Today I'm mourning the loss of my new spitfire that was last seen disappearing out to sea yesterday morning. First flown on saturday, we had eight or so enjoyable flights in preparation for the club scale comp on sunday.

It may only have been an ARTF, but I did a lot of paintwork to it including adding invasion stripes to comemorate the 60th anniversary of D-Day.

Whilst on the last circuit before approach on the first flight of the day, I suddenly realised I no longer had control and it was heading away from me towards the sea straight and level. For one brief moment control seemed to come back, but it was too far away and disorientated, then it turned nose down and disappeared from view.

I spent an hour scrambling up and down the cliffs and scanning the sea, but there was no sign of it. The cliffs are pretty shear and there's no real beach at the bottom, maybe it tucked itself back into the cliff somewhere or maybe the new 91 fourstroke took it to the bottom.

What makes it worse is that there is nothing to salvage, no chance of retreiving the new 91 f/s, air retracts or any of the radio gear or myriad of other components that you may if it had crashed in-land, it's just gone, kind of leaves you feeling a bit empty inside, and almost feeling guilty for 'abandoning' it somewhere as tho you don't care.

It was my first spitty, never thought I'd like one, but she proved me wrong, since I've already spent my 'new model allowance' for the year, I'll have to see about selling off a few models to fund a replacement.

Oh well, onwards and upwards!

A beautiful bird! Very sorry to hear about losing it. Any idea what happened?

I'm guessing receiver failure, it was a new one which perhaps should have had a few flights in something not so nice, tho the range check on the ground was excellent. I'm confident it wasn't the battery pack, since it was a one I have for a few months and keeps it's charge from week to week extremely well.

Who was the Manufacturer?

Sorry about the loss. As Captain Chester McGuillicuddy of the US shrimping vessel 'Kittenpaw' once said, 'The sea be like a woman, give something to her, and you're not likely t' be seein' it back any time soon. Yarr.'

Oh that sucks!

Sorry for your loss, loosing a plane is bad, loosing it second day is unfortunute and makes sad, not being able to salvage anything is even worse.

O U C H !!! I feel your Pain,

I just crashed my first beloved plane (See BIG STICK IS DEAD Post) and it hit a metal pole,, not enuff left to talk about!!!!!

But your plane was absolutely beautiful!!!!!......and even though you only had her for a moment!!! those are precious moments.

but, life goes on, and I would be a little more investigative to try and see what happened? did you have a auto pilot in it?

etc, go thru the list, and when all is said and done!


Dont fly by the ocean again!!

Must have been a bad day for spitfires.
My brother crashed his sunday.
Sorry for your loss.

Sorry to hear that. It sounds to me like you were flying it too far away. Unless it was a receiver failure, these things are only good for about a mile, not line-of-sight as other may suggest. Was it that far or what?

Range, no it was well within range and coming around nicely to setup for approach, that is until it stopped responding and sailed off, then it was out of range.

[&o]

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My latest crashed planes pre crash.

Shrike 40 due to pilot error....oh well... can live with that.

My BAE Hawk which had a tuned pipe on a TT 42 (not shown in this pictutre) lost due to radio interference or some electrical problem, but never managed to find the dam plane in the fields and trees....gutted it was a great scratch build flat balsa wings with a few spars to add strength. Flew so well 60% of the fligth time was other club members. Made a second for a memeber and cant wait to see here up again. Will be making two more with a TT46 and a tuned pipe, will push her over the 120 mph easy given the last one was doing 100 mph in a shallow dive..... flew straigth and true.

Oh well sorry to hear about spit. I am in the same boat as you with the Hawk, spent hours looking....

maybe it will wash up or it richocheted of a sea france ferry and is coming back on its way
and it caught a thermal and does not need to worry about fuel

(maybe not)

Chris, it is never nice losing a model, sorry to hear it was a beautiful spit, I hope you are one of those modellers that persists and gets back in the air again. all the best.

Todd

My latest crashed planes pre crash.

Shrike 40 due to pilot error....oh well... can live with that.

My BAE Hawk which had a tuned pipe on a TT 42 (not shown in this pictutre) lost due to radio interference or some electrical problem, but never managed to find the dam plane in the fields and trees....gutted it was a great scratch build flat balsa wings with a few spars to add strength. Flew so well 60% of the fligth time was other club members. Made a second for a memeber and cant wait to see here up again. Will be making two more with a TT46 and a tuned pipe, will push her over the 120 mph easy given the last one was doing 100 mph in a shallow dive..... flew straigth and true.

Oh well sorry to hear about spit. I am in the same boat as you with the Hawk, spent hours looking....
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nice hawk shame about losing it you should get these locatos there some on ebay where when it loses the signal it starts bleeping or there is ones for rockets with a tiny locator bug that works within 200 ft

that quote gone funny hmm

i have yet to completely lose a plane, i have although spent hours looking for it untill i found it, what i have is a tracking devise that estes made for there rockets, you install it in the rockets nose, and you put the headphone on, and it beeps louder the closer you get to it, its just a tiny little thing, i put them in all my planes (just incase things like said above happened to me), its hard to believe that a balsa wood plane would sink, although, by now its probly water logged and some snails turned the cabin into there living room., tough break.

thats the one i was talking about

Well if it isnt to be found again it's with many other much bigger spits they'll keep it company.

Tough Luck Chris. That sucks, but hey. if it makes you feel any better. Just imagine your spit is still out there. Cruising over the ocean waves just like you saw it last. After all, did you REEEEALLLY see it go down!?

ORrrrrr. Concept #2

Some kid in Jamaica's gonna get a really cool, (if not waterlogged), Spit in a month or two from the majic gods of the sea!!!


Regards

.. it got returned sixty days later....


http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/Retu...2067377/tm.htm

Bloody ell!!!