Big FEJ Hawk Down - wing collapse Reported
 

Reports are this was Lewis Patton's Jet. The same one that had wing flutter at Jets Over KY.

Well that sucks...

Didn't his FEJ A7 meet the same demise?

Yes, the A-7s wing folded. SMH

Where and when did this happen? I just flew with Lewis this past weekend.

Illinois jets.
Hopefully he will come on here and discuss.
Scott

Based on what we all know about FEJ's inherent design flaws and poor quality, flying a FEJ jet at rallies is irresponsible. For crying out loud this is two for two with the same pilot! It's not like this is some sort of isolated event with FEJ. When is this community going to wake up and take a stand against this company from participating in rallies?

Well said Andy. All FEJ aircra(sh)ft should be banned from rallies before someone gets seriously hurt.

Why would you take a chance. When a part of one of these aircraft fails, you are along for the ride. If you chose to fly these aircraft and hurt someone it is on you.

The poor general. He has been such a hold out with FEJ.

Another FEJ "check of the week" boys and girls!

Hmmmm.... He crashed into a roof of a house at Top Gun, an airplane hanger at MS afterburner, several others, I see a pattern here...

I see the same pattern ... CRASH.

FEJ models are very hit and miss quality wise. I just wouldn't trust flying one after all that has transpired. I'm not sure what if anything they are doing to insure proper design, structure engineering, and good composite assembly techniques. I scratch built my last jet and had one of my coworkers do the stress and bending analiyis for the loads my spar joiner and wing structure could carry, maybe they should spend a few dollars doing the same.

I wish Lewis' FEJ planes were as nice as he is. Great guy, but partnered with a rotten company.

Anyone know if the wing that folded was the same wing that wing flutter? Also does the large hawk have a wing tube or just pegs holding it in place?

That hawk had only one fatal flaw.

Anyone flying FEJ anything is flying a ticking bomb. Utterly unreliable airframes.

F= Frankly
E= Endangered
J= Jet

Right wing fluttered at Kentucky
Left wing folded at Illinois

Louis is a great guy. I flew with him at the OC Turbofest. His big Hawk had a lot of flights on it... and had reinforcements that were supposed to fix all the issues. I saw it fly at least 6 times... and I wouldn't say it was a "Danger" as others have said.

I wish Lewis' FEJ planes were as nice as he is. Great guy, but partnered with a rotten company. SUPER NICE PERSON.

ScottBased on what we all know about FEJ's inherent design flaws and poor quality, flying a FEJ jet at rallies is irresponsible. For crying out loud this is two for two with the same pilot! It's not like this is some sort of isolated event with FEJ. When is this community going to wake up and take a stand against this company from participating in rallies?


DO YOU HAVE, ENGINEERING DEGREE?? PLEASE PIONT OUT DESIGN FLAWS.?? IN DETAIL .{DATA}.THANKS

You don't need an engineering degree to see the flaws with FEJ planes. The crashes say it all. With FEJ, causation equals correlation.

This has been done ad nauseum on RCU by multiple engineers and PHD's in the field. Do the search yourself if you are interested. I'm tired of repeatedly digging this info up for the new rash of FEJ sympathizers.

+1

The reinforcement recommended by FEJ that were supposed to fix all of the issues are and were flawed. FEJ doesn't know what the hell they are talking about or doing. FEJ and Lewis refused to listen to my friend who is an aerospace engineer when he offered advice on how to permanently fix the stab on that Hawk. As a matter of fact Lewis YELLED at my friend in front of me at KY Jets last year because my friend actually had the gall to go directly to FEJ and their rep to offer assistance. All my friend was trying to do was help and he gets yelled at and personally attacked by Lewis. This is why I will never go back to KY Jets.

The bottom line is that FEJ and Lewis wouldn't listen to real solutions on how to fix this problem and now he is living with the consequences. Maybe losing two brand new jets will make them start listening to real engineers who give them suggestions (FOR FREE BTW) on how to make their jets last longer than one season of flying.

What I find most amazing is AMA’s lack of safety leadership in the FEJ debacle and their insistence that the jet community will self-police the problem. Doesn’t look like the self-police concept is working very well.

2 for 2 on that particular airframe. Lets not forget the FEJ A-7 that came apart in the air the previous year and was the reason he went to the Hawk. What's the old saying, burn me once shame on you, burn me twice shame on me and I don't know the rest for a 3rd time.... Sorry for your loss Lewis and hope you have a very large wallet if you continue to support FEJ. Sure, they may give you yet "another" replacement airframe, but I highly doubt they are replacing your turbine and electronics. When is enough, enough?


