site. I particularly like the 'mote'. Maybe I'll see you there sometime in the summer.

Cal Poly Alum...always looking for an excuse to get back there.

I would have never guesed it would add up to that amount, and I didn't have that invested as I bought a lot of the high cost items either off Ebay of from the local shop that was going out of business. I'm guessing though that I still had over $500 invested. You kind of pick up a part here and one there and it doesn't look like so much. Sure wish I could recover that engine though. I'll start building th replacement tonight. I think I've got everything I need in hand so it should go fast

Don

Removed duplicate post

Hi Agexpert. You can catch me at the field most Mon, Wed, and Fri mornings. We usually start around 9am and wrap it up around 11 due to the wind. Just ask for Don Rogers.

The Mote's are fun. There are two helicopters sacraficed to the mote mud that I know of. One recently and the other last fall. We are looking at making a big net to see if we can snag them and pull them up. That creek bed behind the vineyards is something though. You could push your way through, but you would almost have to step on the plane to locate it. I've found what looks like a bike or cow path that might take me to the far side of the creek bed but I haven't got a look at it on the ground yet. I need one of the Cam planes to scout it out. I guess there is a chance that it fell in an open area, but until I can get on the other side, I'll not know.

Don