Lightspeed1551

My Feedback: (4)

Purchased a Saito FG 20. [:'(]

matrix509

Built a rocket pistol...(G Harry stein himself scolded me!. While very tired I "flew" anther slope soaring glider for 10-12 min before someone informed me my glider was wandering somewhere else. (It survived) Build a rocket bazooka.. Launched a 38 engine cluster rocket on the 4th of July at night (never did find it) the list goes on....

mikes767

My first rc model was a sig kadet spent forever building it , wanting to learn properly and not crash it so I got a good buddy of mine who was a very good pilot to fly it. We had some problem starting it and dicovered my glow driver dead. He ran back to his car and got his ( he wasnt in good shape) worked like a bugger to start it ,jumped to his feet and took off did one turn back to the field and passed out right in front of me . I quickly grabed the transmitter and somehow landed it as my buddy came to. Now I look back on it my buddy could have died but I was more concerned about my aircraft.

MetallicaJunkie

lean the low end out

rede2fly

My Feedback: (86)

staying in this hobby is the craziest thing ive ever done

glowplugboy

My Feedback: (17)

I drove 18 miles at HIGHWAY speed with my transmitter on the roof of my car. It was there when I arrived at my club field.

cordell staker

Nearly kilt the governor of Colorado. Flying a joss stick with a saito 1.50...seems I stepped on the end of my antenna wire as I throttled up on take-off. Flying at the Cherry Creek Reservoir DRC Eagles field. Started to do a procedure turn, and realized I had no radio. Chopped the throttle. Plane flew straight out towards the reservoir in a shallow dive. The plane flew over the heads of about 120 Boy Scouts at the water's edge who were doing an Earth Day project, with, then Governor, Bill Owens. The airplane flew about 15 feet above their heads, and finally crashed into the bushes and mud about 100 feet beyond the group. My son and I raced down there ( about a half mile) hoping no one was injured. There was the Governor and his video crew. My son grabbed the airplane, and I dug the engine out of the mud. No body hurt. We stood together with the Governor and smiled for some video, then tried to slip away fast before they all figured out that it was not part of the day's activities. Park Ranger grabbed us. We showed our AMA cards and said we were sorry for the poor performance of our airplane. Then I laid low, not flying at that field for a couple of months.

Hill202

My Feedback: (24)

I think I know that guy!

saramos

ROTFLMAO!

dabigboy

I guess my RC career has been pretty sedate. One instance does stick out in my mind, however. Actually it's more like a series of instances.....

New flyer, got a nice Tower Trainer 40 when they were still new, was flying at my dad's boss's private air strip surrounded by cornfields. The aileron servo started acting funny, and soon I lost the plane in an uncontrollable spin. After a brief foot search in the distant cornfield it went down in, my dad and I proceeded to drive back to the local airport where the boss's Cessna 150 was parked (which we basically had full access to at the time), hopped in, and flew back to the private strip. While I didn't really expect to be able to find my plane from the air, it sure was fun zooming around at steep bank and descent angles and low altitude over the cornfields.

Then three months later, after the fields cleared a bit but right before the boss was about to harvest his corn, we went foot searching again. This time we found it, buried in mud. The trusty Tower .40 engine was cleaned up and flown for many years (in fact to this day it still runs), and the little Futaba AM radio, battery, and servos (minus the aileron servo, of course) were put in another model and flown for many more years after, without a single incident. In fact, those parts still work to this day (this was over 15 years ago). Call it stupid or crazy, but it certainly reaffirmed my faith in Futaba's gear!

There was another non-RC incident with a model rocket. In my teen years, I had the great idea to scratch build a rocket. Only this wouldn't be one of those "boring" symmetrical rockets, this would be a semi-scale version of Daryl Greenamyer's record-setting F-104 Starfighter! I worked for many weeks building and painting the model. On the day of the maiden, I popped in a C6-3 motor, set the model on the launcher, and hit the button. The model proceeded to lift off the launch rod and enter an incredible series of backwards spiraling flips that would have put Sean Tucker to shame, before belly-flopping to the ground for 3 agonizing seconds of silence, followed by a pathetic "poof" as the recovery charge kicked off to eject the non-existent parachute. The first comment out of my friend's mouth was "I've never seen a rocket do THAT before!" Great times.