Ghostrider 1

The AMA is to busy spending $250K trying to find a way to make $$ with their own quad copter business and training for commercial use.

AMA is here to make rules not enforce rules.

double post

Actually, the AMA has no current rules regarding an AMA member flying an ARF that has a widely known design and manufacturing defect. Any AMA member that want’s to can fly one, crash and injure/kill someone and the AMA insurance provides full coverage. And the club or CD that allowed the flight is also protected by the AMA insurance if sued. Sounds pretty dumb but that is how it works. Feel free to ask too, but that is the answer I got.

This community will not wake up until someone is hurt or someone losses a large chunk of cash (RV) due to these POS's going in. Then it may be too late!

The leaders of this community are the CD's and club officials. Until we man up and say No, this will continue.

You guys whinging about FEJ in the last month I've seen to skymaster jets a F-16 and a large viper both have the fins blow a part in flight one of them landed safe and the other crash both of them are top pilots. All of the manufacturers have problems.

Damo

The quote comes from a deleted post so has to go


Let's start at the source ... OK?
Does anyone at FEJ have an engineering degree? The answer is, "No."

The REAL engineers (stress & structure, mechanical, aeronautical (including guys from Boeing and NASA)) have already commented about FEJ's lack of knowledge and poor designs here on RCU in such deep and thorough technical terms that it would blow you away. Just research the topics, and see for yourself.


I have edited out names and quotes but left the rest of the post rather than just deleting the whole post as what is being said has value.

Hi,

Let's face it-- the real power/impetus/responsibility lies with the CD of the event. He would be inviting quite a ***** storm if he were to announce that a specific brand of ARF's weren't welcome at his event, so he so far won't do it. Until one of the CD's takes this step, it's all just a bunch of whoof-whoof. I think that when someone does finally take that stand, the rest will follow suit.

I have owned 2 Skygate Hawks, and have flown 3 others. I have 3 friends that own them who fly quite often, and then I would guess at having seen maybe another 5-10 fly a ross the world on my travels. The only time I have ever seen an issue with the rudder was on the prototype model when it was first released at the jet masters. That issue was a result of the rudder servo failing and causing flutter in the entire fin. I know as I watched Stephen Volker replace the servo on more than one occasion, go out and do another flight. Only for the same result. Half way through the flight as the rudder was loaded the servo or something in the servo set up would fail and always with the same result. Sorry but I do not thnk it is a model issue.
Mick, dont get me started o how many Airworld hawks I have owned, flown or seen fly with no issue what so ever. :D:D
I see it more and more often where the larger planes are flown in the same way as the smaller jets ( hard ) most of the time the pilot gets away with it, but sometimes not. At the last jet meeting I was at I watched a very competent pilot, who normally flies mainly smallish sport jets ( Bandits, etc ) Fly his new MB339. He was flying it really well, but just a little to " Hard" in my opinion. I went over and had a word with him, just offering some advice and trying to explain how these large heavy scale models have so much inertia behind them that it's easy to let the speed build up, and then when flown in the same manner as a sport jet that can be pulled and pushed much harder the loads are so great it can cause a failure. He took the advice on board and will hopefully get any enjoyable flights on that model.
I am just getting into full size flying and as part of it I am trying to fly as many different types as I can. The thing that amazes me is the different VNE's ( Velocity never to be exceeded) There are. Its amazing that two very similar looking aircraft can have such differing VNE's! I think its the same with models. For example.. I have seen people fly jets like Bandits, and Bobcats so , so hard with no issues. Yet I have seen models such as big L-39's and large deltas fold up like a paper bag mid flight in what looked to be a pretty tame flight. It's so difficult to give a comprehensive answer without going too technical. it's also so difficult giving a defined limit for each model. As most manufacturers do not test to destruction, and no models that I know of have a VNE. Even if they did how would we measure and monitor that we did not exceed them?
For me the way I try to work round it is I try to adopt a different style of flying for each model.
I have flown and will quite confidently fly a model such as my BVM Bobcat much harder, faster and more aggressively than I would something like my Skygate Hawk. I try and avoid mixing speed with high G maneuvers. Yes I do some pretty damn fast high speed runs, but I work up to these ( during flight testing away from a show environment before I get flamed ) I also do some high energy sharp pulls, but these I do turbine spooled down. I know for sure that if I mixed both those two aspects f my flight that it would be Bye Bye Bobcat!
The same as when I fly my Skygate hawk ( P-180 powered by the way ) As soon as I am off and cleaned up I am back on the throttle, and I am using that throttle stick nearly as much as some of my flight controls. I watched a Skygate fly in Italy once and the only thing that saved it was the fact it flamed out. The pilot took off and from the moment he took off till the moment it flamed out the pilot never once touched the throttle stick ( No I could not see it but I sure could hear it) The model got faster and faster till it reached it's maximum speed. I was fearing the worst as the pilot was just getting settled in and I thought if he goes for any vertical maneuvers this could be curtains. Luckily the turbine shut down just as he was pulling 45 for what looked as it it might have been a half reverse cuban ( Which I think might have been the first and last time for that model ) After a perfect landing I went up to the pilot and tried to explain that he might try and adopt some throttle management, to which he informed me that he was famed in his local club for flying pulse jets ( No throttle ) and he had never had one of those fail. I did try to explain to him that a small pulse jet delta, although flying fast does not have the same flight loads on the surfaces or controls as this big hawk... Not sure what the outcome was but I am hoping that all went well.
Sorry to waffle on guys, and please dont treat this as me pointing fingers, and having a preach. I am simply just trying to convey some of my experiences ( Good and bad ) As well as some of my worries.
If I can ever be of any help, or give ay advice then please feel free to get in touch.
Regards Al

