Mokken

My Feedback: (63)

Get Well..There is no reason why you can't wait till the weekend or when you are at the field to start an engine, or get your wife for GF to hold the plane... Hope all is well.....

jongurley

My Feedback: (29)

I guess it shows you can't be to careful, when I land and even if it is only 5 minutes between flights I check and double check surfaces and throttle, I know that might be picky but it is just something I started doing when I was poor and had my trainer and I still do it now..

davidmor

OUCH!!![X(] That looks really painful. Okay, I gotta ask the question nobody seems to want to ask. How many stitches/staples did you end up with? It looks like a whole ton of metal and thread in those pictures!

I hope you feel better and get back in the air soon.

nyrcpilot

My Feedback: (5)

Geesh John.......let the wounds heal

DENNIS C

My Feedback: (99)

DAMN!!!!!!!!!!Sorry to see that happen. hope you heal well.

DENNIS C

My Feedback: (99)

LOL....Yea john has a big heart dont he

ooooo

Wish I didn't have to see that....but glad I did. This is a wake up call and a reminder to all of us not to be complacent.
All the best and get well soon. Don't even think of giving up this hobby....just chalk it up to experience and stick around to educate others.

Cheers.

mikejdad

My Feedback: (39)

My son and I just got ouir first 33% gasser and your accident sure has opened my eyes. I usually hold it and he does the starting. Once (last weekend) the throttle was open a little more than needed and it really suprised me with the sudden jerk. Luckely I held on and after reading your story I've got to develop a proper restraint other than my old numb hands....Sorry about your injury and thanks for your taking the time to inform us.

BasinBum

My Feedback: (2)

Kudos on posting the graphic pictures. Maybe some will vicariously learn through your mistake and not have to have the same experiance. Now if we can just get Jim Ross to learn from his own mistakes......

Scott Claboe

My Feedback: (9)

Thanks for posting.Glad you are still alive!!!!Heal and fly!!!I hate starting my plane alone.Gassers sound mean when they're at full throttle.

dicknadine

and I thought my 32 stitches, in left thumb and 2 fingers was bad. engine was in a vise, and I was alone in the shop and tried adjust carb- straight on. , wife and Dr about fainted, a few years ago. fotos lost in the old computor. scars and numbness stiil exist. good luck in your recuperation. dick

mu2driver

My Feedback: (15)

Yes thank you for sharing your misfortune with everyone, I do hope you make a full recovery. It takes a lot of guts to post your mistake's on the internet.

Please keep up updated as to your progress of recovery...

FlyBye Tim

My Feedback: (1)

Well, typing with only one hand sux...B). To answer some questions....

It was a cf prop. 22x8 Mejznik. Prop is in fine shape.....figures.

Initially I thought that I reached down during the accident and hit the choke on the radio killing the motor. Now I don't think that is what took place. I think when the prop hit my leg and jeans, that the jeans may have stopped it. I don't really remember everything clearly.

I am planning on still flying once I heal up. I have 14 planes total and am still looking forward to the 540. I will admit to being pretty scared of it at the moment. Every night when I try to go to sleep I keep going over what happened and have a super clear image in my head of looking down and seeing the bone in my left arm bracketed by two walls of hamburger meat. Then I remember blood shooting out of there and dousing the plane. (My wife cleaned all of the plane so I wouldn't have to go through that.) The wounds are still fresh tho so I am hoping I will mentally recover.

I initially had 40+ stitches in my left arm and 34 staples in the right. One of the most fun things has to be the hour that was spent by a nurse using tweasers to dig around and pull threads of torn blue jeans out of the wound in my left arm.... I had microsurgery Thursday on the left arm and am now in a cast for a month. Everything is still numb and I have lost much of my motor control and almost all of the strength in my left hand. Recovery will be slow but I predict total...B)

SunShyne

My Feedback: (68)

Last night in trying to get a bottle of CA unstuck from its cap I slammed the X-acto I was using into my thumb. OUCH!! 5 stitches later I was out the hospital. I bled like a pig and the Dr. said " you did a good job with this one" lol [:@]

I have a pic off of my brothers camera phone that I will post once he emails it to me

BE CAREFUL!!

matt

erbroens

Well, I hope a full recovery for you, and I am sure that you will be flying and having fun soon. your story reminds me a accident that happened with a friend of mine who I taught to fly some years ago. In the 2003-2004 year passage he played as usual with his fireworks and then something went wrong and he lost almost all fingers of the right hand. After that he asked if I
had any idea and I put him his tx in a neck strap and holding the right stick with the little finger.
He is flying now, and when we met at the weekends in our club, he didn´t seem to be any depressed or look any different than before the accident.

