kenh3497

After taking a very long break from flying airplanes (flew helis and then dropped from the hobby for about 10 years) I purchased a Hangar 9 CAP 232. I got about ten flights on it before I crashed last night. After the RCNTSB surveyed the crash site and the wreckage it looks like one of two possiabable things happened.

It appeares there was an in flight structal failure. Either the left hand aerilon servo mount broke loose or the aerilon itself broke at the hinges pulling the mount loose. The arelion was found several feet from the crash site with no damage while the wing panel it was supposed to be attached to had conisderable damage. Aerilon hinges did not pull out of the wing or aerilon. They were torn in half. On a previous high speed pass I notised the elevator fluttering a bit. I slowed my flight to prevent that from happening again. This may have been a contributing factor to the crash. Damage consited of the before mentioned wing panel, fire wall split verticley, horozontal stab seperated from the fuse, wing mount torn loose and other minor damage.

I have yet to strip the covering to determine if it is repairable. I'm thinking not at this point. I was thinking at the time that I just got everything the way I wanted it and it was flying VERY well. The engine was running perfect (Enya 90 4C). I was have a lot of fun with the airplane.

Oh well, the pilot walked away without a scratch.

Ken

RCBruski65

My Feedback: (44)

Flutter can do some pretty good damage in a hurry. Something could have shaken loose or been damaged by the flutter.

scale only 4 me

My Feedback: (158)

What kind of hinges we talking here?

kenh3497

The standard CA hinges that came with the ARF.

All the covering has been stripped off the model and the fuse is very repairable. The hardest part will be the firewall as it split vertically around the motor mount. I epoxy the mount to the firewall, along with the mounting bolts, to get the mount as solid as possible. I tried to squeeze the firewall back together but it is to ragged a break. If it went back together nicely, I was going to epoxy a false fire wall to the original on the back side. Maybe I can clean up the break and still make it work????

The left wing panel is pretty much destroyed. I agonized over trying to rebuild it but I've decided there are too many ribs destroyed and spars broken to make it worth the trouble. The outer 6 inches is gone and there is quite a bit of damage near the root also. I think I will just cut a couple of foam cores and construct a complete new wing.