There was a chap out at the field today flying his plane when he suddenly whistled out loud while trying to attract people's attention and began to shout "switch the controller off, switch the controller off". There was only one other flyer out there and since it was early in the morning, the rest of us were busy gassing or putting our planes together. However when he began shouting, we looked up and saw his plane doing aerobatics all over the place - it was obvious that it was out of control and it subsequently disappeared over and into the trees. As he walked back to the pits, he was cursing that someone must be on the same channel as him but his face turned red with embarrassment, when someone pointed out that all radios were hanging on the impound board and that the cause of his crash was probably because he had forgotten to raise his antenna!

I've nearly taken off with my antenna lowered but this has taught me a valuable lesson!

Yep, happened to me too. In fact, just this year, and I've been flying for about 30. I was dang lucky as I flew an entire flight with my CG Skylark, and not all right in front of me either. It was after I landed I noticed I hadn't extended the antenna. You'd think one would feel the lack of that little inertia the extended antenna creates when you move the transmitter, but I sure didn't. You can bet I kissed that radio when I saw what I'd done and that it gave perfect control for the whole flight!

What kind of Tx was it?

It's an old Futaba Conquest AM type. It's actually illegal now, but we have a fairly small club and those who still have the old stuff just pin a freq on either side of the one they're using and are extra careful. Except of course for seeing the antenna is extended!

I guarantee that you'll only do it once!

See my post:

http://www.rcuniverse.com/showthread...hreadid=158031]

The one time I did that, while taxiing, the guy next to me started yelling, "Hold on - Stop! Wait!" I started looking at him like, "Huh?"

I was nervous because I was about to loosen up on the trainer before taking a new bird up.

He saved my trainer. Nice guy.

Some days it pays to stay home!

In all my years of flying, I have only done that once. Fortunately it was with one of those little combat Gremlin's which are damn near indistructable. But there have been many times when I have been taxiing out to the runway and someone has yelled "HEY! YOUR ANTENNA!!!" Whew!

I almost did that once......
I realized that it was down and I went to pull it out. I was wearing a neck strap, so when I tilted the TX forward my jacket caught on the throttle stick and pushed it to the firewall. My trainer went full throttle into the fence. (So thats what those are there for). Only lost a prop and nose cone.

I had the same thing happen a few years back. I had a rubber duck antenna on this particular radio (BNC mounted). I fired up my Gremlin's engine, walked out to the flight line, and launched...

A split second later one of my fellow flyers called out "Dude! Your antenna fell off!" He scooped it up, ran over and snapped it on. Saved my bacon that time.

I've switched to screw-in rubber duck antennas on all my current radios. They work fine, and I no longer have to worry about breaking the telescoping ones when launching HLGs (or poking anyone in the eye.) This does tend to dull the "extend-the-antenna-before-taking-off" reflex when I fly other people's planes, though

I flew my trainer a couple of weeks ago and never noticed that I forgot to raise it until after I landed and killed the engine. I looked down to switch the tx off and... felt a cold chill. I think that little 6xas was looking out for me that day. Have triple checked myself since.

A couple months ago, first flight, I powered up the
ol' faithful Cub....no sooner than it lifted off, the
engine died. I landed it straight ahead, no problem,
but as I was walking out to get the plane....I noticed
that I had forgotten to extend the antennae.

When I got back to the pits, I found out that I had
not connected the pressure line back on to the pipe.

I guess "double-dumbness" saved me on that one.