Something NOT to do!!
 

Don't ever put your glow stick, ignitor, hot shoe in your pocket with your car keys!!!!!!!!!!!!!![:@] {{That dumbass married to my wife did}} Ouch!!!!!!!!!!!!

RE: Something NOT to do!!
 

Here are a few more I have learned:

Don't ask a state trooper where he got his hat

Don't drink beer in waders

Don't tell jokes in canoes

Don’t take advice from people with missing fingers.

RE: Something NOT to do!!
 

did you burn yourself?

RE: Something NOT to do!!
 

lol that happened to my dad a few years ago

it got so hot it desoldered the tip

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Some of mine:

- Never fly after thinking, "just one more flight, everything is fine."

- Never say "now watch this!".

- Nerver say "don't worry I know what I'm doing."

- Never assume you can avoid restraining a small plane because the engine is so small.

RE: Something NOT to do!!
 

That is so funny and so true: Never fly after thinking, "just one more flight, everything is fine."

For some reason, everytime this thought crosses my mind, I clean my plane and leave.

RE: Something NOT to do!!
 

Never buy a small bottle of CA glue then put it in your back pocket and drive home.

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Well, I squated down to work on an engine, the trip up from that squat was a lot faster going up then going down. Didn't even have time to make the normal old man noises. The meter on the stick no longer works either. It was a brand new battery I just bought yesterday, it seems to be OK and still working. In the pocket with the keys was also my lighter!!! It could have been a lot more ugly then just saying ouch............ouchouchouchouch!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

RE: Something NOT to do!!
 

Well this is probably why I've heard never to do this.

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lol..  it could be worse for sure. I remember some time ago, when I was starting at the hobby, I was playing with an old battery pack at my bed (don't ask me why ) and somehow the + and - leads touched each other. it got so hot so quickly that it melted and made a nice hole in the matress :P

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The last flight thing is one hundred percent true. Every one of my crashes was a result of cramming in just one more flight. It makes sense, though: You are in a rush to leave, you are thinking of other things, you are at the point of total confidence (read: cockiness)  and by this time you have been sitting under the sun for a few hours.

Even worse than putting the glow driver in your pocket with keys? Putting a LiPo in your pocket with keys!

Oh - And Never EVER fly a new model (after spending four months building it) without taking a photo first, especially if you have promised to show it to a prospective RC pilot after that days flying session! (Or they will end up driving RC cars instead...)

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G'day

I never ever have "one last flight". I may have "one more flight" but when I have had a "last" one it has usuallybeen "the last one".

I also never fly on holiday Mondays after a good flight on a Sunday. When I have, something has always gone wrong.

If I go to the field and three things go wrong I know it is time to go home. Someone is trying to tell me something. When I have persisted, something drastic has always happened.

There are some days you should just stay in bed. I'm not paranoid, they are out to get me;-)

Mike in Oz

RE: Something NOT to do!!
 

"If I go to the field and three things go wrong I know it is time to go home."


That's a good one! I'll remember that one. Many a time I fought 3 or more problems to get a plane up in the air only to end up taking a bag of parts home.

Reminds me of the John Kennedy Jr. documentary.

"John Jr. was a go getter, he didn't take no for an answer. If he set his mind to do something he did it. He didn't let anyone or anything deter him from what he wanted to accomplish. However this is a terrible mind set for a pilot. He should have heeded the weather report and stayed on the ground".

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...and as the sun goes down following that one last flight of the day you get to trudge off into those dark woods hoping that you find the crash site before you lose the twilight. Spooky times in those woods after the walk of shame across the runway hearing the cars and trucks leaving for the day behind you.

RE: Something NOT to do!!
 

Every time I went out and the wind was questionable, and if I flew, well, I had problems. Often, I would say "Hmmm.. should I really fly today? Well, I'm here so I'll give it a shot". Mistake #1.

Usually attempts to make a decent approach and landing results in something that is less than what I expected.. the plane wallowing around on approach because I was not flying it with enough throttle authority. Mistake #2

So I land it, walk out, pick it up, notice that I probably broke the darned prop, and pack up and go home. No more mistakes.. I finally made the right decision. The plane is intact (minus a prop) and is ok to fly another day.

But, that hasn't always been the way things happened. The first time I found this out was when I was fairly new. I had a real favorite plane, a Skylark 56 (classic revisited by Goldberg) with an OS 52 Surpass four stroke. It flew great on maiden and a few subsequent flights. Well, that one day, I went out, and it was blowing pretty good, but fairly constant and almost straight down the runway. I took off and immediately realized that I was not prepared to fly in those conditions with that plane. I made a few orbits and decided to come in for a landing.. I made the requisite downwind, turn to base, then turn to final and dropped the throttle to idle. The plane immediately climbed and went inverted headed in the opposite direction. Before I realized what was going on, it was headed in the opposite direction, upside down. I was new and wasn't sure what to do next.. all I really had to do was add throttle and go right side up and come back in, but I was confused and disoriented.. it self corrected, went inverted again, and spun in rather hard. It was totaled. Lesson learned, he hard way.