[email protected]

Well a few i can remember were....

My freind had a broken air hogs helicopter and a TINY coke can rc( the kind with magnetic steering) so we were bored and put the ESC and reciever in the car and wired the two motor outputs in series, man that thing was FAST!!!! one of us steered while the other controlled throttle from the heli transmitter.

Before this that same car had a 380 motor and a prop stuck on top with a 9v battery, till the prop flew off and hit me in the leg after falling down the stairs.

now a few non rc things...

That same freind and i were at his new house and they were renovating so his parents didnt care what we did to the carpets/walls so... we got a box and started riding it down the stairs! haha most fun i had in a long time! we almost got hurt when the box flipped and threw one of us at the edge of a wall. Later that day we made potato cannons fueled with deodorant and ignited with a lighter ignitor from old medicine bottles and then shot each other .

Once i made a match rocket with a whole bunch of matches then sat down near it while waiting for it to ignite, instead of flying the thing exploded. i didnt know what happened just felt a slight warmth. later as i looked at the slowmo from the recording i had i could see a giant fireball that even fogged up the camera lens.

invertmast

My Feedback: (23)

putting a .15 size glow motor on a plane designed for a .049 and flying it!

Lifer

My Feedback: (1)

Bought a THIRD P-47!!!! Damn, those planes fly good!

thailazer

Years ago I put a military issue smoke grenade on a Butterfly. Built a nice aluminum mount that held it away from the rubber bands. But........ The thing was much hotter than expected so I was left with a nice wing, smashed lawn dart of a fuselage, and many stopped cars on the highway by the field trying to figure out how so much smoke could come out of such a small airplane crashing.

rapidrabbit

My Feedback: (20)

beer can combat planes!! 049 C/L combat ..use beer can glue ply to front and slit can for wing and stick wood in butt of can for tail and glue tail on add bell crank and push rod and go fly combat..no streamer ..will take many blast before you have to go to back up can!!

luckyb

Drove to Fort Collins Colo. for Warbirds over the Rockies wit 3 other guys 37 hrs. straight from Fla. Flew and partied 3 days straight and then drove back nonstop. What a week. Dangerous, crazy, but every time I think of it I smile.

raptureboy

Well when we were kids we used to fly our cox planes in the middle of an intersection. When cars came we just flew high and waved them on. These are my votes for the best stories yet. 1st post 39, 2nd post 33 3rd post 57 and 4th post 36. Keep them coming great entertainment! Thanks MINNFLYER for showing all us kids how to set up the killer coptor I still have some of my old 049 engines

Robert Sprague

My Feedback: (21)

wow, ok, thinking back through the years

Launching free flight planes and then rockets out of the back yard into the front yard in the 'burbs of NY, right next to the approach end of Grumman's Bethpage plants

tried flying with cheap mrc radio gear

loading the schwin 3 speed bike full of flight gear and cl planes and pedaling to the school yard through 55mph traffic and later doing the same thing but with rc planes, holding the wing and fuselage under one arm while steering with the other through more 55mph traffic.

I couldn't get the hang of setting pitch curves, so the solution was to borrow Dad's workmate and proceed to tie the American R/C Helicopters Mantis / Commander collective pitch head hybrid heli down and fire it up, while underneath it...

going flying for lunch, forgetting the time and purposely crashing my almost a goldberg skylark copy into my flight box to save time loading the car, it didn't fly right anyway

getting talked into flying off the LIE exit 57 Wicks road in the dead of winter so my buddy could try out his new camcorder, Thanks George I still have the video of the wreck

had a less than good test flight of someone's duraplane, he didn't want to hear the plane needed this and that, so to avoid having him wreck it into someone or thing the flight ended up as a arrested dead stick landing by stopping it with my leg

full contact combat with 2ch 1/2a ace pacers and mach none, got us in trouble with the elder generation of the day but thanks Dennis Brown, that was fun!

all or nothing limbo competition under the pit pavilion tin roof when no one else was around, Thanks Carl Womak, I still remember the sound of the Sig Kougar blasting through under the roof

dynamic soaring (took almost 1lb of ballast) at ground level a Spirit of 76 foam sailplank in Myrtle Beach the day after hurricane hugo, had the 21st ave field all to myself

bah, I'll stop here, there is another 22 years worth to recall, fun stuff

edh13

My Feedback: (9)

My great-dove-hunter buddy and I decided it would be cool to blow my little brothers CL Cox P40 out of the sky with a 12ga shotgun. I was about on my third lap before I realized my ‘buddy’ was tracking the little planes full arch (with me in the middle). I hit the dirt about the time I heard the shot go off. After some rubber band repairs and a quick geometry lesson for my friend we were off again. It took about 5 shots before he killed it.

