Loopman

My Feedback: (195)

As we always tend to over-analyze the loss of a plane, either on a maiden flight or the 100th flight, I am perplexed over what happened to me today. After taking off and turning into the pattern, my Pitts went into a circling flight, followed by two half rolls (that by the way looked pretty darned good) and then straight into mother earth at full bore! Needless to say I was glad it happened away from the flight line as someone could've been seriously injured or major damage to personal property. I of course was screaming the proverbial "I ain't got it" phrase, followed by a few choice expletives. The plane and engine were a total loss but with the exception of the throttle servo, the electronics survived pretty darned good. Upon examination of the servos, batteries and receiver everything was working as it should and I had perfect voltage in the rx battery. I can only conclude that I may have been the victim of someone elses carelessness but I will never know. But since the plane behaved as if someone was inputting stick controls I have to wonder. I fly JR and the rx was a R700 which had never given me a lick of trouble and had never been crashed or dropped. I would also think that if it had been simple interference I would flown through it at some point. NOW here's one more thing to consider, I had another plane sitting a few feet behind me that was ON at the time of this incident (same channel). Is there any reason to suspect that that could've played a part in this disaster? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Happy Flying!

Loopman []

pilotpete2

Sorry about the loss
Having another receiver turned on would not be a problem, in fact that I did that myself just last Tuesday, sometime into a 50 min. thermal flight, I heard servo movements coinciding with my stick inputs, sure enough my Extra 300 sitting about 6' away still had the receiver turned on.
It sure sounds like someone turned on on your channel, if that's the case, it's sad the perp didn't own up[:@]
I moved to 2.4Ghz because our field, while well controlled has had some shootdowns, but we have also had problems with a school yard across the river from us, kids flying foamies on 72Mhz
Good luck,
Pete

Campgems

Man, it a hard call when things check out later. I've had three incidents in the last three years of flying where interference or electronic failure got me. The first was on my secone trainer, still on the buddy box. I was flying my typical four errors high and away from the field when the plane suddenly did like yours, roll over and die. My instructor at the time was all appoligic about "I should have saved it", but it wouldn't answer my radio and I'm sure it wasn't talking to him either. I later found one of the old time members showing off his old computer radio, "one of the first, Look, I can just flip a switch and swithch between chanXX and Chan 56" HUMMM I was on 56 and I've always wondered how many demos he gave that day. By the way, it was four months before we found my plane, well most of it.

The other two incidents were on the same plane. The first, was on take off and it suddenly went tail high and took a hard right turn and wouldn't answer the TX. then suddenly dropped the tail, the engine shut off which I was trying to do, and went airborne. It just cleared the barbed wire fencen and landed on the wrong side of the shore line of the pond below our filed. It looked like a battery failure, the VoltWatch was showing a red light, even though it came off the charger 30 minutes before and showed full charge before I took off. I couldn't find a thing wrong when I got it home. Full charge on the battery. I skinned the battery and checked all the weld joints and the individual charge on each cell. After a few months, I finally rebuilt the wing and after again checking the battery, I flew the plane again, for several days and flights. Then it went deaf on me. First flight of the day and about three minutes in, in a long slow left hand turn, it just went deaf. Nothing I could do would cause a response, We watched it go round and round and round for a few minutes befor it finall lost altitude and crashed. Checking it out this time, two of the welds had given up and opened. I know, and I've already taken the flack for not scraping the pack after the first one, but it looked good after all testing.

Just about a year back, one of our guys was wringing out his 1/3 scale Yak54 when he started doing some stuff I never saw him do before, and he kept loosing alitutide in the process. Finally he went in. It turned out that one of his $150 a pop metal gear aileron servos had locked up so hard that we couldn't turn it by hand. It wasn't crash damage as he hit the netting over the grapes and there was litttle damage to the plane.

A lot of times, the "interference area" turns out to be a broken antenna lead on a 2.4 receiver, or a broken antenna on another 2.4 TX. We fly next to a college and I some times wondered what they may be playing with. We are also within 3/4 miles of a National Guard base that is active 24/7. The only known interference at our field, a few years back, was from a dirty signal from a paging Transmitter on the hill behind us. Each time we have suspected something on the 72mhz band, we get out our frequency anyllizer and have yet to see anything.

Some days, it just isn't your day I guess.

Don

Loopman

My Feedback: (195)

Guys, Thanks for the support. This hobby is full of unexpected occurences, "Gremlins" I guess. Every plane we own has a secret "die by date" written on it, some sooner some later. It just makes me irate when I lose a plane like this. It would be great if we had "black boxes" on our aircraft as it would provide some type of closure.

Happy Flying!

Loopman [&o]

freeair

loopman, did you also re check your r/c range after this incident ? another possibility could have been your receiver switch that could be a little worn both at the contacts or the actual switch piece.

texaswarbird

I lost my p51 pts when I just started solo. A old time pilot switched on his box to ground check his Sukhoi. My baby did a loop and a high-g turn, then headed for the ground. I knew I did not do those manuvers because I was not ready for that yet. Just survive to flight another day!!

Loopman

My Feedback: (195)

Freeair,
I did a complete check of the system both before and after the crash. I always range check before I make the first flight of the day. Everything works as it should. By the way, how's everything down in the land of the roos? I know another Aussie flyer that I receive e-mails from occasionally, Graham Scott. I believe Graham is in NSW and here is a pic of a friend of his he sent me. Man, if this is a typical spider down there, I'd be taking a shotgun to the loo!

Happy Flying!

Loopman