Am i Jinxed or what? Crash-a-day
 

I think i may be in the wrong hobby. I have yet to have a day of crash free flying and i've only been 5 times. LOL

the first two times it was my instructor who crashed it. Both were dead sticks cause of a finicky engine. He's INCREDIBLE and if he had had more than 20' of air he would have glided back but they were too low for much other than a landing in the weeds. Those crashes broke a motor mount, tore some monokote, etc. Very minor.

During my buddy box landings i scraped a few wingtips trying to turn to fast on the ground... lol No biggee either. Then i had another dead stick... that nosed over in the grass ... breaking props is my speciality.. lol

Then the 4th day i was doing my first solo and forgot to pull out the TX antenae... well you know what happened. End of runway, full throttle, 10' nose dive.

But today really sucked. I was flying alone and had a great first flight. Noticed a little flutter... landed and noticed that 5 out of 6 elevator hinges were broken ... couldn't believe i made it back in one piece. Was wondering why i had to trim it to extremes to get it to fly straight.. lol After some repairs i took it up again and made a low pass and took it around again for slower landing and on the final turn the whole plane stopped controlling. Uhhhhhhh.... was so sad. I didn't panic, i just kept holding up elevator but nothing moved. Was so sad to watch that big .60 trainer turn and dive almost straight in the ground. Like one of those diving birds that catch fish... It was so anti-climatic. Just a pop sound and all was quiet.

Still ahve no idea why it did it. thought battery had died.. but plenty of juice in TX/RX all servo's working etc. I am baffled.

Well i am Ordering a new trainer from Tower and we'll give it another go-round. Maybe i can get a crash-free day soon :)

RE: Am i Jinxed or what? Crash-a-day
 

Uhhh oh... i think i may have figured out why i have a new box of kindeling... Tip stall?

That turn it lost it on was Downwind ...


(X)<<<<<Plane<<<<<
v ^
v ^
v <<wind<< ^
v ^
v

(X) where planed crashed

Ya'll think that was it?
I had lowered engine speed and was banking pretty hard

RE: Am i Jinxed or what? Crash-a-day
 

Yep, you got it, tip stall. The key is, you said you took it around for a slower landing. The flight controls need to have air moving over them to have any effect. You may not have felt as though you panicked, but in effect you did. You froze at the controls. You just kept holding up elevator and watched as it dove into the ground. What you needed to do at that point is let the nose drop with a neutral elevator and gain some airspeed then try to recover.

Try to carry more speed into your final turn and let it slow as you come in with the wings level.

Don't let yourself get too discouraged. Try to learn from what happened during your first flights. The first 4 days seem pretty obvious, avoid the things that caused those accidents. Never take off if your engine is being finicky. Chances are, if it's finicky on the ground, it'll die right after take-off, or soon thereafter. The ground loop thing is just a matter of practice. I'm sure you know you need to extend the antenna, that just sounds a little like a case of the butterflies to me.

Anyway keep at it. It doesn't sound all bad to me. You had the confidence to solo a lot sooner than most people do. Just learn from your mistakes and don't be embarrassed to use that trainer cord. Good luck

RE: Am i Jinxed or what? Crash-a-day
 

Thanks...
On the contrary i'm more motivated to get this "thing". I suppose if i kept crashing alot i would get the hint... but we'll wait and see.

As far as panic... i don't think so. When it was starting to drop i actually increased power but it still never pulled up. I live here in the rockies and we get these weird wind patterns up here. I suspect that i had more down wind at the plane than where i was. I had made that turn several times at about the same speed/bank so maybe it was a drop in signal (which my ego really wants to believe :) ) but i suspect the wind was a bit stronger and i lost lift.

As far as the finicky engine goes... they would run awesome on the ground then just quit. It's been behaving lately though. At 8500 ft. You really have to dial them in and even then they don't have the same power as sea level.