Ali,

I appreciate your response and what you say is very true about throttle management - for everyone and every manufacturer out there. The problem I have understanding your response as it relates to FEJ is that for the most part a curtain percentage of jet flyers of all makes, not just FEJ have and always will (as discussed not necessarily the best thing but do anyway) over throttled their jets. This happens across the spectrum of manufacturers available. The problem is that FEJ, given that this speed problem is universal to all pilots and all manufacturers, is having a disproportionate amount of airframe failures compared to the rest of the pack.

The other problem with this argument is that Lewis is not known to over speed his jets. At least I have not seen him over speed one of his jets. Now I was not in attendance during the previous two failures he experienced but the times I have seen Lewis fly the flights are very conservative.

what turbine was he using? 180-200N?

I have removed several posts from this thread that were either personal attacks or a response to the attack.

Lets keep this one polite gentlemen.

Hah,,
not on this subject, you get the same regulars,shooting out the same info and opinions,
Its great, I did read and learn,, I do own one of the older FEJ f-16s no honeycomb junk in it, good solid ply, the plane is strong, and it flies and looks great, but the price to pay for the build quality comes in at the scales, my plane is fairly heavy when compared to the new honeycomb designs. I did a lot of reading before purchasing mine from another member, Making sure it was not honeycomb build. I got it and Iove the Jet, but I was warned about the Gear from multiple people, and it was true, I have had my issues with the gear, I spend another 700 and had them converted at down and locked and that took care of the gear problem (I did have two of their actuators fail, but they stepped up took all three and updated them to the new strong transmission system). So when I look at my jet, it looks great, everyone likes it, takes off straight flies straight, and lands OK, I still need some fine tuning, but all in all it has been a proven jet, the previous owner had multiple flights on it, I have now had 9 flights on it. I can trust my jet, to stay together, if I can keep the landings well. I am also in this jet for almost 6k I bought all high end components, Tams Pipe, Good Batts, Jetcat p120sx, the only real problem with mine is its heavier than any other 1/8 f-16 out there. SO WHEN I READ THESE COMMENTS SAYING AMA/CD's should ban all FEJ planes, I say that's BS, not all, there are still plenty of older fej airplanes still flying, NOW PERSONALLY, from what I have read on this forum,, Would I buy a new FEJ,,,, Honesty,, NO, I have no confidence in their current building techniques with this honeycomb being used as support,Im no engineer, but I do know you want something solid there to hold. I am also not happy with the customer support, they have burned many,,, BUT also I can see it like this, did they build the plane, yes, are they responsible for the plane, (lawyers would love to get some of this question) Is the customer the one in the end holding all the responsibility, YES, you take that risk anytime you purchase something in this hobby. You try to learn from others experience, and advice, and use that to make a sane judgment. SO when it comes to this subject, instead of getting angry at people who bought what they thought was a good jet, OR EVEN some who were told they would build it their way,, that anger should be turned to the manufacturer, and eventually you will get 1 of two results, they will step up and try to take care of what the problems are and peoples losses, (I don't see them doing that, I see that putting them in bankruptcy) Or they ignore all the bad pressure, and continue on going the way they have been just ignoring it all, and I see that putting them in Bankruptcy too. What I would do is completely shut down, sell off all the parts, then work with the manufacturer, have the flaws on airframes fixed, then start up a new company with a new beginning, and try to keep its customers secure with their product. I know this strategy works I have seen it done multiple times at Chinese buffets in town.......this is just my two cents on the matter,