Disclaimer: Any similarity to persons either dead or alive is purely coincidental. All principles in this story were minors and therefore cannot be held responsible for their actions. No animals were harmed during this project. Do not try this at home.

Lifer

My Feedback: (1)

edh13,

You win......

A6TEXAN

I was teaching my brother how to fly and one day he got the bighead wanting to go fly his super sportster 40 on a day with 20 mph south wind. even before his flight started i warned him not to let the aircraft get too far downwind. it didnt take him 20 seconds and it looked like a bumble bee headin north. gone out of range and climbing. we decided that plane was gone and loaded our equipment up to head home. as we drove out i said what the hell head north and let me scan around. lol, after about 6-7 miles, i see this dot in the sky. i stuck the antenna out the window just to see. (lol) damn if it wasnt the plane. i jumped out of the truck and was able to establish orientation at what seemed about 2,000 ft.
by this time i had traffic stopping and lots of onlookers, after what seemed like 2 minutes of diving straight towards us i was able to grease it in slicker than owl@#!$ right on the easment of the highway. we loaded and took off before the lawman came to check for the "nut" with a transmitter on side of the highway. .

sensei

A couple of years ago a buddy had a well worn out U-can-do .60 slated for the trash can, so we decided to place two receivers in it on different channels. We then placed rudder and aileron on one receiver and elevator and throttle on the other. When we took off, I had control of roll and yaw with my transmitter, and he had control of pitch and throttle with his. After a few minutes arguing while flying we were able to torque roll, high alpha roll and a slew of other 3D garbage. After several flights, we decided we would put this worn out airplane to rest, so we fueled up for it's final voyage and with cameras rolling, we lined up on center stage of the runway and knife edged into the ground at full power, the whole thing turned into bunch of splinters and everyone got great video at the field that day and had a great laugh too.

Bob

John Baligrodzki

Stupid thing #1 Several years ago I was installing a a tray with a second rudder servo in a 1/3 scale Extra. Had the plane on the shop floor so I could get my hands inside it. Was Zapping in the supports and used to much and the next thing my left thumb is now very securely glued inside. No way to pry it off without serious pain. No one home. Debonder on the shelf above the workbench. Took about 5 minutes of manuvering the fuse and myself to get into a position to get it down. Had to grab a ruler on the bench to do so. Been very careful after that!

Stupid thing#2 In 2007 a drunk driver plowed into me go to the field at 7:30 on a Sunday morning. Broke my left arm. Just before getting the cast off I was working on a plane carving a block of balsa with a #11 Xacto. Knife in the left hand, block of wood in my right. Was holding it against my chest and working on it. A bad idea. Slipped and stabbed myself. Blade went into my chest all the way just below my ribcage. I could not beleive how much blood could come out such a small opening! Took a while to get the bleeding to stop. Did not tell the wife about it. A couple days later it would not close so I fessed up to the wife. She said why don't you use some super glue to close it? Went to doctor and he shook his head after telling him what happend. Said to be more careful. Then used some super glue to close it. Should have listened to my wife and avoided a $30.00 copay.

Oh, by the way, the 1/3 scale Extra I glued my thumb to. It was in the van when the drunk dude hit me. It wass totalled along with my van!

Regards,

John

markhamregular

Back in Puerto Rico my friend flew a plane on the highway while I was driving my little MG Midget. We were driving up the mountain and had a deadstick. I guess the air mixture changed with altitude. Anyway, I had to slow down and he landed safely in front of the car. To me defense, I was just the driver.

tenacious101010

My Feedback: (97)

Heres a fun thing we did at WATTFEST 2011 this past weekend, we put together a MIG target drone and sold tickets a dollar each for a chance to shoot it down with an airsoft AK-47.