Regards, Enrique

FlyBye Tim

My Feedback: (1)

reminds me of the time that my medium ca had a clog in the nozzle and so I decided to squeeze it to pop out the clog. I squoze it so hard the whole lid popped off and the ca shot all over my left hand and onto my face. That was a fun cleanup!

cobratraxxas69

My Feedback: (31)

Tim,

This may sound like a silly question, but how painful was it when it happened? You always hear when people have a sudden, very traumatic injury (like an amputation) that they don't feel any pain (or little pain).

Thanks,

Mike

Absolut Yak

My Feedback: (4)

Thirty-five stitches in my Left arm from a .40 sized plane jumping the wheel chocks. The scars have faded after twenty-two years, but I learned about restraining planes. Nothing near as dramatic as your injuries. Get healed soon. Good luck.

FlyBye Tim

My Feedback: (1)

Very little pain at all until I got to the hospital. Then plenty...

sillyness

My Feedback: (25)

Tim... how are you doing? I noticed this was your first post since Oct 2004. How has your recovery been? Small world... I grew up in Puyallup.

For all, as a safety side note... there are many times when I load up the car/trailer, head to the field and find no one there. I'll wait around for a bit, if no one shows up I drive straight back home. Oh well.

There is no reason to fly by yourself... an incident like Tim's can prove lethal if alone. We had a guy in my last club get mowed over by a Saito 1.80... he started it without turning the plane on and the throttle happened to be at full. It bent the rods he had in the ground and chewed him up. Field was a good 20-25 minute drive to the hospital The guys threw him in the car with compression on the wounds and called an ambulance on the cell phone... the ambulance met them halfway and took over. The docs said he likely would have died from blood loss if they had waited for the ambulance to show up at the field... he needed fluids yesterday.

Along those notes, with ANY gas motor I will not tether it down with stakes and rope... the best tether is your buddy holding the plane. I usually have someone stand over the turtle-deck with the stabs iagainst the back of their legs (I carry pads for them since the stabs are sharp and will bruise your calves pretty good!!!) I don't really like guys holding the wing because if something strange happens they can easily be caught off guard and get pulled forward... pretty hard to do that standing over it. Call me paranoid, but I like my job, my life, and my pain free body… my hobby isn’t worth sacrificing everything for a quick flight.

Anyway... between this thread resurfacing and the accident in Hungary a couple days ago this is a good time to stop, take a breather, and reassess our practices. Check your gear over carefully, don’t be in a rush, don’t take shortcuts, and DON’T BE STUPID!!!

Fly Safe,
Jason

If you hadn’t heard about it:

UPDATE2-Crashing model airplane kills two, hurts three (adds FOUR INJURED, details)
Budapest, May 13 (MTI) - Two people died and four others were injured when a model plane crashed into a crowd of spectators at an international model builders' show at Ocseny Airport, SW Hungary, on Saturday, police reported.
The accident was caused by a 2-2.5 metre-long, remote control model built by a German pilot that went down behind the fence into a group of spectators, organiser Gabor Biro told MTI on site. Two people died, a couple from nearby Szekszard, who had come to see the show with their grown-up children.

Four others were taken to a hospital in Szekszard with slight injuries, the ambulance services said.

It is assumed that the model became uncontrollable due to a technical interference problem, Chairman of the Hungarian Modelling Federation Andor Harmath told MTI.

FlyBye Tim

My Feedback: (1)

My recovery is done and not much change in my arm. Cannot really use two fingers on that hand. Planning on selling the plane this Summer....Anyone want a wild hare?