CGr.

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Ok, I just picked up myself off the floor where I was holding my belly with laughter:):):)

No offence meant Graybeard. I can understand your state. Since I dont have my own vehicle (yet), I usually carry all the tools that I need in my backpack. There is this large tupperware box in which I carry my adjustable wrench, small screw drivers, glow drivers, all the reject screws from my earlier airplanes etc. I had forseen this problem a long time back and retained the rubber caps that came with all my drivers and keep them on during transport. At the field I store any metal objects in my left pocket as the driver always ends up in the right. After seeing how I stored the drivers, my flying buddies also began to do the same thing. Had I not made this a practice, I would have had the same problems already.

I always say that but some others never listen


Ok, I did do that. Split-Sed from low, was out of practice that day. Luckily, the Reactor 46 was on high throws and I pulled level a couple of meters off the ground. Even my spectators missed a beat

My flying buddy did that, except he did that with a 120ax running a 18x6 prop. He was running his engine in his garage for finishing off the residual fuel and had his piano cross stand (that he used to assemble his model on the field) across the tail. After starting, as he got up he brushed the throttle and the airplane ran into him at WOT. Ended up in the hospital requiring a skin graft on the inside of his knee and was plastered up for a couple of weeks there. He had is engineering practicals only three days later, luckily his professors postphoned them for him. His airplane still bears his bloodmarks. Dont worry, I dont have pictures

Ameyam

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Rubber Cap??? You mean they have a rubber cap for these things!!!!!!!!!!!! Seems that would remove all the excitement and thrills but I can see there use if stuffed into a back pack. You wouldn't feel the heat as fast, wonder how long it would take before you noticed the smoke!!:D

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I remember years back when some cameras used a "magic cube" flash. If you put one of the cubes in your pocket with keys, it could set off all four flash bulbs. I,m sure that caused some interesting motions.

And yes, nicads get hot when shorted. I plugged in an RX battery backwards once and unsoldered the pins in the receiver. Also ruined the battery and set off the basement smoke alarm, not the best move at 5am.

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I finally got my 'Mach Racer' flying wing, complete with 0.50 size glow engine, finished and running OK. The thing only weighs about 3 and a half pounds and I've read that they fly fast, certainly well over 100mph stock.

 I finally took it to the field last Sunday. The idle was a bit dodgy and when I lined it up on the runway I wanted to run it briefly at WOT to clear it out. There was no one else there and the plane was awkward to hold (normally I just stand infront of the horizontal stabs including for planes with twice or thrice the power). I went WOT and the thing wanted to leap into the air.

I could feel my grip at the front starting to slip and I had my other hand on the receiver. I couldn't easily reach the throttle on the transmitter while I could feel the plane starting to slip away. In those few seconds, I could either drop the transmitter and get my other hand on the plane (thereby restraining it, but having it stuck at full power until I could figure out a way to get to the receiver) or tough it out and get my hand to the throttle or kill switch and hope the plane didn't slip out of my grasp. I hesitated, did nothing, and the plane slipped free and took off along the runway, bounced into the rough, leapt into the air about 20 feet and the motor promptly stalled. By that time I had picked up the controls and managed to steer it into the long grass. I was lucky, a broken prop is all and I'll try again next weekend.

Lesson learned is a wing is diffeent to a normal plane and awkward to restrain. A small engine has plenty of power paticularly on a light plane that is greasy with spilt fuel. I can still feel it, trying to hang on with one hand on the greasy, smooth wing with the prop wash blowing into my eyes, vibrating away  and slowly slipping away....where it goes nobody knows.

RE: Something NOT to do!!
 

Those small hand-held FRS radios have the charging connections on the bottom.
Put that in your pocket with change and see what happens. Yeah, it got hot.
And, the dime got stuck to the melted plastic.

I looked pretty stupid, in front of a Labor Day Air Show crowd.

RE: Something NOT to do!!
 

Naaaahh... it was all part of the skit act.. :D

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When asked in Q and A, never tell a bunch of boy scouts that you haven't ever seen a plane hit a bird! We had a troop at our field one day for a visit and some buddy box training. One of the scouts asked if any of us had hit a bird before. We said no, and went on with the day. On my last buddy box flight the student got too far behind the flight line and I took over. Within 10 seconds, boom/crack, the wing was literally torn in half and the Avistar trainer plummeted to the ground. Yep a bird had hit the right leading edge and we found some blood and small feathers plastered to the wing. Even I got a laugh out of that one.