I was flying my friends plane once on a new street with a paseo bridge overhead about 50yards out. As I was coming in for a landing, the airplane dissapeared behind the bridge with a loud thump! A second later, the plane falls to the ground.

I've done that before.....

I had a Spitfire I used to put in a straight down vertical dive and pull at the last second. I did this many times, until the last time...Lawn Dart!

Back in the 80's I had a Falcon 56 with a OS .45 FSR on it..

So as usual I strapped the wing down with rubber bands, did my pre-flight and took off..

The plane was acting a little funny on hard up elevator commands and loops..
I landed to check it out and I'd only put 4 rubber bands on.. (normally use 8-10)
The wing had been lifting off the fuselage..

My dumbest move to date was with my Telemaster in my 2nd year of flying.
I'd just gotten into inverted flight and loved doing low passes down the runway about 8' off the deck.. Fun but a tele dosen't like to push out of inverted flight all that well.

Well I was about 10' up on the next pass and thought I was high enough to loop out.. Turns out I needed about 12' to make it.. WHUMP!
smacked the paved runway hard enough to crack the wing in half. The 3" spinner and the fuel tank held a foot race down the runway to see who could escape the wreckage faster.

I managed to salvage the tail and wing.. About a month later I had it rebuilt and flying again but the fuse was 1/2" wider because I cut the bulkheads to the outside lines on the plans

I'm sure several here have done the classic step over the plane and kick the tail off right? Always best done right after finishing the final radio setup in the living room the night before a maiden flight..

A good friend of mine just passed away this last week, he was a heck of a pilot, and a great guy.

He told me years ago he was flying on a big open field that had some old goal posts on it. he said he was standing off to the side of the field, and decided to fly between the posts, everything looked great until the last second, then he realized his offset perception was wrong..he nailed the vertical post and the plane exploded..

he said it was like someone grabbed the plane and moved it over at the last second...

My last cockup was after consoling one of our juniors who had just done a guillotine job on his plane by trying to fly through the guide wires on a 200ft telemetry mast. We got he remains of his plane back and I got him to fly again but he wanted to use the buddy box. I have an old ARC/Thunder Tiger Ready trainer with me in case anyone needs training so we got it up and running and he took off straight and true, after about 30 secs the Ready went straight in, couldn't believe it 2 planes in 20 mins itwasn't till I looked at my tranny the ariel was still down DOH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think my biggest blunder tops you all.

Formy first NATSIhad built aCLScale P-38 and I also built the electronic controls for it. It featured Right Throttle, Left Throttle, Flaps, Retracts and Brakes. Igot very nervous and when I called Takeoff Ionly advanced the Right Throttleand Ground looped it right in front of the Judges and all of the other contestants. No damage to the model but Ithought a lot about NOTshowing up the next day.

The model was in Model Aviation March 1986.
My Avatar shows my newest CL Scale model.
Clancy

I pulled out in front of a 1/5th scale P-51 with a foamy.  THWAAAAP!   fortunately the P-51 only suffered some scuffed paint.

many years ago I was flying one of my first PT-40 trainers in an incomplete housing subdivision, Only paved streets, no buildings anywhere.  There was ONE telephone pole in the whole subdivision probably the only pole within a mile, yep you guessed it...I hit it.

I used to build rubber band powered airplane kits. I was preparing for a model flight competition, I guess I wound the rubber band too tight,  the plane flew, and flew, and flew.....I never saw it again.

I was standing behind my .60 size mustang on the taxi way, I bent over to grab the rudder and check something (I don't remember what), when I bent over I stuck the end of my 72 mhz antenna in the prop of the running engine. I ruined the antenna and the prop.

And I can't forget the most embarrassing one,  I was out late one Friday night,  Got up early Sat morning to fly my brand new 71" FW-190, I guess I was too tired, I hooked up the ailerons backwards and missed it during my pre-flight check.  took off and crashed it in the first turn.

In 1998 I was living in Cornwall in the UK. Of course, I was also in the ******** scene and was building a Sopwith Pup. On the particular evening I was working on the fuse, busy superglueing things in place - I had myself a bit contorted in and around the fuse and a bottle of super glue in my right hand - the BA Concorde was then flying regularly between Heathrow and the States. When it flew up the Bristol channel, it would accelerate to supersonic speed. So this particular night, while I was busy with the Sopwith fuse, minding my ownbussiness,the Concorde flew by and meteo conditions was right to conduct sound very well, the result was a larger than normal sonic boom, the house vibrated, I got a fright and squeezed the cyno glue bottle, glueing myself to the Sopwith fuse in several places - my wife had to help me getting free......

Some 35 years agosome guys bet me for a sixpack of beersto fly a 72" Barnstormer Bipe through the rugby posts on a local field - which I did successfully, then, to be the smart*****I attempted to do it again to prove I can do it - this time Icame in faster and flew straight into the left upright post, almost cutting both wings off and uprooting the rugby post...

Around the same time we attached a long nylon fishing line to a plane to tow balloons. On that particular day we did itagain,and I took off - and realized about at the same time that somebody is standing on the end of the line when the plane was about 4 m high and the line snapped taught, stopping the plane in mid air and came crashing down...

Cheers

Bundu

Hello All,
I am a newbie as most of you would probably call me, ( flying for about a yr now), I had several foamies to learn the finer points of keeping a model plane airborne before I stepped up for the large money purchases. I assembled the wing onto my Parkzone Stinson SR10 and checked all my controls as I have been taught to do every time I fly a plane. All was well and I proceeded to make a beautiful takeoff and several nice loops around our field. After getting comfortable I proceed into a steep dive and planned on pulling out well before any risk of danger. At exactly the same time as the wing folded in half and removed itself from the plane, I recalled not having installed the retaining pins into the wing struts. That was definitely the fastest that stinson will ever go, straight into the ground.
Mattchewn


17 planes and 10 are still airworthy! After only 8 months. Lots of foam for safe packing though.

FOODSTICK , Your story brought back memories of a friend Burt , gone now quite a few years. Igot to know him from the hobby store we both went to. As a surface R.C. er I didn't see him fly but the other flyers that came in used to call him the cub guru. They said he probably trained 100 or more R.C. pilots and built many planes for himself and others from stock wood and home made templates. Anyway , to his favorite blunder story. His 8 year old grandson wanted to learn to fly. Being a proud grandpa Burt went a little overboard in setting up the boy for his 1st lesson. He custom built a special trainer and took the electronics from one of his competition planes as this radio had a buddy plug. Things were going well untill the boy asked " Grandpa , what does this do?" and hit the pre- programed button. That was when Burt realized he hadn't cleared the snap roll from the radio! He said the plane came apart like it was hit by a missle and his grandson didn't want to fly for a month after that. WE ALL MISS YOU BURT!